Tens of thousands of Jews say: Shame on you, Boteach

Four photographers from The Record managed to cover Memorial Day parades in only five Bergen County towns, according to today's Local section, but none visited Englewood, above and below.

VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Shame on you, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, for your publicity mongering and your support of Governor Christie, the worst leader in New Jersey history.

And shame on you, Editor Martin Gottlieb and Columnist Mike Kelly, for devoting more than 100 inches in The Record today to a rabbi who makes tens of thousands of Jews cringe at the thought that they have anything in common.

How can Kelly -- himself a walking question mark --dare ask on Page 1, "Who is he [Boteach], anyway?" (A-1).

Readers know Boteach purchased a mansion on Englewood's East Hill, even though it was next door to the home of the Libyan ambassador to the U.S.

Then, in 2009, the shamelessly self-promoting rabbi grabbed the front page of The Record several days in a row, protesting the planned visit of Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi.

Folloing those news stories was a glowing profile by Staff Writer Jim Beckerman, who described pop king Michael Jackson's visit to the Boteach mansion for Friday night dinners.

The reporter referred to the mansion as "an ordinary house in Englewood."

Must-read list

Head Assigment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza managed today to find room for Memorial Day photos from only a half-dozen North Jersey towns (L-1, L-2 and L-3).

Any other photos were held to make room for thousands of names in a huge Dean's List (L-5), which Sykes and Sforza rely on frequently when they can't find legitimate municipal news.

Monday's paper

The Record's front-page story on the crash death of Princeton University mathematician John Nash fails to report the Nobel laureate and his wife weren't wearing seat belts in the back seat of a taxi.

NJ.com reported the Nashes were ejected from the cab during the national "Click It or Ticket" campaign on seat-belt use, a stepped up enforcement program that runs through May 31.

In mid-May, Road Warrior John Cichowski warned more than 4,400 tickets were issued in Bergen County alone during last year's two-week crackdown.

Yet, The Record consistently fails to report whether people killed in car crashes were belted in.

Christie and crime

In another front-page story on Monday, Gottlieb and the other editors managed to hold Christie blameless for police layoffs that resulted in a spike in violent crime in Camden, Newark, Paterson and other cities.

The story by Staff Writers Abbott Koloff and Melissa Hayes goes on and on, but never reports the GOP bully cut state aid to poor cities in 2011.

Camden lost 163 officers and Paterson -- which has twice as many residents -- let go 125.

The Record's revisionist theory is that the layoffs were caused by the "recession, coupled with a freeze in state aid and a 2 percent state-imposed cap on local property tax levies" (Saturday's A-11).

Different story

In 2011, The Record and other media attributed the layoffs to Christie's state aid cuts. 

On July 1, 2011, NJ.com reported the governor cut aid for the state's most troubled cities to $10 million from $149 million.

On Monday, The Record described that drastic aid cut as "a freeze in state aid."

Now, the Woodland Park daily -- which struggles to report what happened yesterday completely and without errors -- can't be relied on to accurately report what Christie did in his second year in office.

More of the same old blah, blah, blah

A window at Barneys on Madison Avenue. Fashion Week in Manhattan is coming to a close today.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Compared to his previous efforts, there's little discernible difference in Mike Kelly's front-page column today on the 12th anniversary of 9/11.

In more than two decades of trying at The Record, Kelly has never developed a distinctive voice or the strongly opinionated point of view readers look for in a columnist.

If it wasn't for the outdated thumbnail photo, complete with shit-eating grin, the Kelly column reads like another, long news story (A-1).

His awkward writing is evident in the first paragraph of today's piece, when he has Tom Acquaviva of Wayne standing "in silence for a few humid moments."

A bad smell

A "few humid moments"? Kelly's phrases are indistinguishable from farts.

The paragraph ends with "the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, which most of us know as Ground Zero."

"Most of us" is a reference to reporters and the media, who adopted the phrase in 2001 and argued over whether it should be written with capital letters (The Record) or lower case (The New York Times). 

It's no wonder that more than a decade ago, news copy editors on River Street in Hackensack -- weary of Kelly's bad writing -- had to be ordered by their supervisors to edit his long, boring columns and slap on a headline.

Inside transit

Another Page 1 story today amounts to the same old blah, blah, blah about the incompetent administrators at NJ Transit (A-1).

But The Record's office-bound editors and reporters  continue to ignore the mass-transit agency's basic failing where the rubber meets the road: 

It's inability to provide enough rush-hour bus and train seats for commuters, aggravated by Governor Christie's anti-public transit policies.

Bergen corruption

The off-lead today -- new federal charges against Joseph A. Ferriero, onetime chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Party -- explains why even many Democrats helped put a Republican county executive in office (A-1).

Unfortunately, Ferriero allies were the power behind the Zisa family regime in Hackensack for many years, and still have their hooks into the city's Board of Education.

