Hackensack is paying new attorney as much as Christie

During a spirited discussion of tax breaks for downtown apartment developers on Monday night, Hackensack Board of Education Attorney Richard Salkin was uncharacteristically deferential when he addressed City Council members; City Manager David R. Troast, left front; and Alexander H. Carver III, right front, the new city attorney, a job Salkin once held.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Alexander H. Carver III, who is Hackensack's new city attorney, is being paid a flat rate of $175,000 a year -- or $10,000 more than his salary when he left the Superior Court bench in 2013.

He also is making as much as Governor Christie, who picked the last Hackensack city attorney, Thomas Scrivo, to be his chief counsel in Trenton.

In addition to the maximum of $175,000 a year, Carver and his firm, Harwood Lloyd, will be paid legal fees associated with litigation, according to The Record.

Three-quarters of The Record's story today is filled with Carver's exploits as a Superior Court judge "who pulled no punches," but doesn't mention the city will pay him and his firm at a rate of $150 an hour (L-1).

When Scrivo was city attorney in 2014, Hackensack removed two city managers and a public relations consultant, running up legal bills topping $200,000 in six months.

During the Zisa years, Hackensack routinely paid its city attorney more than $250,000 a year, one official said.

COW

Do you hear mooing?

Most of the discussion and debate on the appointment of Carver, as well as tax abatements for downtown apartment developers, occurred on Monday during the Committee of the Whole meeting, which started at 6:30 p.m.

When City Council members convened for the regular meeting at 8 p.m., they ran through more than two dozen resolutions read off in rapid-fire fashion by the city clerk before they were open to public discussion and then a council vote.

Members of the public, such as City Council candidate Richard Cerbo, were limited to 5 minutes each, but could have spoken longer at the COW session.

City tax breaks

On Monday, the Hackensack City Council approved the introduction of two resolutions designating the redevelopers of 150-170 Main St. and 210 Main St.

Other resolutions were introduced to grant the apartment and retail developers tax abatements of 30 years and 25 years, respectively.

Cerbo, son of a former mayor, addressed the council, saying "10 years [of tax breaks] is plenty."

But Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino said the apartment and retail projects would never get built without the longer abatements, also referred to as payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT).

Canestrino noted the land and buildings at 150-170 Main St. are paying tax revenue of $228,277 a year, compared to the first-year payment of $802,605 after the project is completed.

Meanwhile, the city's annual street festival is set for Saturday from 10 a.m. t0 6 p.m., rain or shine.

Among the entertainment is Village People. 

Today's paper

Nearly six years after he took office, Christie says he is open to raising the gas tax and creating a stable source of funding for the Transportation Trust Fund (A-1).

His refusal to raise the second-lowest gas tax in the nation helped drivers, even though logically they should pay for repairing the roads and bridges they use.

But the GOP dictator moved decidedly against mass-transit users by killing the Hudson River rail tunnels, and stood by when the Port Authority refused to expand bus operations into Manhattan.

He also cut state subsidies to NJ Transit, forcing the agency to raise fares and cut service.

The Record's coverage of mass transit is so sophisticated a reporter today refers to NJ Transit's sleek, electrified light-rail system as "trolleys" (L-3).

And, like Christie, the Woodland Park daily has paid far more attention to drivers and driving, as evidenced by a dozen years of Road Warrior columns largely devoted to no other topics.

Hackensack Costco

The Record today is reporting Costco Wholesale is planning to convert its Hackensack warehouse to "a more specialized business center" after the store closes Oct. 13.

A bigger Costco is scheduled to open in Teterboro on Oct. 14.

In October 2014, the same reporter said the Hackensack Costco would be closing permanently, making the 14.8-acre parcel available for redevelopment.

So much for the reliability of The Record's business reporting.

Bus station story on Page 1 is full of heat, but no light

Workmen were so repulsed by the design of this Woodland Street house, on the East Hill of Englewood, they abandoned the site.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's coverage of mass transit in the past decade or more has been decidedly negative, and today's front-page story on a new bus station in Manhattan is no exception.

Who can forget the anti-light rail stories penned by onetime transportation reporter Tom Davis?

Or the editors ignoring the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains in recent years, and refusing to call on the Port Authority to add a second reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.

