Editors reward Jon Stewart for keeping his hands off press

This sign might give you hope, if you have a medical emergency while driving on Route 4 east in Paramus, but the urgent-care center itself isn't close to opening, below. Why would Paramus officials approve the sign weeks before the building is ready?

On Friday, you could still see the original entrance and exterior paint of the shuttered Dos Cubanos, a Cuban restaurant, which is being renovated for the CITYMD urgent-care center, part of a Manhattan-based chain. When the center finally opens, how many patients will be rushing over after an artery clogging meal at the fried-chicken restaurant next door?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You'll have to read between the lines of Virginia Rohan's front page tribute to Jon Stewart to realize his greatest failure is never lampooning newspapers -- large ones like The New York Times and small ones like The Record.

Martin Gottlieb, editor of The Record, is a veteran of The Times, and both newspapers have revealed deep flaws -- from scandals over fabricated quotes to lazy, irresponsible local editors who wink at official misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance.

Stewart, the stand-up comedian and actor, never even bothered looking across the Hudson at the state of print journalism in his native New Jersey.

No. For "The Daily Show" targets, all you have to do in look at the continuation page, which is peppered with familiar TV news acronyms: CNN, MSNBC and CNBC, as well as the infamously slanted Fox News (A-8).

A-1 photos

Poor Virginia Rohan, The Record's veteran TV writer, who gave us the Stewart appraisal. 

Isn't Production Editor Liz Houlton discriminating against her by running a contemporary thumbnail photo of Rohan (A-1) while using dated photos of Columnists Mike Kelly (O-1) and John Cichowski (L-1)?

Talking about front-page photos, check out the racy image of Emilee Carton, manager of the Lilly Pulitzer store in Hackensack, whose cleavage-baring low neckline is upstaging the racehorse behind her (A-1).

On the Web site of the store in The Shops at Riverside, Lilly Pulitzer is billed as "the unofficial uniform of the affluent at play."

That's appropriate considering the wealthy Borg family own the Woodland Park daily and (201) magazine, considered by some to be the bible of Bergen County's moneyed elite.

Stretching the definition of transportation, the editors assigned NJ Transit reporter Christopher Maag to cover the race at Monmouth Park, and he tries mightily to polish all of those horse turds (A-1, A-8). 

Zisa and Molinelli

Also on Page 1 today, the rare byline of Staff Writer Jean Rimbach appears over an "Analysis" prompted by an appeals court vacating the convictions and prison sentence hanging over the head of former Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa. 

Rimbach claims that and other setbacks constitute "a bad run" for Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli (A-1).

Of course, you won't find any mention of Joseph S. Conte, the Zisa trial judge, who was harshly criticized by the appeals court.

"The judge [Conte] did not forcefully tell the jury that the prosecutor's remarks ... were improper, and he did not unequivocally tell them that the improper information must be disregarded," the ruling stated.

And The Record has never examined Conte's record on the bench -- and how many times he's been reversed by higher courts -- before he retired and joined a Hackensack law firm.

Local news?

There isn't much to read today in the local-news section, ostensibly edited by Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, unless you're a dog owner (L-1).

Nothing is changing with New Jersey's full-service gas stations, so why is the Road Warrior wasting our time with a long column on self-serve pumps (L-1)? 

Finally, an opinion

Mike Kelly finally manages to offer an opinion about something, the cancelled Hudson River tunnels project (O-1).

"This year, we have seen in graphic detail what happens when elected officials do not take care of important pieces of our transportation infrastructure" (O-1).

How's that for hard-hitting local journalism from the columnist with the shit-eating grin thumbnail photo?

Oh, by the way, "Hudson River tunnel," which appears in his first paragraph, is incorrect. Two tunnels were under construction.

On O-2, the Margulies cartoon about Governor Christie is a stretch.

But Opinion columnist Brigid Harrison, a professor, places the blame squarely on Christie for why a poll found our satisfaction with life in the Garden State hit a 35-year low.

Lions or humans?

On Friday's A-1 and A-4, The Record inadvertently published a condemnation of the media for their propensity to ignore human misery.

"It's so cruel," a woman in Harare, Zimbabwe, told The Associated Press, referring to the slaying of Cecil, a protected lion.

"But I don't understand the whole fuss, there are so many pressing issues in Zimbabwe -- we have water shortages, no electricity, no jobs -- yet people are making noise about a lion?"

You'd hear the same complaint from residents of Paterson, who live in fear of a drive-by shooting taking the life of another innocent victim, but who are saddled with a police director who has failed to attack the city's gun problem.

Yet, instead of questioning why Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale shouldn't be replaced, The Record spends more time reporting on his lawsuit against the Port Authority, where he once worked, and his problems clearing security at airports.

New Orleans

It's sad to see that Travel Editor Jill Schensul waited nearly 10 years after the devastation of Katrina to declare that New Orleans "is back" and "better than ever" (T-1 today and last Sunday).

That's the danger when journalists go on press trips arranged by hotel owners, chambers of commerce and mayors.

