Bridgegate probe moves one step closer to Christie

An Armed Forces Career Center, representing all of the services, has moved into the space on Main Street in Hackensack once occupied by Prozys Army-Navy Store. The space has been empty since Limon Fine Food Market Place closed in 2010.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Newly released e-mails and text messages show Governor Christie's campaign manager knew about the cover story for George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee as they were happening in early September, The Record reports today.

Christie fired Bill Stepien, his campaign strategist, and Bridget Anne Kelly, his deputy chief of staff, who sent the infamous e-mail to the governor's crony on the Port Authority, which runs the bridge:

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

The e-mails and messages bring the state Legislature's investigation one step closer to the GOP bully, who claims he was lied to by his inner circle during the political-retribution scandal now known as Bridgegate (A-1).

The Record's front pages today and Monday carry too much international news -- on Crimea and the missing Malaysian passenger jet -- for a local daily newspaper in North Jersey.

Tin men

On the first Business page today, the obituary for William "Wild Bill" Perretti recalls a North Jersey auto dealer who gave a bad name to the industry.

The Record's own investigation, by Bruce Locklin, found "a pattern of bait-and-switch ads, misrepresented prices and finance terms, and other deceptive practices" (L-8).

In Local, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza manages to top previous accident photos that showed car doors had been removed to free victims.

Today, a vehicle involved in a Route 17 collision is shown with its roof peeled back like the top of a sardine can, but as usual, the caption is completely devoid of any real information (L-2). 

Sforza also needed a long Dean's List (L-2) and a truck crash photo (L-3) to fill out the thin local-news report.

Sloppy editing

The high level of editing continues.

A story on Monday's L-5 reported a section of Van Houten Street in Paterson had been renamed in recognition of the city's Bangladeshi community.

In the first paragraph, the street's original name is given as "Van Housten Street."

In Friday's Hackensack Chronicle, another North Jersey Media Group publication, the caption under a large photo of a man climbing over a snowbank in Hackensack said it was taken on "Main Avenue."

In (201) magazine's March 2014 issue, a community profile of Wyckoff lists a farm, a market and restaurants, but omits any mention of the Goffle Road Poultry Farm, which has been raising and selling antibiotic-free birds since 1948 (Page 44). 

Superficiality is the new norm

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It's hard to understand how today's story on the second day of the snowstorm -- based on reporting of 15 or more staffers -- can be missing so much detail. It's hard to fathom, that is, until you take into account Deirdre Sykes' lazy, incompetent local news assignment desk, which has hobbled The Record of Woodland Park for too many years.

A Hackensack man died after he went into cardiac arrest shoveling snow, but the Page 1 story is missing both his name and his age. There is not a single interview of a bus rider among the thousands affected by the suspension of NJ Transit service or of a flier grounded by canceled flights. Hackensack snowfall totals are again missing from the front-page map.

Jon Corzine (photo) gets some belated credit for what he did as governor in the other A-1 story on the slowing in the growth of property tax bills. The average bill in Tenafly in 2009 -- $17,411 -- is reported as the highest in North Jersey, but you can be sure Publisher Stephen A. Borg is paying a lot more than that on his $3.65 million mansion.

For a decade or more, the haughty Sykes and her assignment minions have not understood the need to cover towns, even when the reporters assigned to them are doing enterprise stories, spend six months on a fellowship or cover such disasters as the Haiti earthquake.

So today, on the front of Local, Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano has a long, interesting story on African-Americans for Black History Month, but she has yet to analyze the election of a new mayor and report whether voters chose change or the status quo.

On L-2, you'll find not one but two education stories about Montvale. You rarely see an education story about Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck, three core towns in Bergen County.

On the front of Better Living, you'll find more superficial reporting by Food Editor Bill Pitcher, whose "Food Smart" piece on eggs omits anything about cage-free, vegetarian feed or other issues consumers should weigh. He recommends the chicken eggs at Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff, but doesn't tell readers they can find duck eggs there as well.