Finally, here is Super Bowl news to celebrate

Miller's N.J. Ale House on Route 4 in Paramus didn't call Fish for a seafood delivery. Imagine the possibilities: Bully Beef Building Maintenance, Pork Barrel Electricians and Lamb & Lion Plumbers.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

If you can survive the boring front-page Tara Sullivan column on an assistant pro football coach with the improbable last name of "Studesville," there is really big Super Bowl news in The Record today.

Woody Johnson, the filthy rich owner of the Jets, who play in New Jersey but refuse to drop New York from their name, says it would be at least a decade before we could possibly see another Super Bowl in the Garden State (L-1).

First "Studesville," which sounds like "Studsville," and then "Woody," undoubtedly a phallic reference.

Isn't that grand? A respite of 10 whole years before the vast majority of readers have to wade through all this upbeat crap about pro football in every section of the Woodland Park daily.

In the interim, readers can only hope The Record does a little tougher reporting on wealthy team owners' response to compensating football players for all of the brain injuries they suffer (A-8 editorial). 

Mass hysteria

Let's hope the Page 1 "expose" about Port Authority Chairman David Samson's ties to a luxury apartment development doesn't derail a $256 million reconstruction of a nearby PATH station in Harrison that he approved (A-1).

The PATH project would be one of the few improvements in a commuter-rail system that has languished under the Port Authority's well-known anti-mass transit policies -- a story The Record won't touch.

More Bridgegate

A Page 1 Charles Stile column and an A-3 story on the legislative probe round out today's Bridgegate scandal package.

Everyone involved seems to have received subpoenas except Governor Christie himself (A-3).

In his usual awkward style, Stile says Christie's staffers "have been hit with subpoenas" and the governor "has been served a heavy dose of comeuppance."

We also learn Christie "stormed into Trenton four years ago vowing to follow the advice of his 'tough as nails' Sicilian mother" that it is better to be feared than loved.

Still, Stile won't call Christie a "GOP bully," the name he has earned just about everywhere else.

But his Sicilian mother also must have given young Chris a love for pizza.

He became as soft as lard, if you believe the governor's claim he knew nothing about his staff plotting in early September to close George Washington Bridge local access lanes in Democratic Fort Lee.


Mahwah tax cut?

On the Local front, Mahwah residents who opposed a 600,000-square-foot shopping center at Routes 17, 287 and 87 were decades late in citing "traffic, environmental and quality-of-life issues" (L-1).

And given all the nincompoops elected or appointed to run Mahwah and every other home-rule town in North Jersey, residents probably can't even expect any property tax relief when the project is completed.

Lots of questions

An L-2 story about a bank robbery doesn't explain why Valley National Bank on Dean Street in Englewood had $66,000 in its vault. 

Was it expecting a run on the bank or laundering large amounts of cash from illegal activities?

Another story on L-2 doesn't say Paterson laid off police officers in 2011 after Christie cut aid to poor cities, leading to a rise in crime in an already violent community.

The only photo of Christie in the paper today appears on  L-3, where he is seen trying to overcome his love for pizza in a table tennis game at the Boys & Girls Club of Newark.

Who won?

You won't find the outcome in the story or the 
photo caption.

More words, but not always the right ones

Image via Wikipedia

Artist's conception of the new World Trade Center.

The Record's overwhelming coverage of 9/11 in the Sunday paper is followed today by more overwhelming coverage of the 10th anniversary of the attack on America.


The top half of Page 1 carries an unusually large photo of one of the memorial pools and victims' names under a headline shaped from a few eloquent words: "Sorrow etched in stone."


Though well-written, the headline isn't accurate. 


The victims' names are carved in bronze -- not stone -- as noted in both the A-1 story and photo caption.


Only two stories appear under the photo, and if you compare them, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg's well-written news reports puts to shame Columnist Mike Kelly's trite, gimmick-filled column.


Boburg's first paragraph describes a "reborn World Trade Center ... and the transformation of a place that for a decade spoke of horror and destruction," while Kelly's lead seems to be delivering a weather report:

"NEW YORK -- Once again, it was a perfect morning, with a golden dawn streaking through Manhattan's canyons and a quiet seamless azure sky overhead like a protective canopy."

His second paragraph mentions "the threat of another attack scratching at our collective fear." 


Scratching???? I stopped reading there.


Kelly puts his foot in his mouth so often, he must be a favorite of Editors Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who seem to care nothing about the poor reader who has to plow through his turgid prose.


Most of Sykes' Local section is filled with coverage of 9/11 ceremonies closer to home -- 36 of them.


Then, readers are jolted by a story on L-7 about drunk Jets football fans tailgating at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford and waving American flags.


Why is this in the local-news section, and why is it juxtaposed with all that 9/11 coverage?


The story -- from Staff Writer John Brennan -- includes two uses of the phrase "just like usual."

The editors play it straight

Image via Wikipedia

The State of the Union address in January 2010.

