Christie vows to return country to 'despair and status quo'

The long-awaited, long-delayed repaving of Prospect Avenue in Hackensack -- a street lined with high-rises -- has been completed between Essex and Passaic streets, but other crudely patched blocks between Passaic and Ross Avenue weren't touched. Residents who use NJ Transit buses complained that during the work, a police officer stood by and provided little assistance in helping them cross the street and keep away from heavy equipment and other construction hazards.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers of The Record took one look at another front page from journalism hell -- dominated by Governor Christie, Medicare payments to hospitals and baseball -- and dove into the paper, looking for something relevant to their lives.

If you glance at the headlines and text on Page 1, you'll see that Christie spoke to supporters of his presidential bid and promised to "kick 'hope and change' out" in 2016.

"We're going to bring a little Jersey to the White House," said the GOP bully, who is ninth in a Fox News debate field of 10 clowns on Thursday (A-1).

That's great. Christie would replace "hope and change" with "despair and the status quo," and export the hell he's created in New Jersey to the rest of the country.

And Christie's statement that he has used birth control with his wife is at odds with all of the years he has spent screwing the middle class in New Jersey (A-8).

When did he have the time or the energy to have sex with first lady Mary Pat Christie?

Hackensack news

Jason Nunnermacker, a lawyer who is president of the Board of Education, has announced his second bid for a seat on the Hackensack City Council.

Nunnermacker, an ally of the Zisa family political machine that ran the city for decades, headed a slate that lost the 2013 municipal election.

Now, he's filed a nominating petition for the special Nov. 3 council election to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Rose Greenman.

Nunnermacker has appeared at council meetings for the last two years to criticize Greenman, Mayor John Labrosse and other city officials.

But he's never discussed why the school budget has continued to increase to the point where it now exceeds the city budget.

Nor has he addressed allegations that a teacher stole two laptops from a school and a supervisor falsified time cards of a subordinate.

As head of the school board, he also has ignored about $58,000 in overbilling by board attorney Richard Salkin in 2014. 

That's over Salkin's contract limit of $95,000 a year.

The Record's Hackensack reporter, Todd South, also is aware of the theft and time-card allegations, but he hasn't bothered to report them.

Local news?

Editors Deidre Sykes and Dan Sforza managed to keep Law & Order filler news to a minimum in today's Local section.

By they did find room for a photo of an SUV that ran into a utility pole in Englewood (L-3).

However, the caption, based on information supplied by the photographer, tells readers nothing about the possible cause.

And here's breaking news:

"An ambulance was observed leaving the area and heading toward Englewood Hospital and Medical Center."

Racial motive?

A story on opposition to a proposal for 24o apartments in Upper Saddle River doesn't explore whether homeowners are trying to keep out black and Hispanic renters (L-9).

The editors frequently portray seniors as confused residents of nursing homes or so addled they mistake the accelerator for the brake pedal, smashing their cars into other people or storefronts.

But on L-1 today, a photo shows an engaged group of seniors picketing a Wayne zoning board meeting in opposition to a proposed 422-unit Avalon Bay apartment complex.

Cheap wood construction was one of the factors cited in the fast-spreading inferno that destroyed the 308-unit Avalon at Edgewater complex on Jan.21.

Healthy eating?

The headlines on the Better Living front promise "simple" and "healthy" recipes for college students (BL-1).

But the recipe on BL-4 calls for two teaspoons plus three tablespoons of artery clogging butter for a pound of flounder fillets.

And Staff Writer Elyse Torbio and the culinary expert she quotes, Jim Edwards of Chef Central in Paramus, don't bother teaching students one of the most valuable lessons of all:

Avoid meat and poultry with antibiotics, growth hormones and other harmful additives.

Meanwhile, clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson advises readers to hold the mayo in a potato salad, but to make sure they include four slices of fatty bacon (BL-2).

Jock itch invades news meeting

Image via Wikipedia

The Bergen County Courthouse is in what town?

Editor Francis Scandale's well-known jock itch appears to have infected all of the editors in the news meeting by the looks of today's front page -- the second day in the row of above-the-fold sports.


When I still worked at The Record, Scandale said a survey showed sports was 12th on the list of what subscribers wanted to read. He ignored that then, and he ignores that now.


Governor Christie's White House ambitions also are back on Page 1 today, and the story reports a "public announcement" may come soon.


The A-1 story to the right of the big high school football photo probably has readers doing a double-take. 


Training wheels


In the same position on Friday, Staff Writer Karen Rouse reported the federal transportation debt facing New Jersey had grown to nearly $274 million, and the story contained no hint of a deal.


What a difference a day makes. Today, Rouse reports U.S. and New Jersey officials have ended their 11-month standoff over the aborted Hudson River rail tunnels, and the state can get off the hook with a payment of $95 million.



Did Rouse's sources tell her, earlier in the week, a settlement was near, but she couldn't report it? Or did her story on Friday shake something loose? Pretty strange.


Today, Rouse does her best to polish Christie's anti-mass transit image, leaving to nearly the end of her story the resultant loss of billions in federal funds, as well as tens of thousands of jobs, not to mention how commuters will be standing in the aisles on rush-hour trains for years to come.