Staff Writer John Cichowski transformed the Road Warrior commuting column into a pulpit for drivers, running hundreds of emails from crackpots whose only interest is to see their names in print.

Now, transportation reporter Christopher Maag is tackling a proposal for a midtown Manhattan bus station with a maximum of controversy and a minimum of intelligence (A-1). 

It starts with the headline:

"A busload of cash"

The minimum cost of $7.5 billion stands alone in the story without any information on how much the Port Authority might be able to land in federal grants or what air rights sold to apartment or office developers might fetch.

There is nothing here on how many cars expanded bus service would take off the road, reducing pollution and boosting worker productivity.

The bi-state agency's midtown Manhattan bus terminal hasn't worked for years. The only solution is to replace it, and The Record should get behind the proposal.

In one of his first major acts in office, Governor Christie killed new Hudson River rail tunnels, setting back expanded train service a decade or more.

No one expects Christie to come out in favor of the Port Authority spending billions on a new bus station, but at least the GOP bully should stay out of the way.

The agency isn't tax supported, and will use grants, toll money and fees from airports and seaports to pay for the new terminal.

Hiding heroin

Among all the Law & Order stories the editors used to flesh out today's Local news section, the one about a male suspect hiding 40 bags of heroin in his sock caught my eye (L-2).

Today, Cliffview Pilot.com carried a similar story, but with a spin only former Law & Order Editor Jerry DeMarco could put on it:

"A pregnant Pennsylvania woman accused of stashing 89 folds of heroin in her vagina during a traffic stop [on Route 208 in Glen Rock] was due in court tomorrow...."

See: Summons, no bail for pregnant woman


Sloppy editing

The first paragraph of a story on the main Business page reports Tesla Motors sells "$100,000 luxury vehicles" (L-7).

But later, the story reports the all-electric cars sell for $71,000 to $140,000.

Maybe the reporter and editor averaged the price of different versions of Tesla's Model S.

Another Marty Gottlieb front page that doesn't affect us

In Manhattan, workers are trimming the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, above. The tree-lighting ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 3.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A sensational child-abuse trial in federal court involving an Army couple from Mount Holly. 

Rewrites of two other newspapers -- on sports wagering in America, and the resignation of Governor Christie's chief of staff, who lost hope of ever becoming New Jersey's attorney general.

And a real fluke: A Morris County homeowner who was awarded his house after the creditors missed a legal deadline.

This last story carries an inaccurate headline: The house isn't "free" since Gordon A. Washington paid $131,000 of the mortgage before defaulting, as noted in the A-1 data box.

This is another front page that is irrelevant to the lives of the vast majority of North Jersey readers -- straight from the mind of Marty Gottlieb, the sophisticated New Yorker who is editor of The Record.

Where is the tree?

I guess the staff photographer sent to cover a "living memorial" to Waldwick Police Officer Christopher Goodell was in a rush to get to his next assignment.

The photo appears on Page 1 and the Local front, but doesn't show the copper beech tree planted to honor the cop who died when a truck driver plowed into his radar patrol car in July (A-1 and L-1).

HUMC profits

An L-1 story says nearly 200 Hackensack University Medical Center employees have accepted early retirement packages, but adds the non-profit "will hire far more people in the next 90 days than the number who are leaving."

The story also notes "two credit reporting agencies said that Hackensack -- a 775-bed medical center with $1.4 billion in annual revenue -- was doing very well financially."

As written, this story belongs on the Business page, not the Local news front, filled as it is with financial jargon.

The story also is missing any explanation of why anyone but the affected employees should care.

Nature center

The Record has done a terrible job of explaining the opposition to expansion of the Tenafly Nature Center (L-1).

Residents voted against the proposal in a Nov. 4 referendum, but today's story notes local officials had called a larger center "a boon to Tenafly."

The story also says "both sides traded accusations of misinformation," but I cannot recall the paper making any attempt to separate fact from fiction before the election.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in Tenafly.

The Woodland Park daily also didn't do much to separate fact from fiction when hysterical Tenafly officials turned thumbs down on extension of NJ Transit's electrified light-rail line to the wealthy borough.  

Second looks

November is Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, but the first story that mentioned the disease likely was the obituary of former Rep. Marge Roukema on Thursday's front page.

Roukema, who was elected to the House of Representatives 11 time, was one of those "socially moderate, fiscally conservative Northeastern Republicans [who] became increasingly rare in the years after she cast her last House vote in 2002."