How did Editor Francis Scandale keep a straight face when he ran a front-page story today on a salary gender gap at charities?

Didn't he and Features Director Barbara Jaeger OK a $70,000 starting salary for a new food editor in 2006 -- a man in his very early 30s who had no food editing experience? And wasn't that thousands of dollars higher than the salary of a woman who was hounded into retirement after more than 20 years as food editor of The Record and another newspaper?

Does anyone believe the disparate salaries of Bill Pitcher and Patricia Mack are the only examples of a gender gap at the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group, which has fought the unions and kept staff salaries secret at all costs over the years?

And how did Scandale keep a straight face when he totally dominated Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily with coverage of Jets fans traveling to today's Super Bowl playoff game?

Sure, the Jets deserve a part of the front page, but why assign one of the most talentless reporters on the entire staff to the story? 


Staff Writer John Brennan's breathless first paragraphs report, to paraphrase: A lot of Jets fans arrived in Pittsburgh on Saturday, but they're having a hard time finding their way around the big city. Duh. 

A correction on A-2 today says the incorrect day was given "in some editions" for President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday.

We roam the state

At the top of Local, a power broker from Cherry Hill is today's 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH, "brought to you by" Benzel-Bush Motor Car Corp. in Englewood. It's strange that the ad above the fold is "local," while the person to watch is far from it.

A story about Harrington Park appears on L-7 today, in a section without news of Teaneck, Englewood and many other larger towns. Is that because head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes lives there?

Living by bread alone

On the Better Living front, "The Corner Table" column by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung tells us what goes into the basket of bread served in good restaurants. What great reporting went into this column.

Do you think subsequent columns will tell readers whether the chicken most places serve is raised with antibiotics, whether the meat is pumped up with growth hormones and whether the farmed salmon is artificially colored?

Hunger or obesity?

An editorial on Page O-2 praises first lady Mary Pat Christie for helping to fight hunger in New Jersey, though it's apparent she's not diverting food from the governor's table (see photo of him on O-3).

And, of course, the editorial ignores why New Jersey's first couple aren't fighting obesity, too.

A great paper for sports fans

Image via Wikipedia

Francis "Frank" Scandale, editor of The Record, apparently learned nothing from Columbine.

Who is Magdy Elamir and why is a story about this doctor leading The Record of Woodland Park today? Well, you get a hint in the drop headline's "latest brush with law," but wait until you turn to A-12 and find out he's allegedly been breaking the law for more than 12 years and has been practicing medicine all along. 

Now, that's Page 1 news, not a story focusing on weeds in the driveway of his empty multimillion dollar home in Saddle River. Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions are on autopilot again.

You'd think Editor Francis Scandale would be ashamed of how he downplayed the Arizona shootings to run a huge photo of a Jets football player on the front page last Sunday, but here is another big photo of a Jets "rally" on A-1, while the shooting rampage story has been shoved inside the paper.

In fact, there are so many good stories and and at least one column that should have appeared on A-1 today, all this bonding Scandale is doing with the other male editors over sports is getting really irresponsible. 

Rich will get richer

Governor Christie is vowing to give another tax break to the wealthy -- corporations and small businesses this time -- and that should have been all over Page 1. There is no evidence tax breaks create jobs, and a A-1 refer doesn't cut it. 

The profile of Tuscon in the wake of the assassination of a federal judge and the attempted murder of a congresswoman, now on A-5, also should have been outside, especially in view of all the letters to the editor on the shootings from North Jersey readers (O-3).

This still is the most talked-about story in the region and the nation, even if Scandale can't hear it for all the ass-slapping and high-fiving he's doing over the Jets' playoff game.

Readers are constantly asked to wade through drivel on Page 1 from Columnists John Cichowski and Charles Stile. So why didn't Scandale put a powerful package -- Mike Kelly's column on our weak gun laws (O-1) and Margulies' cartoon on the gun lobby (O-2) -- out front today? 

How many more massacres will it take?

That question is the headline on Kelly's column, but it could just as well be posed to Scandale, who covered the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 when he was an editor at The Denver Post -- as he never let anyone at The Record forget in the decade since he arrived here. 

I'm no fan of Kelly, but here, for a change, he writes directly and effectively:

"America is awash in too many handguns, too many angry nut-jobs, too many gun laws with loopholes and too many politicians who fear the narrow-mindedness of the National Rifle Association."

More jock itch

Even Sykes is succumbing to jock itch, putting Yankee captain Derek Jeter on the front of Local today as one of the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH, along with a six-column auto dealer ad above the fold, an abomination. Sykes doesn't get out much, if she can't find any local people to watch.

How is local news covered by her clueless assignment desk? 

The towns assigned to her pets -- such as Hackensack and Englewood -- languish, while the towns covered by energetic staff members flourish. One of those, Denisa R. Superville, has three stories in the section today, but there are none from Monsy Alvarado and Giovanna Fabiano.