Rail nightmare was averted, but commuters still face ordeal

Completed in April 2014, NJ Transit's new Anderson Street Station is more of a shelter, open to the elements on two sides, and with inadequate heating and few creature comforts.

Still, the station is a vast improvement over the two bus shelters and ticket machines commuters were provided after the original station house burned down on Jan. 10, 2009.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A tentative contract agreement may improve the lives of NJ Transit rail workers, who threatened to strike on Saturday.

But North Jersey commuters still have to contend with crowding on SRO trains and in their Penn Station waiting room in Manhattan, and frequent service disruptions.

The Record's A-3 reaction story today and Saturday's banner headline on Page 1 -- "Rail nightmare averted" -- ignores all of the problems rail commuters face, including higher fares and service cutbacks.

Nor is there any mention of Governor Christie's anti-mass transit policies, and the deep cuts he made in state subsidies, forcing NJ Transit to raise those fares.

Transportation reporter Christopher Maag, like his predecessors, apparently has never ridden a train to and from Manhattan during the rush hour, when seats are hard to come by, and reported on the quality of service.

And in more than a dozen years of writing the so-called commuting column, Road Warrior John Cichowski also has ignored train and bus service, distracted as he is by MVC lines, potholes, pedestrian deaths or road projects (L-1).

Half the story

In fact, a column and two major stories on today's front page are woefully incomplete.

Staff Writer Charles Stile's column sounds like a political battle over the state constitution between Christie and Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat (A-1).

But nowhere does Stile mention Sweeney's hand has been forced by the hundreds of vetoes the GOP bully has executed, including those against a hike in the minimum wage.

The A-1 graphic on local property taxes is missing towns where non-profit hospitals and other tax-exempt entities shift the burden to homeowners, such as Hackensack and Englewood, making it difficult for them to stay within the 2% cap.

And from the story on a lake cleanup, readers have a hard time deciding whether Pompton Lakes, state and federal environmental officials caved into corporate giant DuPont -- just like Ringwood did on Ford Motor Co. pollution.

Local news?

In Local today, stories about schools in Englewood, Saddle Brook, Edgewater and Leonia have Hackensack readers wondering why they rarely see anything in the paper on their schools (L-2 and L-6).

Readers also are puzzled why Englewood Schools Superintendent Robert Kravitz isn't being offered a merit payment for increasing white enrollment in the city's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black and Hispanic (L-2).

What's the point?

On the Opinion front, the first four paragraphs of Mike Kelly's column put readers to sleep.

OK. A Jersey shore native became "the first U.S. citizen to be convicted ... of trying to join the Islamic State in Syria and fight against his country" (O-1). 

"What is significant is how ordinary [Tairod] Pugh is," Kelly writes.

What is Kelly's point? Sadly, most readers will never turn the page.

Third story on small-plane crash still doesn't get it right

Abma's Farm & Market in Wyckoff was closed on Labor Day.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers know Labor Day is what editors call "a slow news day," but that's still no excuse for the third story in four days on pilot Jack Rosenberg.

The Spring Valley, N.Y., man is shown in a Page 1 photo today, recovering in a hospital bed from broken bones and other injuries, wearing what looks like a skull cap.

The Record's story not only doesn't say whether Rosenberg is an Orthodox Jew or if the slice of pizza he ate was kosher (A-6), it raises other questions.

Why is the Woodland Park daily doing a third story on the crash, and why is it all over the front page?

What's the big deal? 

Don't all small-plane pilots who go down after their engines conk out try to avoid injuring or killing other people on the ground?

Flawed story 

And why was first-day coverage of the crash on Friday missing the crucial details about Rosenberg deliberately turning his crippled plane away from cross-country runners and others on a Tenafly field?

Or, as the overworked police reporter, Staff Writer Stefanie Dazio, put it:

"As Jack Rosenberg looked out the window of his small plane ... hurtling 60 [mph] to 70 mph over the Cresskill and Tenafly border and saw dozens of young faces on a school field that would have made a perfect landing site, the father of seven knew he'd have to find another spot" (A-1).

Even my shortened version of that lead paragraph is enough to choke a horse.

Small-plane menace

Small planes like the one Rosenberg was piloting seem to crash all too often, usually with fatalities. 

When they're not crashing, small, medium and large planes, and the noise they make, have a huge impact on the quality of life in Bergen County, especially if you live in Hackensack, Teaneck and other towns near Teterboro Airport.

One story on Rosenberg would have been enough, but The Record's reporters and assignment editors never seem willing to hustle and do the legwork needed for such thorough reporting.

