Another lame story from editors who ditched Hackensack

The Record's front-page story on the redevelopment of Hackensack doesn't discuss inadequate indoor parking in the 222-unit Meridia Metro apartment building under construction on State Street, and whether this empty lot across the street could be turned into additional parking spaces.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I doubt "the face of the new Hackensack" is an apartment building under construction on State Street, although that's what The Record's front page claims today.

But you could find the new Hackensack a couple of blocks away at the recently completed Atlantic Street Park or in Art of Spice, one of the downtown restaurants that opened in the past few months.

Today's story is about a debate over how to market a redeveloping Hackensack (A-1), but there is so much missing from this account it is hardly worthy of Page 1.

Will it work?

And the biggest question of all isn't even asked: 

Will apartment development in downtown Hackensack revive Main Street, once the shopping and entertainment hub of Bergen County?

In Englewood, which has seen intensive apartment development on its main street, Palisade Avenue, as well as along Route 4, empty storefronts are commonplace, and restaurants come and go.

The story incorrectly calls the Meridia Metro building shown on A-1 and A-8 (five floors of apartments over a parking garage) a "residential tower." 

And it doesn't mention the appeal of its location for people who work in New York -- across the street from an NJ Transit express-bus stop and not far from the Essex Street rail station.

'The Sack'

If you want a good laugh, take a look at marketing themes proposed by two professional firms, Axiom of Secaucus, and Words and Pictures of Park Ridge:

"Hackensack: Bergen County's Main Street."

"The Sack: Not Your Mother's Main Street."

"The Sack"? LOL. 

As a taxpayer, I hope the city doesn't turn out to be a "Sack of Woe."

How about sacking that firm, which isn't identified? 

Left Hackensack

This superficial story comes from the same editors who abandoned Hackensack in 2009 on orders from Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

He closed the River Street headquarters of North Jersey Media Group and its flagship daily paper.

A year before, Borg's newsroom downsizing set off a precipitous slide in accuracy and the quality of local reporting that continues today.

On the the land across the street from the Meridia Metro project, passers-by can see what looks like jet skis on a trailer, above; and shuttered businesses, below.

Does the landlord own the expensive Porsche parked behind this building?

Two sides of Christie

The Record's reporters continue to cover Governor Christie's fading campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, months after the paper's editorial writers started to criticize him in harsh terms.

Today, an editorial says replacement of the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan is more important than a new La Guardia Airport (A-16).

"As for Christie, he is more concerned about a few hundred thousand Republican voters in the early presidential primaries and caucuses than he is about the millions of passengers who use the Port Authority Bus Terminal annually.

"A midtown bus terminal is not a Christie priority. Perhaps if the Port Authority were to build it in Iowa, he would come."

Local news?

In Local, Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza relied on nearly two pages of police news and a long Dean's List to fill the municipal-news holes in their thin section (L-2, L-3 and L-6).

Best editors can do is an all-Trump, all-infrastructure A-1

In a front-page story on Monday, The Record hailed the 25-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act, but didn't discuss the widespread misuse of parking spaces reserved for the handicapped. Spaces at 24 Hour Fitness on Route 4 in Paramus, above, often seem to be filled by drivers who bound out of their vehicles and seem able bodied. Of course, their handicap could be mental.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Even if you ignore today's all-Trump, all-infrastructure front page, you'll find a story about La Guardia Airport on A-3 and another on the federal highway bill on A-4.

All of this infrastructure news helps Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record reinforce his reputation for long, dull stories.

And even if you read between the lines, it won't be clear that conservative Republicans like Governor Christie and the party's elite in Congress are the ones standing in the way of expanded mass transit, as well as rebuilding roads and bridges (A-1).

The Record's story on Donald Trump's business interests in New Jersey is being upstaged today by a report from Bloomberg that the presidential candidate is worth $2.9 billion -- not the $10 billion he claims.

Scott Garrett

One of those opposing the federal highway bill is Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, the Tea Party idol whose fundraising received more scrutiny on Monday's front page than it has in many years.

In a column, Staff Writer Herb Jackson reported Garrett raised nearly $1 million in both 2012 and 2014 election cycles from "employees and PACs tied to banking, insurance, securities and real estate interests."

Garrett is chairman of the subcommittee that reviews legislation affecting those industries.

Today, a story on the Local front reports protesters at Garrett's Glen Rock district office on Monday called for his resignation (L-1).

They cited Garrett as a co-sponsor of the First Amendment Defense Act, "which would offer protections to people and groups who cite their religious beliefs when declining services to same-sex couples seeking to marry."

Believable?

How believable is this headline on L-1 today?

ATM workers
lose $150,000
left on lawn

The word "lose" should have been written in quotation marks.

And doesn't it sound like police should be exploring whether the ATM workers and a man in a white van who took the bag of cash are working together?

Yet that possibility isn't raised in the story.

Political plum?

Another story in Local has so little information it's pathetic.

The report on retired North Arlington Police Chief Louis Ghione doesn't explain how he got a plum Port Authority job, "security manager at ... One World Trade Center" (L-3).

Ghione, who was chief since 1982, will receive roughly $200,000 in accumulated vacation and sick time from the borough, an annual pension of $131,000 and the Port Authority salary, which is missing from the story.

His age also isn't given, and readers aren't told whether he will be able to get a second pension from the Port Authority when he retires from that job.

'Pending' suit

Editing lapses like that have become commonplace -- fallout from continuing economies in the newsroom that began in 2008, and ineffective, six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton and her minions, including the supervisor of the copy desk.

Is there a difference between a "lawsuit" and "pending lawsuit"?

I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt it.

Yet, in a story leading Monday's Local section, no editor seemed to notice that Staff Writer Minjae Park said a lawsuit is "pending" three times in the first five paragraphs (Monday's L-1).