The obituary by Staff Writer Herb Jackson includes praise from Democrats and Republicans alike, but Christie's name is conspicuously absent.

Roukema retired in November 2001 after narrow victories in primaries "in which challenger Scott Garrett of Sussex County said she was too liberal."

Hollywood reporters

Did you see Thursday's Better Living cover story on "a new spate of movies on journalists"?

Do any of the new or old movies from La La Land even acknowledge the mediocrity of so many local daily newspapers like The Record that are struggling to stay relevant in our digital age?

And where is the analysis of unchallenged "sound bites" that have now migrated to print journalism?

In a brief on Thursday's front page, The Record quoted House Speaker John Boehner, who called the climate deal between the U.S. and China "the latest example of the president's crusade against affordable, reliable energy," an apparent reference to coal.

A longer Boehner quote appeared in The Washington Post story on Thursday's A-10, but that paper never reported whether the ultraconservative Republican is referring to coal generating plants, which are the direct cause of mercury in fish and air pollution.

The latter probably has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. 

More errors

As he has shown so many times before, Road Warrior John Cichowski is unable to accurately report data from the annual state police report on road deaths (Friday's L-1).

Here is a summary from the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"In his Friday column, the Road Warrior goes down his mistake-filled wormhole of reporting about another New Jersey State Police annual report (this time for 2013) on roadway fatalities.

"The Road Warrior indicated that the increase in fatalities for Bergen County pedestrians and truck drivers was part of a 'trend.'

"They are not part of any trend.

"Bergen pedestrian deaths have gone down in 3 of the last 6 years. Tractor-trailer deaths have gone down in 2 of the last 4 years and are on pace to go down this year.

"Road Warrior indicated that the 2010 law requiring drivers to stop for to pedestrians in marked crosswalks has 'driven down' fatalities.

"Unfortunately, pedestrian deaths have gone up every year since 2010, except for last year, and are on pace to greatly exceed last year’s record low number of fatalities."

See: Road Warrior reporting mistakes climb

Take a break from The Record of Woodland Park

A new public garden opposite the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.

The Record today calls on burned-out Columnist Mike Kelly to report on a Jersey shore that still has a long way to go on the road to recovery (Page 1).

Of course, this piece was sorely needed as a counterpoint to the wildly exaggerated front-page coverage on Saturday that was orchestrated by Governor Christie and the "Today" show.

Now, it amounts to furious backpedaling by Editor Marty Gottlieb, a New Yorker who is so enamored of the GOP bully and so solidly behind his bid for a second term.

Superstorm Sandy damage on Palisade Avenue in Englewood.

This Memorial Day edition is a good time to take a break from all of this amateurish journalism.

As usual, readers' letters today tell you more about North Jersey than news and opinion editors do.

Edith and Gordon Wallace of Glen Rock bemoan the wrong-headed decision by Tenafly officials to reject light-rail service, and by some residents to oppose an education building at the nature center (A-11).

The Record's support for light rail and mass transit in recent years has been lukewarm at best.

Editors allow Tenafly to demonize mass transit

Rush hour at the Lincoln Tunnel, above; Manhattan's Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, below, show North Jersey needs more mass transit, not less.

NJ Transit rail waiting hall at Penn Station in Manhattan.

NJ Transit commuters slowly making their way to an escalator that takes them to upper-level platforms and buses to Hackensack, Cresskill and other North Jersey towns.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

NJ Transit's fully electrified light-rail system takes cars off the road, eases traffic congestion, cuts pollution and saves gasoline. 

Yet, The Record has allowed Tenafly officials to turn those positives into negatives, culminating in NJ Transit's decision to scrap a plan to extend light rail to the wealthy community, which counts Publisher Stephen A. Borg as a resident (A-1 and L-1).

Mass transit can't catch a break in North Jersey, where two new Hudson River rail tunnels were scrapped by SUV-riding Governor Christie in October 2010.

NJ Transit Newark Light Rail cars crossing Broad Street to enter the Newark-Broad St. Station. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) 

Tom Davis is remembered fondly by Hackensack residents as a muckraking journalist who wrote a series of hard-hitting stories when he covered the city.

But when Davis was promoted to transportation reporter, he wrote negative stories about the extension of light rail to Englewood and other towns.