She could have visited New Orleans in 2010, and written about the renewal up to that point, helping to steer tourists to one of America's most distinctive cities.

I saw much of what she described this month on a visit in the summer of 2009, including jazz clubs along Frenchmen Street, restoration of the St. Charles Streetcar line and a French Quarter that was as vibrant as ever.

Putting the plaintiff on trial

Image by vaXzine via Flickr

Attorney Samuel J. Samaro, the hired gun who opposed me at the Superior Court trial of my suit, taught me a thing or two. But nothing he said came in time to help me win my case. "I can't be bought, but I can be rented [for $300 to $400 an hour]," he said during a break on Thursday.


Samaro said that in the 20 or so years he has been practicing employment law, he has represented both sides -- employers and employees. If he believes in a worker's case, he will take it on a contingency basis (no hourly fee). The only way to win, he said, is to portray the employer as "evil." That's what he did to win a $1 million settlement for two professors.


He didn't have to say what he does when he defends an employer -- I watched him doing it to me. Samaro put me on trial and, with a favorable ruling from the judge, he was able to dredge up details of my performance reviews dating to 1985. I put my objections on the record, telling the judge anything beyond 2005 would be unduly prejudicial.

Samaro also won another motion -- to admit excerpts from my "Eye on The Record" blog that referred to all the white male columnists The Record was left with after getting rid of Hispanic, black and female columnists in their 50s. My comment that Mike Kelly and John Cichowski were "over the hill" also was used against me.


There was more. A letter I wrote to the EEOC in 2006 and my answers to questions during the discovery phase of the case also were quoted. As with the blog, these unfortunate comments about Bill Pitcher's weight had nothing to do with age discrimination and retaliation -- the two narrow issues the jury had to decide.

He used more words of mine against me, especially my preference for naturally grown or raised food as opposed to the obsession for desserts often found in the food pages of the newspaper. My e-mails to Publisher Stephen A. Borg, notably one sent April 4, 2008, about mistreatment of older workers, also were read to the jury.


I recall the day I testified and Samaro cross-examined me, using performance reviews written by Kathy Sullivan and Dan Shea, among other editors. On many occasions, I explained to the jury, I was fighting for the integrity of my lead paragraph with rewriters and others, but the jury only saw someone who was difficult to deal with.

I wasn't allowed to tell the jury anything about Sullivan or especially Shea, who was married when he had an affair with a reporter, Stephanie Stokes. When he first took over the Business News department, he told me to call a failing bank but not to say I was a reporter. Later, Shea was put in charge of buying a new typesetting system, and purchased one that made us miss deadline numerous times after he left for New Orleans.


When I moved to the copy desk to get "editing experience" at the age of 44, Shea sent me an Atex message: "Sigh, I can't make old jokes about you anymore."


The judge also granted another Samaro motion, preventing me from discussing what I saw as mistreatment of other older workers in the newsroom, including fellow members of the news copy desk. I doubted the jury understood how the desk had become a scrap heap for older workers and was considered the lowest of the low by assignment and the Franks.


I wanted to call Diane Tinsley, a graphic artist who left The Record, and have her testify about her age- and race-bias complaint to the state Division on Civil Rights in 2008, but was prevented from doing so by the judge, who granted Samaro's objection. 

Defendant Jennifer A. Borg, the chief legal officer of North Jersey Media Group, had been in contact with Tinsley's lawyer, but Borg also knew she had testified at one of her depositions that my bias complaint was the only one filed. Borg was in the courtroom from beginning to end, taking notes and advising Samaro.

In his closing argument, Samaro also tried to portray me as litigious and claimed I used my knowledge of age-discrimination law as a "shield" against discipline -- despite having told the jury in excruciating detail how I was disciplined numerous times, put on probation and cited for insubordination twice (in 1995) when I walked out of meetings to discuss my calling in sick on a Jewish holiday.


Jennifer Borg even testified that my supervisors feared me -- feared that I would name them in a lawsuit.

Desperate for a real newspaper

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The earthquake survivors in Haiti are desperate for relief, according to the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today, but I'm just desperate for a newspaper that has the balls to go to bat for people who have been ignored by the world for far too long.

You won't find anything in today's disaster coverage -- not even an editorial -- expressing outrage at the failure of government in Haiti, at the collapse of law and order, at the slowness of the rescue effort and at the realization the world may have allowed this Caribbean nation to descend so far, it may be beyond help without a truly massive, unprecedented infusion of aid. But how many Haitians will this neglect have killed?

(Similarly, the Borgs may wake up one day and actually read the paper, only to realize too late that the lazy, incompetent editors have run it into the ground so deep, it can't be saved.)

The absolute failure of government quickly became evident only a day or two after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but The Record was unwilling to go out on a journalistic limb to say so. It waited -- for an "expert," a story from one of its wire services, anything to avoid its own responsibility to report what a poor job the Bush administration was doing to help one of the nation's greatest cities.

