Self-serve gasoline could be bad for air quality in N.J.

This two-pump gas station on Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs will probably never convert to self-service, even if the law is changed to allow it.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front-page story on a proposal to allow self-serve gas stations in New Jersey raises a lot of questions about prices that are never answered.

The story claims drivers pay a "full-service premium ... at the pump" estimated "at 8 cents to 18 cents a gallon," but doesn't say whether prices will be cut, if self-serve is approved (A-6).

Nor does The Record say how much the gasoline tax might be raised, and whether the net effect will be lower prices at the pump.

Cutting gasoline prices would transform a quality of life report into an environmental story, if lower prices encourage more driving and discourage the purchase of hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.

Of course, the New Jersey Gasoline C-Store Automotive Association probably wouldn't pass along labor savings to the consumer.

Members of the owners group have been charged with numerous wage violations.

Confusing numbers

At one point, the story reports self-serve pumps "would mean the loss of hundreds of part-time jobs," but a few paragraphs later notes gas stations employ about 5,000 attendants who pump gas, most of them part time (A-6).

Today's lead story on A-1 reports air pollution is getting worse in New Jersey. 

A proposal that might lead to lower gas prices and encourage more driving certainly isn't welcome in the Garden State, where mass transit is already operating at capacity.

Letterman effect

If the page proofer, news and copy editors, and other members of the newsroom production staff are still watching David Letterman, readers might finally have an explanation for the dramatic spike in errors in recent years (BL-1).

Letterman's "Late Show" was a fixture in the newsroom before the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group abandoned Hackensack in 2009.

Even more significant, moving the printing of The Record to Rockaway Township from Hackensack a couple of years earlier apparently ended the tradition of checking the first copies for errors, stopping the presses and fixing them.

Six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton has done a miserable job of ensuring accurate headlines, and all editing seems to have ended, allowing reporters and columnists to write on and on, and spin fiction if they want.

All this coverage -- today and Sunday -- of Letterman's final show on Wednesday is a waste of space. 

After I left the paper, I never watched the comedian again.

Second looks

Take a look at the corrections on Saturday's A-2 for examples of what a crappy job Houlton and the news and copy editors under her are doing.

One headline "gave the incorrect town in which seven people face prostitution-related charges."

Another correction fixed the misspelling of a Bergen County official's name, but also gave the name of his agency incorrectly.

Adam Strobel was identified as "division director for open space." The division isn't named.

The Strobel correction noted the "impact" of raising the open-space tax also was wrong in a story on Friday's L-6.

Death Valley

Sunday's Travel section cover story on California's Death Valley National Park was beautifully written by Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, the paper's chief medical reporter.

Her description of the landscape and "a silence as immense as any on earth" makes me want to visit even more than I did before (T-1).

It's simple: Put hike in gasoline tax on the November ballot

The Record's Peter Sampson, the reporter assigned to the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, above, is covering the federal corruption trial of onetime Democratic Party chief Joseph Ferriero in Newark. Kibret Markos has been shifted from the Passaic County Courthouse in Paterson to cover court stories in Hackensack. Are readers being shortchanged?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When Governor Christie vetoed a hike in the state's minimum wage, proponents put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, and prevailed.

The same thing happened when the GOP bully threatened funds to acquire open space.

Now, The Record is declaring doomsday has arrived for a gasoline-tax hike to fund road, bridge and rail repairs in the Garden State (A-1).

Why not put a hike in the nation's second-lowest gas tax on the November ballot and let voters decide?

That would take the debate away from The Record and other media who love to stir up controversy instead of condemning the state fiscal crisis caused by Christie's rigid stance against any kind of tax increase.

And it would silence the crackpots who run Americans for Tax Reform and motorist groups that oppose a gas-tax increase to boost the state Transportation Trust Fund (A-7).

Hiking the gasoline tax would put the burden of fixing roads and bridges on the drivers who use them most, including the thousands of out-of-state residents who tear up the turnpike and parkway.

More corrections

Three more corrections appear on A-2 today, evidence that six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton and the copy editors she supervises aren't doing their jobs.

Houlton was promoted from chief of the features copy desk, even though she earned the title of "Queen of Errors" for failing to correct repeated spelling and other mistakes in her sections.

Crappy food group

The Record's Business section gives major coverage to the merger of Kraft Foods Group with H.J. Heinz, even though neither has plants in New Jersey.

The merger certainly isn't consumer news, because executives promise billions in cuts from shedding employees and other expenses.

Nowhere do Kraft or Heinz promise to improve the quality of the crappy processed food they sell.

They would form the third-largest food and beverage company in North America.

BIGLIE plate

The Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers is suggesting Staff Writer John Cichowski apply for a personalized license plate, such as HASBEEN, BIGLIE or IMKIDNG.

Houlton, the production editor, plays a big role in allowing publication of the literally hundreds of errors that have appeared in Cichowski's column in recent years -- few of which are ever corrected --including a boner in his Sunday column on personalized license plates.

Cichowski reported the NJMETTS plate is "fastened to the bumpers of two Toyotas residing in Rutherford with Bill and Shirley Metts" (Sunday's A-4), but it would be illegal for the couple to have the same plate on two cars.

They don't, however, as readers could plainly see from the Page 1 photo that ran with the Road Warrior column.

It's Houlton's job, as supervisor of the news and copy editors, to reconcile such blatant factual conflicts from a reporter who has clearly lost it.

And her refusal to correct them further erodes the credibility of the Woodland Park daily.

See:

Road Warrior's license to commit errors