When he killed the rail tunnels, Christie cited potentially devastating cost overruns, but also noted his overweight wife, first lady Mary Pat Christie, had complained she would have had to walk too far to make her subway connection in Manhattan.


Major Latino news


Putting aside that the sentencing of a gang leader is the most important local news today, the poorly written lead paragraph of the story confuses readers with both an "after" and a "before."


The L-1 lead says Juan Rosario was removed from a courtroom "after an expletive-filled outburst before a judge sentenced him on attempted murder charges."


This would have been much clearer: The gang leader was removed from the courtroom for an expletive-filled outburst at the judge who sentenced him.


Also, he was convicted of attempted murder, so the word "charges" are unnecessary. 


The first paragraph also says the courtroom is in "Bergen County," and nowhere else are readers told that means Hackensack. It's "Superior Court in Hackensack" or a "Hackensack courtroom," not a "Bergen County courtroom."


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' supremely lazy assignment minions also use non-fatal accident photos to fill holes on L-3 and L-6, and the only Hackensack news is a police story on L-1.


Reliving 9/11


The story on journalists giving their eyewitness accounts of 9/11 to students at Ramapo College doesn't mention that Jim Dwyer of The New York Times once worked at The Record (L-3).


Readers also aren't told Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's "iconic image of three firefighters hoisting an American flag" over the debris was relegated to a back page through a massive failure of new judgment by Scandale, the editor, who -- then and now -- simply lacks the gumption for the job.

The elephant in the newsroom

Image by afagen via Flickr

The White House vegetable garden.

Editors of The Record probably will tell you they strive to remain objective, but readers aren't the fools the paper thinks they are. 

The editors can't hide how much they like Governor Christie and his divisive budget and tax policies. And they can't hide how much they go out of their way to avoid tackling the obesity epidemic or discussing the governor's weight problem.

But now, more than a year after he took office, Christie himself is talking about his size, first in a Star-Ledger story that appeared in The Record on Feb. 20, reporting the governor is trying to lose weight, and again today in a report on his appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" (A-2).

On the Sunday TV broadcast, Christie defended first lady Michelle Obama's efforts to encourage children to be more active and eat healthy food, an initiative some other conservatives have criticized. He said:

"I think it's a really good goal to encourage kids to eat better. I've struggled with my weight for 30 years. And it's a struggle."

Only half the story

Of course, I didn't see any mention in the story by Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson that Christie cut school breakfast programs for low-income children or that his wife, Mary Pat, is working with food pantries, not addressing the childhood obesity problem.

Some Record editors also have struggled with their weight for years or decades, but they are not about to acknowledge it or launch a project on the obesity epidemic -- the elephant in the Woodland Park newsroom, as it was for many years in the abandoned Hackensack newsroom.

At one time, three editors were obese or verging on obese -- head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Project Editor Tim Nostrand and Food Editor Bill Pitcher -- but the paper kept on printing stories or restaurant reviews promoting desserts, chocolate and other sweets.

Pitcher began free lancing for the Food section when he was a layout editor on the news desk, then left the paper for a year or so before returning as food editor in mid-2006. 

His daughter was a 2-year-old of normal weight when I met her, but a few years later, in 2006 or 2007, she appeared in the newsroom as a grossly overweight little girl.

Pitcher has left the paper, but the restaurant reviewer he hired in 2007, Elisa Ung, continues to indulge her mindless obsession with dessert in her weekly columns.

Well-reported burg

Sykes' Local section doesn't have any Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news today, but don't miss the story on the ambulance corps in Harrington Park, the editor's hometown (L-2).

Unscripted, unhinged

In Better Living, the Associated Press coverage of the Academy Awards broadcast mentions Best Supporting Actress Melissa Leo's use of the F-word, but not what a blithering idiot she was during her acceptance speech -- one in a long lime of such speeches from actors who seem to fall apart when they don't have a script to work from.

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.

In tabloid mode

The murder of a 9-year-old North Jersey boy in the city is the best the desperate, incompetent editors could do for the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today.

Doesn't that big Page 1 photo of grieving relatives make you sick over the paper's tabloid-like exploitation of them? Why doesn't the reporter discuss the obvious child-care issues of entrusting a child to relatives on a regular basis. Later, we have to endure sloppy editing, with a quote from the principal of the boy's school running twice at the end of the story.

At the bottom of the front page, another EnCap story appears, as if anyone still cares about the botched attempt to remake Meadowlands garbage dumps. Do we need any more examples of how New Jersey is a political cesspool of greedy developers and even greedier public officials? Why not highlight the good that may come of this debacle -- open space and more solar energy -- instead of leaving it to the end of the story? 

On Page A-4, there's a flattering "profile" of Mary Pat Christie, who will become first lady Jan. 19. The reporter doesn't have the good sense to ask her whether she is going to encourage her husband to eat a healthier diet or reform a campaign-finance system that allows only the rich to run for county or statewide office in New Jersey.

Looking for news of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood in the Local section? You won't find any. Yet a great deal of space is squandered on 10 political figures "to watch in 2010." I'm wondering whether we'll see any of them in handcuffs.

The rest of the paper went right into the recycling bin.