We're seeing the same thing with the earthquake in Haiti. Look at the nonsense from Columnist Mike Kelly (see yesterday's posts). Where is an editorial criticizing the Haitian government and its greedy ruling class? Where is the editorial on how little the world community has done for Haiti in the last few decades?

If ever there was an argument for busing students to school, look at the story on the front of the Local section about a teen driver who manages to hit a tree -- cutting the car in half -- and nearly kill himself and his sister. Does anybody believe he wasn't speeding? Why was the reporter, Marlene Naanes, able to get his sister's name, but not his? What is a story about Giants Stadium memorabilia doing on the Local front?

Reporter Monsy Alvarado's byline on a Hackensack story appears for the first time since Dec. 30, with another detailed piece on disciplinary hearings for police officers who are suing the chief. This is a subject she has reported far more than any other, ignoring schools, development, the City Council and  municipal government. There is no news of Teaneck or Englewood, two other premier towns in Bergen County. Between Dec. 20 and today, only one Englewood story has appeared in the paper, outside of police and fire news.

The restaurant review today, in the centerfold of Better Living, is written by food editor Bill Pitcher, whose sudden visibility is welcome now that Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung is on leave until summer. Pitcher's familiarity with fresh fish, in this review of a Greek restaurant, is a revelation, compared to Ung's constantly obsessing about dessert. But why run a photo of  "overcooked and flat-tasting" grilled shrimp and a second one of the owner holding that dish?

There is an unusually long list of restaurant sanitary inspections on Page 24 of Better Living today, but what about Wyckoff and other towns that never appear? And is it really fair to readers to run a long story on the next page supposedly containing "facts" about antibiotics in poultry and other issues written by the National Chicken Council, an industry promotional group?

Is this front-page news?

Two stories taking up most of Page 1 and the front of the Local section in The Record of Woodland Park today seem out of place. They easily could have been reversed, giving readers a compelling Hurricane Katrina success story on the front page.

Instead, readers are lectured by Road Warrior John "Drivers' Best Friend" Cichowski on Page 1 about the dangers of walking along highways such as Route 4 and Route 46. Is this front-page news? New Jersey saw only 157 of the 1,200 pedestrian deaths cited for the metropolitan area in 2006-08.

The profile of an African-American woman in Paterson who was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, which took her father, doesn't quite fit the Local news section. It reads more like a North Jersey story, with data on other survivors. It just goes to show how unlikely it is for black people to get on the front page of the former Hackensack daily unless they are charged with murder or some other heinous crime.

The rest of the Local section is silent on any news of Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck -- the three most diverse communities in Bergen County -- unless you count the obituary of a woman who ran the old homeless shelter in Hackensack. The Record's move out of River City seems to have shifted the focus of news-coverage to the west, such as the story today on the Garret Mountain deer hunt -- near the paper's new headquarters.

The placement of stories continues to grate. The sanitation problems at a city of Passaic Mexican cheese factory and the opening of a new hamburger restaurant in Montclair -- essentially two food stories -- appeared this week in the Business pages, where the latter seemed like a big, free advertisement.

The food-phobic travel editor

Page 1 of The Record today is filled with hard news, which is not always the case. The newspaper loves putting sports and infrastructure stories all over the front. Readers may not know that a story, no matter how important, will not be assigned to the central element of the page unless it has a great photo (or graphic, as in the algebra-test story today). In Record parlance, that story is "the patch."

On Page A-8, a story about a protest by commercial fishermen is silent on whether the new rules will affect New Jersey fishing ports.

A letter to the editor on A-11 claims "police salaries are out of control." The Record has published a number of stories in recent years, blaming high police and teacher salaries for the financial troubles of many towns. But it has been silent for the past decade on the incredible inefficiencies of home rule. Does Bergen County need 70 police chiefs, and police and fire departments; almost as many superintendents of schools and Departments of Public Works, and 100 to 200 neighborhood schools? Aren't they the reason property taxes are so high?

The Local section has no municipal news from diverse Teaneck, Hackensack and Englewood.

Better Living  has no food coverage, which is the case on most Saturdays, unless you count the stories on Halloween candy.

The Sunday Travel section -- delivered with the Saturday paper -- is a collector's item. It actually carries a story about restaurants (in New Orleans). Many travel sections are filled with stories about food, a big reason many people travel, but not The Record's section.

Have readers noticed the paper has had no major articles about travel in South Korea in many, many years? It's believed The Record's travel editor -- an animal lover -- is horrified by the notion  that some South Koreans allegedly eat dogs and won't run any stories about South Korea. This same editor traveled to Africa to help animals -- not people.

The story about New Orleans restaurants confines itself to the French Quarter, ignoring all the great neighborhood places, including Li'l Dizzy's Cafe (shrimp and grits) and Parkway Bakery (overstuffed po' boy sandwiches). It also provides no strategy for avoiding all the artery-clogging butter and cream in creole food, such as eating at one of the great Vietnamese places in or near the city.

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