Editors help PA sell toll, fare hikes

Image by Mulad via Flickr

At $2.75, the PATH fare would be one of the highest in the U.S.

Hey, Shawn Boburg, you're supposed to be a reporter covering the Port Authority, so why do you sound like an agency spokesman trying to sell a plan to more than double Hudson River tolls and make the PATH rail fare one of the highest in the nation?


Hey, Deirdre Sykes, you're supposed to be the head assignment editor of The Record, so where is reaction from commuters in today's lavish Page 1 coverage? Did you go home early on Friday to get a jump on your weekend?


And where is the editorial condemning the plan from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, seemingly the paper's only advocate of mass transit?


Lazy edition


You know the Woodland Park daily is falling down on the job when a paper like the Daily News delivers a complete package that includes reaction from a Teaneck commuter, and his photo, as well as an editorial.


Boburg, on the other hand, front-loads his story with what sounds like the bi-state agency's press release, complete with justification for the record hikes.


Readers have to wade through the boilerplate and turn to A-6 to hear U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., slam the proposal as "unfair" and "yet another assault on New Jersey's commuters."


Another critic noted Governor Christie redirected $1.8 billion from the Port Authority for use on state roads after he killed the biggest expansion of passenger-rail capacity in memory, the Hudson River rail-tunnel project.


Pay for what?


Why should drivers and PATH riders pay for cost overruns and mismanagement of the World Trade Center site construction, which will be incomplete on the 10th anniversary of 9/11?


Will the increased revenue result in the long-overdue second bus lane on the helix into the Lincoln Tunnel to relieve a standing-room-only commute for thousands? 


Boburg doesn't bother asking those questions and others, and his assignment editor must have merely spell-checked the story before sending it on.


Also on A-1 today, why did it take six days to report July was the second-warmest month ever recorded, dating to 1895?


On A-11, four letters to the editor slam gullible Staff Writer Elisa Ung -- the restaurant reviewer and columnist -- for her July 31 article putting a positive spin on the brutal force-feeding and killing of ducks to produce swollen livers known as foie gras.


However, on Twitter, her editor praised her handling of the story:

susanlsherrill Susan Sherrill 

@BetterLivingNJ's @elisaung handles a tricky subject with aplomb. Her column on Hudson Valley Foie Gras is a must-read bit.ly/p0zcur

1 Aug Favorite Retweet Reply

Second look


One of the best stories in the paper this week was in Sports: Staff Writer Gregory  Schutta turned in a detailed and sensitive piece on the adjustment of Paramus Little League ace Hiro Mizutani after he moved here in June 2010 from Japan.


One of the worst was Ung's review of Joe's Crab Shack in Clifton, with an undeserved rating and headlines that seem designed to keep the chain's ads coming.


Maybe the restaurant should be called Joe's Crap Shack.

See previous post on Hekemian & Co.

Where are all those 'job creators'?

Image via Wikipedia

President Obama is being blamed for the economic fallout
 from the tax cuts pushed through by President Bush, left.

Governor Christie and other rabid Republicans in Congress and in State Houses across the country have fought tooth and nail to preserve tax cuts for all those millionaire "job creators."


We're still waiting.


The front page of The Record today reports Wall Street took a 512-point dive on Thursday -- but you can be sure Publisher Stephen A. Borg and his fellow millionaires continue to laugh all the way to the bank, while employees at the paper and elsewhere watch their retirement accounts take another pounding.


Way back on Page L-7 of today's paper, two Rutgers economists say only 2.2 million of the 8.8 million jobs lost in the recession have been replaced.


On Wednesday, again on L-7, Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn reported U.S. private employers added 114,000 jobs in July, but also announced job cuts of 66,414 last month.


Can't bear it


The bear-attack report that led the paper Wednesday turned out to be wildly inaccurate, according to the off-lead on A-1 today.


Maybe the lesson for Editor Francis Scandale -- whose news judgment is seriously flawed -- is to reserve the front page for bear fatalities, not any old scare.


Page A-2 today carries the third correction in three days.


Just two days after wasting most of the Better Living front on the cast of "Jersey Shore," editors run another photo of the bimbos and bimbas on A-3 today.


Barack Obama is lucky he is president and not an employee of North Jersey Media Group, where he would have ended up on the Borgs' elimination list on the day he turned 50 (A-5).


Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin savages the president in his OpEd column today (A-19), but he's consistently treated Christie with kid gloves.


Like a rabid dog, Road Warrior John Cichowski has sunk his teeth into the MVC story, and won't let go (L-1).


Beached whale


If you count the tip and tax, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung spent more than $300  at Joe's Crab Shack in Clifton and all she got was overcooked, over-salted food served in one of the noisiest restaurants in North Jersey.


And who waits more than an hour to eat at a restaurant? What a rube. No place is worth that.


Still, she gave it a one-and-a-half star rating (Fair to Good) "mainly because the staff is terrific." 


Ung should know food is paramount; you can't eat the wallpaper or get a date with your server. 


It's easy to see how flawed her judgment is by the 2 Stars she gave to a crappy, faux-Caribbean chain restaurant in Wayne called Bahama Breeze. 


Only five months later, then-Food Editor Bill Pitcher gave the same 2-Star rating to Legal Sea Foods in Paramus, the best seafood chain in the Northeast (Pages 19 and 20 in Better Living).


Joe's, schmoes


I ate at Joe's Crab Shack with my wife and son -- without waiting -- and we spent nearly $100 on dinner. But my $29.99 Crab Daddy Feast was overcooked and the meat was dry and tasteless. 


I complained, and got the chain to send me a $40 gift card.


Why doesn't she do the same, and try to recoup some of the $300 the paper wasted, including $6.99 on a piece of Key lime pie?


Joe's Crab Shack is a disaster, and should have been rated Poor (no stars). It certainly is no "beach party."


Here's a comment from a friend who ate there:

"I went to this place [Joe's Crab Shack] late Saturday night and witnessed one of the most disgusting things I have ever experienced in my life. I had our waiter sit down next to us to offer suggestions then get up, take a paper towel, blow his nose in it, and then drop it in that little garbage can in the middle of the table."