That tradition was carried on after Davis left the paper, which this year and last reported the wild claims of Tenafly officials without rebuttal from NJ Transit and light-rail commuters.

One explanation is that the current deputy local-news assignment editor, Dan Sforza, wrote at least two "highways of the future" takeouts when he was a transportation reporter.

Sforza did his best to ignore mass transit, even refusing to report on defective NJ Transit buses with screeching rear brakes that ruined the sleep of people living along such bus routes as Grand Avenue in Englewood.

Today's Local section has no news from Hackensack or many other communities, but readers will find three more engaging local obituaries on L-6.

Alliance strikes back

A public-private partnership called the Hackensack Main Street Business Alliance, also known as the Upper Main Alliance, is striking back at Eye on The Record and Victor E. Sasson.

Sasson reported in Wednesday's post he could not find the names of any Main Street restaurants taking part in Sunday's food-centered fund-raiser at The Shops at Riverside.

Sasson checked again today, and no Main Street restaurants are listed on any Web site connected to the event nor are they mentioned on The Record's Second Helpings blog.

On Hackensack Now.org, Editor Albert H. Dib, a city employee who is the alliance's executive director, wrote:

"Vsasson stated very inaccurately that the Alliance was not participating in the upcoming "Taste of Hackensack" [The correct name is  "The Taste in Hackensack"].  He made no attempt to check with the Alliance about its participation. The Alliance is participating in the event.   

"Vsasson has clearly violated this site's Registration Agreement terms not to post false or inaccurate statements. As a result, all of vsasson's future posts will be screened. For the record: This is the practice he currently uses on his own blog, wherein he screens all posts for content. [Eye on The Record screens all comments for content, not 'posts.']

 "Also, this 'Eye on the Record' topic thread has overstayed its welcome on this site and will likely be deleted in the near future. I am closing posting for this thread now." 

Albert [H.] Dib
Editor, Hackenacknow.org

Dib says on Hackensack Now that "four eateries from the Business Improvement District" are participating in the fund-raiser for the Hackensack Blue & Gold Scholarship Fund, which benefits Hackensack High School students, but he does not name them.

The alliance represents only Main Street restaurants and businesses between Atlantic Street and Clinton Place in Hackensack, and apparently does nothing for eating places or businesses in other parts of the 4-square-mile city.

Its work and half of Dib's city salary of roughly $64,000 is funded through an assessment on property owners, who must pay a property tax surcharge to the city.

One businessman calls the assessment "a grand ripoff," arguing the alliance provides services that the city properly should be supplying to residents and property owners.

'I'll always have Paris,' top editor says

The Louvre Museum in Paris.

When Editor Marty Gottlieb retires from journalism, he'll always be able to look back with pride to his years at The New York Times, including his editorship of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune.

I can see him sipping a glass of vintage Bordeaux and sighing, "I'll always have Paris."

But if he keeps turning out front pages like the one in The Record today, it's unlikely he'll ever say, "I'll always have Woodland Park."

I can't think of a bigger waste of space than the overlong Page 1 story on how Giants player Victor Cruz is enriching himself with endorsement and book deals after the team's victory in the Super [Toilet] Bowl.

I don't see anything about an endorsement that would have real meaning for Cruz, an unwed father who pulled himself up from a poor Paterson neighborhood: a reliable brand of condoms.

Odd couple

And what was Gottlieb, who is 64, thinking when he created the Odd Couple who reported and wrote the Cruz story -- local obituary writer Jay Levin and sports writer Art Stapleton?

At least Gottlieb saved part of the front page for a non-profit expose from Staff Writer Harvy Lipman and two stories on Governor Christie's proposed budget and income-tax cut.

But I'm certain "RINO" is a reference to Christie's ballooning waistline, not a criticism of his conservative credentials (see A-4 photo).

And Gottlieb certainly won't ever wax nostalgic about Editor Liz Houlton's news copy editors, judging from a photo caption on A-3 today that doesn't tell readers anything about what is going on in the photo.

Racist layout

Was it Gottlieb or head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes who decided to lead today's Local section with the thefts of unlocked luxury vehicles (L-1) and bury an upbeat feature on Jordan Coleman, 16, an African-American Hackensack High School filmmaker (L-6)?