The two follow-ups corrected an error in the first account that Rosenberg contacted air-traffic controllers at La Guardia Airport; it was Teterboro Airport.

Overlooked pilot

Instead of a rehash and regurgitation of pilot Jack Rosenberg's crash, some enterprising editor should have put the obituary of a Tuskegee Airman on the front page today.

You'll find the compelling life story of Calvin Spann, 90, a former Englewood resident, literally buried in the back of Local (L-8).

The obit illuminates how African Americans in North Jersey still face discrimination today.

As a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Spann flew 26 combat missions, including the longest bomber escort mission of the 15th Air Force.

When Spann returned home, he wanted to become a commercial pilot, but the major airlines wouldn't hire African Americans.

The sub-headline on Spann's obituary says incorrectly he "faced segregation after war." 

He "found a job in pharmaceutical sales and settled in Englewood," the obituary notes.

Spann faced discrimination, but the black and Hispanic children attending Englewood schools today still face segregation in the elementary and middle-school grades.

Virtually all of the white children in Englewood attend private schools, and officials have sought to desegregate only the high school.

Why treat the courts with such deference?

Image by wallyg via Flickr

Some New Jersey judges act as if they just want you to go away.

In only a few days, two criminal trials ended with verdicts that left observers shaking their heads in disbelief.

But The Record and other media reacted as usual, merely reporting the outcomes, without making any special effort to examine the process or quote legal experts who believe the courts would benefit from more public scrutiny.


Shirt crime


Stories on Page 1 and A-8 today report Passaic city residents are outraged a police officer was found not guilty in the beating of a schizophrenic man whose only crime was not wearing a shirt.


The A-1 story, by Staff Writer Richard Cowen, never explains why police had to "move" Ronnie Holloway off the corner of Main Avenue and Summer Street in May 2009.


Most of Wednesday's front page was devoted to the acquittal of Casey Anthony in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter -- an O.J. Simpson-like verdict that has many questioning the viability of the jury system. 


Judge who?


But the charges against Passaic Police Officer Joseph Rios III were decided by a judge, not a jury, and readers learn nothing about him in the two stories today.


Did The Record ever report why a jury wasn't impaneled? 


What kind of legal practice did Superior Court Judge Donald J. Volkert Jr. have before he was appointed to the bench? Was he a criminal defense attorney? A prosecutor? Did he ever represent a police officer?


Too civil for many


The media scrutinizes the civil courts even less than the criminal courts. 


High legal fees often block plaintiffs' access to the courts, and judges have no incentive to change that, because once they were lawyers charging $200, $300, $400 or more for an hour of their precious time. 


Of course, you rarely read anything about high legal or contingency fees in The Record, where the reporters covering the courthouses seem to be doing public relations for the bar.


Have you seen anything about how much Anthony owes her attorneys? 


Hey, Editor Francis Scandale, how can the Florida woman resist book offers and paid interviews with a legal bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars hanging over her head? 


Serving the rich


Does the lead A-1 story -- on Governor Christie sending more aid to wealthy school districts -- surprise anyone? 


He axed the millionaires tax and now he's taking care of their kids.


The Record and other media report over and over again the Republican claim that ending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy will hurt the economy (A-4) -- but they never report on just how many jobs have been created.


It's a myth that tax cuts create jobs, but the media are more interested in sound bites than in sound reporting.


Good Englewood news


The front of Local has a little good news for Englewood's segregated elementary schools -- a district partnership with a primary school in Nanjing, China -- one of two stories about the city on L-1 today.


Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado was too busy covering one of her other towns, Maywood, so there's nothing for city residents today. Teaneck news also is missing in inaction.


Keep up the good work, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.


This is satire?


What do you make of the column at the bottom of today's editorial page (A-11)  from Michael Fremer, an audio-visual writer and blogger, who suggests "privatizing the poor"?


This doesn't even make sense, and is in bad taste, given all of Christie's cuts to programs for poor and working-class families. 


Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin must be desperate to run this moronic column on his page.


Dissing Sephardic Jews


The review of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on the Better Living front today highlights the season opener, which perpetuates Larry David's abysmal ignorance of where Jews come from.


A Daily News writer reports one character on the HBO show jokes that if a Jewish couple wanted to have an affair, a Palestinian chicken restaurant would be the place to go, "because there would be no chance they would see any of their Jewish friends there."



Of course, there would be no chance only if the couple had no Sephardic Jewish friends, whose ancestors came from the Middle East and who frequent Arabic restaurants.


The morons who run the media seem to know only one piece of Jewish history  -- the Holocaust of European Jews.