More errors

As the corrections on A-2 demonstrate once again, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, her minions and Production Editor Liz Houlton create problems as well as missing them.

Houlton's copy editors have completely given up trying to ensure accuracy in the Road Warrior column, according to a concerned reader:

"In his Wednesday column, the Road Warrior continued his epic inability to correctly report and provide any valid assessments on the problems and delays in completing the Route 17 Summit Avenue exit, which finally opened on Sept. 9.

"Road Warrior only explained there were 'additional work issues' involved in the delays and repeated that the only obstacle over the last 5 months was due to activating a traffic light.

"Yet, I was able to find out from NJDOT and contractors about other specific utility and ramp work that also caused the delays.

"Road Warrior is repeatedly befuddled by math, counting and calendars since he repeatedly got the number of days it took to finally activate the traffic lights wrong.

"Why was the Road Warrior unable to get more explanations, better information, and any completion date if the DOT and contractors provided me with all of that?"

To read the entire e-mail to Houlton, Editor Marty Gottlieb and management, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

When will Road Warrior's light go on?

Editors continue to screw commuters

The Record of Woodland Park publishes another story about the Port Authority's 50% hike of Hudson River tolls months after it might have figured in the public debate.

The Record's editors -- and the reporters who do their bidding -- don't cover mass transit and commuting; they cover the meetings of the agencies that provide those services.

A perfect example is the story that leads the paper today -- the Port Authority violated its own policy   when it raised Hudson River tolls to $12 last year.

But the story amounts to so many sour grapes, coming many months after the public debate and after Governors Christie and Cuomo caved in to the profligate bistate agency.

Page 1 boo-boo

On top of that, the front-page graphic doesn't agree with the text of the story, which says, "Through 2015, tolls are set to increase by 75 cents each year, starting this December."

So, if I read that correctly, the toll -- now $12 -- will go up 75 cents in December and 75 cents in 2013, 2014 and 2015, a total of $3. 

But the A-1 graphic shows the 2016 toll as "$12.50."

Christie's screwing

Does Christie give a shit about New Jersey commuters? No. 

He cancelled the Hudson River rail tunnels, grabbed $1.8 billion in tunnel money to fix highways and packed the Port Authority with his cronies.

Does Road Warrior John Cichowski give a shit about commuters? No.

The Mad Journalist has been knocking himself out in recent years writing about roof snow, potholes, suicidal pedestrians, head lice, teen drivers and a bunch of other irrelevant topics -- anything to avoid writing about commuting problems. 


Screwing Hackensack

Editor Marty Gottlieb's recently renewed focus on Hackensack appears to culminate today with a Page 1 piece by Mike Kelly, who is running neck and neck with Cichowski and Bill Ervolino for the title of "The Record's Worst Columnist."

Hackensack is one of the best-run communities in North Jersey, and its police force has overcome the burden of being led by Police Chief Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa to give residents both service and security.

So, what's Kelly take? The headline declares:

Zisa case, 

lawsuits

leave city

in 'havoc'

On what does Kelly base his overlong piece? Did he interview any of the 43,000 residents? No.

He quotes one of the City Council's chief gadflies, so-called reformer Emil Canestrino: "It's havoc in this town."

On March 26, an A-1 Zisa story in The Record carried this sub-headline:

Drawn-out case has 

Hackensack in limbo

What was the basis for that? Did that reporter, Stephanie Akin, interview residents? No. 

She quoted Canestrino's wife, Kathy, as saying Zisa's long-standing legal troubles have "put a lot of things in limbo."

Well, at least readers know the Canestrinos feel the city has deteriorated from 'limbo' to 'havoc.' 

But does Gottlieb really expect readers to take seriously this kind of lazy, amateurish journalism from two reporters working for head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes?

Is this what he learned in the all the years he spent at The New York Times -- hanging a story and a Page 1 headline on such flimsy reporting? That's just shameless.  

Where's the beef?

The rest of Gottlieb's Sunday edition is pretty thin.

In Better Living, Staff Writer Elisa Ung squanders her entire Sunday column on promoting a so-called Korean taco at T.G.I. Friday's, one of those restaurant chains that charges a lot of money for low-quality food (BL-1).

She never questions the use of the word "Korean" to market a taco without kimchi or gochujang, a Korean red-pepper paste.

Readers expecting an exploration of restaurant issues from the customers' point of view are disappointed again by Ung's misnamed column, The Corner Table.

She might want to rename it The Owner's Table.

Gifts to readers are hidden inside

Image via Wikipedia
A new painting calls into question this famous American  image, George Washington crossing the Delaware in 1776.

Fascinating glimpses of New Jersey history are hidden inside The Record today, wrapped in a front-page dominated by a sports rivalry that is of little interest to the majority of readers.