If anything, Road Warrior John Cichowski's same-old Black Hole pothole awards on L-1 should have been buried or spiked. He's the ultimate black hole on the staff.

On L-3 today -- in contrast to Cichowski's car-centric coverage -- transportation reporter Karen Rouse has a rare commuting story, exploring NJ Transit's regressive policy on allowing riders to bring bicycles onto platforms and trains. 

Good job

Staff Writer James M. O'Neill saves L-1 with his bright, well-written rendition of a onetime Local section staple: a local barber who seems to go on forever.

Of course, I would have liked it even more if O'Neill explained how South Hackensack barber Tony Joe D'Ambrosio and his customers have been able to reach their 80s and 90s on a diet of McDonald's, pull-pork sandwiches and tiramisu. 

Only the trite headline lets down readers. It's likely a story this good wasn't handled by Sykes or one of her incompetent assignment-desk minions, Dan Sforza, Christina Joseph and Rich Whitby. 

Out to lunch

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's column errs on the pricing policy at most Korean barbecue restaurants, where customers who want to cook meat or seafood on the table are required to pay for a minimum of two orders -- a total of $50 to $60 or more (F-1).

Such a restaurant is a better value than Picnic Garden buffet in Englewood Cliffs, where each person pays $26.95 to $29.95 for dinner, because three or four people can share a meal at a traditional barbecue restaurant.

Seeing the light

In Opinion, an editorial urges extension of NJ Transit's light-rail service to Leonia, Englewood and Tenafly -- contradicting several years of negative news coverage from Sykes' assignment desk (O-1).

Last Sunday's paper

Staff Writers Colleen Diskin and Rebecca D. O'Brien, and three staff photographers did a beautiful job on Whitney Houston's funeral on Page 1 last Sunday.

On L-1, the Road Warrior column continued to rely on readers' e-mails, showing once again Cichowski long ago ran out of energy to do any original reporting.

No Hackensack news appeared in Sykes' Local section.

In Business, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais explained to puzzled consumers that Tropicana quickly stopped using banned orange juice from Brazil in its Pure Premium product and added the phrase "100% pure Florida Orange Juice" to labels.

On the Opinion front, couldn't news Columnist Mike Kelly find anything else to write about than Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American pro basketball player everyone is sick of hearing about?

I enjoyed Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn's Japan story on the front of Travel, but wonder why she didn't mention restaurant meals or food safety in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.

Readers are familiar with all of Travel Editor Jill Schensul's food phobias, but this omission is ridiculous.

Editors love Asian murder case

Jeremy Lin

 I question why the editors led The Record today with a sensational murder case instead of the governor's budget address, but came away impressed with the exhaustive reporting by at least six staffers.

At the same time, the Page 1 story of the Monday afternoon slaying should have been in the paper Tuesday. Instead, the lazy assignment desk run by Editor Deirdre Sykes took its sweet time assembling the sordid tale. 

After reading all of the interviews with doormen, witnesses and others in North Jersey and Queens -- plus soaking up details of the Fort Lee crime scene -- I wonder why none of that was done for another sensational case.

Black v. Korean

Since the fatal police shooting of Malik Williams of Garfield on Dec. 10, the Woodland Park daily has published numerous stories that struggled to go beyond the prosecutor's press releases.

It took the family's lawyer and an independent autopsy to reveal that police shot the 19-year-old man twice in the back.

Could The Record's lack of effort in the Williams case be explained by him having been an African-American suspect who ran out of police headquarters and hid in a garage? 

And did the editors knock themselves out in the Fort Lee case because the couple involved -- Charles J. Ann and Aena Hong -- are Korean? 

Only Sykes and Editor Marty Gottlieb know the answers to those questions.

Media insanity

Indeed, if you're not a sports fan, you might think coverage of the Ann-Hong case is just an extension of the media hysteria over Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American professional basketball phenom.

And if you're not a sports fan, the so-called Linsanity only conjures up all the negatives about China -- from human rights violations to the hundreds of thousands of American jobs exported to that country to the attempted suicide of workers in the plant that makes the highly praised iPhone.

Selling out again

The Page 1 news story on Governor Christie's proposed budget seems straightforward enough, but would you get a load of the upbeat editorial on A-8 -- it could have been written by the GOP bully's spin doctors.

The headline over the editorial: 

Happy days

Christie's budget increases spending

What mindless drivel from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin.

