Road Warrior peddles more fiction for drivers

An NJ Trantsit local speeding toward Trenton.

Editor's note: Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to spin fictional roadside controversies based on complaining e-mails sent in by his adoring fans, who love to see their names in print. Here is another e-mail from a reader concerned about these flights of fancy.

"What is it and what does it mean?

"Readers regularly ask these questions as the Road Warrior continues to  mistakenly report and grossly exaggerate utter nonsense, as he does in his May 12 column, about inconsequential roadside sights.

"The Road Warrior is unable to fill his column with anything relevant or accurate so he concocts stories with his senseless observations to make it seem like he is doing his job. 

"Road Warrior babbles endlessly about towers and high-rises, which are really only 6 and 8-story low-rise apartments being built next to the Lincoln Tunnel Helix roadway.  

"He never answers drivers' questions if the buildings will obstruct some of their Manhattan views, which they will.

"He exaggerates and falsely reports about drivers taking their lives in their hands when dealing with everyday roadside objects. 

"Road Warrior recommends NJ should buy up land for possible future widening of Route 17 south of the Garden State Plaza mall. 

"He makes his faulty assessment, even though he reports it is against NJ DOT policy to buy land if no project is approved. 

"He previously reported that NJ transportation fund has no money for capital projects."

The full e-mail can be viewed on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Road Warrior is making it up as he goes along

Today's front page really sucks

Lincoln Tunnel, New Jersey side approach and "helix," circa 1955. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Long-suffering readers of The Record know Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk can't edit or always deliver accurate headlines. 

But the lead Page 1 story today demonstrates the copy editors can't add, either.

If the Lincoln Tunnel helix was opened in October 1938, it became an engineering marvel more than 73 years ago, not "70 years ago," as the lead paragraph reports.

And nowhere in the text on A-1 and A-8 or in the elaborate graphic can readers find the helix's well-known numerical designation, Route 495, though other route numbers are provided.

That's just sloppy

You don't expect that kind of sloppiness on a front page from Editor Marty Gottlieb, who spent many years at The New York Times.

Even on a Monday after a slow news weekend, the Page 1 column by sports writer Tara Sullivan seems made up, fabricated, fraudulent -- supply your own word. 

Who the hell remembers what happened five years ago? So members of the Rutgers women's basketball team were called "nappy headed hos" by that racist pig Imus. 

Is there any doubt -- except in the mind of Gottlieb and his desperate sports editor -- the women shook it off years ago? 


Elephantine news

Instead of getting better, the front page gets worse with yet another column by Charles Stile on Governor Christie's "Jersey style."

Christie is the worst governor the state has ever had, and that can be documented in numerous ways. On top of that, the GOP bully is a slave to food who has ignored the childhood obesity epidemic in New Jersey.

When are the editors of The Record going to stop trying to polish a turd and level with readers?

Local readers suffer

Although story length has grown and sidebars have proliferated under Gottlieb, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes still turns out the same tripe she has been peddling for decades.

Former Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado was sent to the Rutgers campus for reaction to the Dharun Ravi verdict -- the 10th story about the trial in the past three days -- and readers are still wondering how the university pairs roommates and how easy it is for students to change rooms (L-1).

The only Hackensack news in Local today is a brief on a kitchen fire (L-2).

Let's study this further -- and this, too

Image via Wikipedia

The Lincoln Tunnel helix circa 1955. In the past 20 years, the Port Authority has refused to add a second reverse lane to boost the number of buses into Manhattan and give more drivers faced with high tolls a less expensive way to commute to their jobs.

Two of the three major stories on Page 1 of The Record today are based on studies, and the third is a he said/she said on oil drilling off Delaware and Virginia -- making for another edition that's as dreary as the weather.


The clunky headlines on the lead story -- elevated cancer rates in DuPont-polluted Pompton Lakes -- should have said the higher number is for women.


How many of these matter-of-fact recitations, masquerading as news stories out of Pompton Lakes, does Editor Francis Scandale expect readers to take?


The Passaic County town isn't that far from a community that was polluted by another corporate giant, Ford Motor Co., so why not compare how predominantly white Pompton residents have fared compared to the mixed-race residents of Upper Ringwood.


Oh, there's no study on that? Never mind.


Another big screw-up


After a week when the stock markets went wild and the world economy seemed on the verge of collapse, the paper notes on Page A-2 today that its Money and Markets report was incorrect.


If you doubt the assignment editors working under the burden of Editor Deirdre Sykes are the laziest east of the Rocky Mountains, look at today's Local section, which is devoid of any municipal news from Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, as well as many other major towns.


Palookaville


Port Authority reporter Shawn Boburg continues to gloss over the bi-state agency's historic lack of commitment to mass transit (L-2). 


Harvy Lipman, the non-profit reporter hired at the direction of Publisher Stephen A. Borg, appears to be averaging one story a week (L-3).


In Better Living, an Associated Press recipe on Page F-3 suggests ruining a perfectly healthy tomato with sausage meat, butter and "torn stale bread."


Sounds yummy.