The state's past industrial might is revealed in the A-3 story on the history of a 2-million-square-foot Elizabeth warehouse that caught fire -- written beautifully by Amy Ellis Nutt, a Pulitzer Prize winner at The Star-Ledger.


At the bottom of A-10, AP veteran Verena Dobnik reports a new painting corrects several inaccuracies in one of America's most famous images -- George Washington crossing the Delaware River to surprise and defeat Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Trenton on Dec. 26, 1776.


These two stories are gifts to readers that surpass anything on today's disappointingly ho-hum Page 1.


Don't look for much interesting reading in the rest of the paper, especially the Christmas wish lists or year-in-reviews you'll find on L-1, B-1 and F-1.

No escaping editors' laziness

Image by Klim Andreev via Flickr

Since Saturday, The Record has carried only one story about Japanese residents of North Jersey.

You can hear the snoring above all that laughter from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and the pounding of the keyboard by sub-assignment editor Rich Whitby, assuming they aren't contributing to The Record's newsroom snooze fest.

You also can hear snoring from the office of Editor Francis Scandale, who quickly ran out of ideas for covering the disaster in Japan through the eyes of North Jersey residents who might have relatives or friends living there.

You know the editors are lazy by all the junk in the Woodland Park daily today -- filling the space of legitimate stories they didn't generate.

Wire-story filler

On Page A-11 -- opposite a full jump page on the earthquake and tsunami -- more than a quarter of a page is wasted on a floating restaurant that was moved back to shore in Kentucky -- with no injuries and no starvation.

In Sykes' Local section, nearly a third of L-3 is devoted to Lyndhurst news -- an exercise class and a single restaurant being allowed to have outdoor tables. The lead paragraph of the fitness piece will put you to sleep.

Editor covers hometown

More filler appears on L-6: A doctor is honored for his service on the Health Board in Sykes' hometown.

Now, take a look at the messy story leading Local today (L-1). The reporter gets the official run-around on the identity of a Fort Lee fire victim -- no name, no sex and no age appear in the story -- but the headline on the continuation page says, "Woman dies."

That reminds me of what a lousy job the paper did on Sunday in reporting the death of Robert Ellis, 48, in a shootout with police early Saturday in Washington Township. There's not a single word of follow-up in today's paper.

Image via Wikipedia

Shame on Scandale

Scandale is especially insensitive. He had a couple of heart-to-heart talks with News Copy Editor Michael Thaler before he died of cancer in 2008, and was well aware the copy editor had spent three transformational years teaching English at a junior high in Japan.

Does it occur to Scandale there might be other North Jersey residents living in Japan and teaching English now?  Do their families know where they are or even if they are alive? Does Scandale care? Can someone check if he's napping in his chair.

Sleepy assignment desk

Why aren't reporters sent to the airport, the Japanese-American Society in Fort Lee or the big Japanese supermarket in Edgewater to interview Japanese residents about their search for relatives in their homeland?

Television coverage of the disaster is putting the paper to shame. The Today Show located an American woman teaching English in Japan and connected her by cellphone to her relatives back home.

Coverage this morning also showed a Japanese couple finding the family dog in a tsunami-devastated neighborhood, and other residents recovering photo albums from the wreckage of their home -- all of which readers can relate to.

Green with mold

On Sunday, Columnist Mike Kelly defended Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who held a hearing on Islamic terrorists even as the congressman deflected any focus on his own support for the Irish Republican Army.

Today, Kelly is back with a long column on Englewood officials' quixotic bid to collect taxes on the East Hill mansion that has been owned by the Libyan government since late 1982 (L-1). 

In the process, Kelly gives more publicity to Schmuley Boteach, a rabbi and author who bought the house next door, knowing full well who lived there, but who has cried bloody murder ever since.

It apparently doesn't bother Kelly that Englewood appears to be doing little to improve the education of black and Hispanic children -- 99% of the enrollment -- in its public elementary and middle schools.

Or that city officials decided it was "too expensive" to convert the shuttered Lincoln Elementary School -- a 100-year-old building in a working-class neighborhood near downtown -- into a community center.

Hackensack readers still haven't seen any stories about budget deliberations or the tax rate from reporter Monsy Alvarado, although those meetings have been reported by other municipal reporters in Teaneck (L-1 today) and other towns.

Two-faced Christie

The lead story on A-1 today is another example of Governor Christie trying to score points with his conservative supporters across the country, while desperately accepting cash from anywhere he can get it to avoid taxing millionaires.

The state has already received $39 million and is asking for another $40 million under the new federal health insurance law he has denounced as "Obamacare," Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson reports.

A second look

The same quarter-page story on the NCAA pool appeared on opposite pages Sunday in the four-page Wall Street Journal insert carried by The Record Business section (B-4 and B-5).