Nowhere will readers find any discussion of the relentless increase in property taxes since Christie took office two years ago as the governor successfully shifts the media's short attention span to his proposed income-tax cut.


A photo with the editorial shows Christie extending three fingers on his right hand. Appropriately, one of them is the middle finger.

Light-headed

There's Hackensack news on the front of Sykes' Local section for a change today, but Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to beat a dead horse with another column about "Tanker Turn" -- a sharp curve that has proven to be the undoing of many lead-footed tractor-trailer drivers (L-1).


What continues to mystify readers is what this turn has to do with the commuting issues Cichowski is supposed to deal with.

Utility pole news


The lead story on the Local front continues to explore all of the official objections to the proposed extension of light rail to Leonia, Englewood and Tenafly, where Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives.


Sykes' assignment lackeys have yet to ask reporters to interview officials and commuters in the towns that have had light-rail service for many years.

The assignment minions worked overtime on Tuesday, judging from the photo on L-3 today -- the latest installment of utility pole news. It's hard to believe this was the only photo available for that page.

Editors expose Christie's pork

Image via Wikipedia
Governor Christie has recommended more than 50 people for jobs at the cash-rich Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The Record has published so many favorable news stories and editorials since Governor Christie took office two years ago that readers are shocked when his true nature is exposed -- as in today's front page report on the more than 50 people he recommended for jobs at the cash-rich Port Authority.


They include donors and Republican Party officials, including one man who is being paid $50,000, plus full benefits, for only three days' work.


Is anybody surprised? When he was U.S. attorney, Christie steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to two others -- his former boss and a former federal judge.


A second shocker is the rare byline of Staff Writer Jean Rimbach on the upbeat Page 1 account of Victor Cruz's rise to football glory from one of Paterson's most dangerous neighborhoods. The continuation of  the A-1 story and a second story fill an entire inside page (A-8). 


Unfortunately, in view of cuts in state aid and dishonest city officials, the celebration of his success will do little to help the Silk City, which the paper has consistently portrayed as a center of drugs and prostitution in North Jersey.


Money laundering? 


It's hard to believe Christie didn't know about illegal deposits totaling more than $2 million in the family business' bank account when he nominated Korean-American Phillip Kwon of Closter to the state Supreme Court (A-3).


On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local, a proposal to extend light-rail service to Tenafly gets lukewarm support from Road Warrior John Cichowski (L-1).


In a rare piece on mass transit, the so-called commuting columnist says "Bergenites are married to their cars." If Cichowski's is "married" to his car, which he calls "Mr. Honda,"  that would be same-sex coupling.


He also blasts "giant SUVs and psychos on cellphones" -- yet fills columns with his inane answers to their e-mails.


His endorsement of mass transit is in the last paragraph on L-3: 


"Somehow, predictions of death, mayhem and excessive trips to ear doctors got lost in a wealth of obvious improvements in commuter convenience." 


Lazy journalism


Sykes continues to cover protest marches in Garfield in the wake of the police shooting of Malik Williams, but readers still do not know the identities of the two police officers who killed him on Dec. 10 or many other details being withheld by the prosecutor (L-1).



That's in keeping with how this lazy editor has covered local news for many years: Wait for the press release.



In Better Living, a column by Staff Writer Elisa Ung on how to eat local through the winter makes readers wonder why she rarely tells them whether the food she samples for her restaurant reviews is naturally raised or grown (F-1).

Enough construction updates already

Image via Wikipedia

As if we didn't read enough about Ridgewood in Monday's paper, here is another detailed story in The Record of Woodland Park about a construction project in the village. The assignment desk and reporter take what is basically a construction update and pad it mercilessly, while trying to give it a negative spin by quoting residents whose lives are disrupted by the project.

The piece on today's Local front is by Staff Writer Tom Davis, a transportation reporter infamous for his attacks on light rail, including its planned extension to Englewood and Tenafly.  


In today's piece on making the Ridgewood train station handicap accessible, he pulls out all the stops: Cranes "tower over this bucolic community." "Stores and shops dating ... to the 19th century are visible to train passengers." There's more:

"Tubes, beams and pipes are scattered around the site as cranes and bulldozers move quickly through concrete rubble."

This is great reporting, but Hackensack readers might be asking themselves why they've never seen a story on a permanent replacement for NJ Transit's Anderson Street Station, a historic structure that burned down, what, two years ago? Rail riders have had to make do with a crummy bus shelter since then. 



It's a marvel how head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and such minions as Dan Sforza get reporters to do construction-update fillers and dress them up as real stories, while continuing to ignore news from Hackensack and other Bergen towns. Or did The Record miss the project in Ridgewood until now?


Monday was the first day since July 17 without coverage of the parking-garage collapse in Hackensack. The stories, as numerous as they were, often didn't contain even basic information, such as whether Prospect Avenue remains closed. It does. And the stories also overlooked major information, such as the massive project being pushed for 329 Prospect, diagonally across from the high-rise where the garage collapsed.


A letter to the editor today from Thomas J. Lyndon of Hackensack (A-8) reports that "for the past year," the city Board of Adjustment has been considering more than a dozen variances for a 20-story, acute-care hospital with "five levels of underground parking."


I guess we haven't read about this proposal -- especially relevant in view of the garage collapse -- from Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado, because apparently she has been ordered by Sykes to ignore all Hackensack news outside of the legal troubles of suspended Police Chief Ken Ziza.


Today's front page is an all-New Jersey affair except for a big photo of soldiers in Afghanistan, an image that looks posed. The editors, desperate for a color photo, again demonstrate how A-1 design trumps journalism. Were there no Jersey photos worthy of Page 1?


Here's belated recognition for Staff Writer Jeff Pillets, whose A-1 story on Sunday exposed the waste and corruption behind the making of the New Overpeck County Park, which was 60 years in the making. However, I did think he was nitpicking over erosion and slow-growing grass.


Still, will anything come of his story? The contracts have been awarded, millions of dollars in taxpayers' money have been  wasted. Maybe his story would have changed things if it was written a year ago or two years ago.

(Photo: Original Anderson Street Station in Hackensack.)

How accurate is this reporting?

Image by wallyg via Flickr

Can readers rely on transportation reporter Tom Davis? In two takeouts on the future of light rail in Bergen County (photo), he sounded more like a lawyer trying to make a case against mass transit than a journalist objectively presenting pluses and minuses. He often omits information or fails to back up assertions.


For example, on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today, he reports that off-peak, round-trip train riders have been hit by hikes of "up to 45%," but manages to find patrons who are paying only 50 cents more than the old $1.75 fare (an increase of about 30%) and $2.50 more on the old $10.50 ticket (about 20% higher).


Deep down in the story, on the continuation page, he discloses that monthly passes cost 35% less than daily tickets. He buries that information because it dilutes the impact of his biased story. And he never mentions the hikes are the direct result of Governor Christie's assault on mass transit users -- cutting state aid to NJ Transit and refusing to raise the low gasoline tax, which finances road repairs, and train and bus improvements.

Finally, he reports "restaurant workers and students say they're turning to cars and buses," but provides absolutely no support for that assertion regarding cars. Does he actually expect readers to believe the off-peak fares are higher for a commuter than auto insurance, gasoline, tolls and parking?


Of course, some of the blame resides with head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and Davis' assignment editor. Let's hope he's working with someone other than clueless Dan Sforza, who wrote about fanciful, not-in-our-lifetime "highways of the future" when he was transportation reporter, but ignored brake defects in NJ Transit cruiser buses used by Manhattan-bound commuters. 

Sforza couldn't even edit Davis' stories intelligently. A mediocre reporter makes for an even weaker assignment editor, and Sykes has some doozies working for her.


A day after the paper's consumer columnist, Kevin Demarrais, reported that the BP boycott has had limited impact, a promo headline on A-1 today declares: "Boycott hurting BP gas stations." 


You can scour Local for news about Hackesnack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other towns without success. A photo showing the car of a 79-year-old driver inside the Whole Foods Market in Ridgewood is one of perhaps a hundred such incidents in the past decade -- some of them fatal -- each chronicled with a few paragraphs. 

But does this single accident deserve to be all over the front of the local news section? The poor guy wasn't even injured. Guess there wasn't anything better. There are only eight bylines in the entire section.

You'd think some genius on the news staff would long ago have proposed a series of stories on problems facing older drivers, and the help available to them, but the former Hackensack daily appears to be an equal opportunity discriminator against older workers and older readers.