Sunday edition editor is ignoring local readers once again

Grand Avenue in Hackensack has finally been repaved, but so many other streets in the city have been neglected for decades.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Saturday's front page, Governor Christie's presidential campaign was described as "sluggish" and "struggling."

Yet, The Record today continues to waste precious Page 1 space on how the GOP bully is doing in New Hampshire, ignoring the mess he's made in the Garden State (A-1).

Sadly, a reader serves as the only antidote to the upbeat coverage masterminded by Editor Martin Gottlieb:

"Christie's most recent attacks [on the teachers union] have come in the same week when state schools have once again received national recognition for excellence," Paul White of Ridgewood says in a letter to the editor (O-3).

"This is the same man who lied about his real reasons for cutting money for women's health, who destroyed the proposed ARC tunnel and who accepts 'lavish' gifts from 'friends' while attacking the wages and benefits of public workers."

Today, there are only two other main elements on the front page -- a lead story and a superfluous column about a disgruntled whistle-blower from Fort Lee who fatally shot a security guard before killing himself, and a piece on college tuition insurance (A-1).

Local news?

Bergen County readers find two Passaic County stories dominating the Local front (L-1).

And a Road Warrior column on "confusing signs" on Route 4 is of concern only to those drivers who refuse to buy or use navigation systems (L-1).

Inside Local today, another long Dean's List stands in for municipal news (L-2), and stories from Riverdale and Kinnelon appear on L-3.

I haven't seen any stories about Hackensack lately, meaning the reporter assigned to the city might be on vacation.

Food news

On the Better Living cover, restaurant critic Elisa Ung is back with a column promoting sub shops that use cheap, low-quality, preservative-laden cold cuts -- this only four days after the section praised the variety of crappy lunch meat available at supermarket deli counters (BL-1). 

She notes one of the shops uses "quality bacon from Nueske's," but the smoked-meat company's Web site doesn't claim its products come from animals that have been naturally raised, so readers have to wonder if Ung is trying to deceive them again.

Death of Jerome S. Some is linked to building renovations

On Saturday afternoon, a Hackensack police officer was on hand as three city firefighters used a hose to try and remove the blood stain left after Jerome S. Some was struck and killed by a small SUV as he was crossing Prospect Avenue on Tuesday night. Plywood covers the doors of Some's building, rear, during renovation of the lobby and other areas.

Pedestrian safety is a gamble on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, above, where crosswalks are few and far between. The same can be said for signs advising drivers of the state law on yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks.

By Victor E. Sasson

Editor

Jerome S. Some would be alive today if renovations to his high-rise in Hackensack hadn't displaced members of the building's co-op board.

Some, 87, was crossing Prospect Avenue to a Tuesday night meeting of the board, on the second floor of Bel Posto Restaurant, when he was struck and killed by a small SUV.

Witnesses said the driver, Kathleen Gehm, 63, didn't see Some and didn't brake before the impact. She was charged with driving while intoxicated, police said.

Gehm is a nurse who is believed to have been on her way to her job at Hackendack University Medical Center.

On Saturday, Hackensack firefighters used a fire hose to try and remove Some's blood, which had stained the pavement in front of his building, the Eiffel Tower at 151 Prospect Ave.

There is no crosswalk between Some's building and Bel Posto, a fine-dining Italian restaurant with a sushi bar.

Pedestrian gamble

On Saturday afternoon, along the nearly 1 mile length of Prospect Avenue, between Passaic and Essex streets, I could find only four signs advising drivers of the state law requiring them to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk.

Keep in mind Prospect is a busy street lined with high-rises and apartment buildings.

Two of those signs flank a crosswalk in front of the medical center, one is located at Beech Street and one is on Prospect between crosswalks where the street passes over railroad tracks.

One of the four signs on Prospect Avenue advising drivers to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks is near Beech Street, above and below, a busy intersection with stop signs, not the traffic light residents have been demanding for years.

Even when there are crosswalks on Prospect, they consist of two parallel painted lines in several cases, not the more visible painted cross-hatch.

Some, the founder and owner of Some's  Uniforms on Main Street in Hackensack, left a wife and four children ages 23 to 60.

Election follies

The Record's front page today continues the tradition of editors and reporters bored with the electoral process trying to persuade voters that nearly every contest is 

a horse race, defying the facts.

Voters weary of the endless discussion of politics and the absence of any real exploration of issues and what is good for New Jersey and the nation simply turn off and don't even go to the polls.

Look at the preview of the U.S. Senate election dominating Page 1 today, especially the preposterous headline over a Mike Kelly column on Steve Lonegan, the Tea Party crackpot who would add even more division to a dysfunctional Congress.

Which editor's twisted mind is responsible for using "passion" to describe Lonegan's racism and extremism?

Kelly, the columnist with the shit-eating grin, is so eager to avoid mention of Lonegan's shameless campaign against Newark Mayor Cory Booker he begins his piece with ancient history, something Lonegan did more than 30 years ago!

A-2 carries another embarrassing correction of a Page 1 story.

Another moron

On the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski has reached a new low: a quiz for drivers -- another royal F.U. to commuters who use the overburdened public transit system.

Kelly's failure as a columnist can be seen clearly on the Opinion front, which carries yet another dated, unflattering photo of the veteran reporter (O-1).

After detailing all of the millions of tax dollars that go into supporting football programs that cause "too many brain injuries in too many players," Kelly simply can't muster the courage to express the strong opinion that readers look for in a columnist.

Instead of saying emphatically that tax dollars shouldn't be used, all he can muster is: "It needs to be asked at some point why tax dollars should support it."

Doblin column

In a letter to the editor today (O-3), Paul White of Ridgewood questions the competence of Editorial Page Director Alfred P. Doblin, who started a column on Governor Christie and last week's debate with "three paragraphs on nonsensical questions concerning music" that "expose his usual bias" for the GOP bully.

White notes that during the debate with Democratic challenger Barbara Buono, "Christie displayed callousness toward the health of women, our cities, the middle and lower classes, and minority rights."

In view of that, why can't Doblin write a column without references to Broadway musicals and Hollywood films? That's so gay.

And as the editor who helps determine which candidates are endorsed by The Record, I don't think he should be writing an opinion column at all.

Let them eat cake

For yet another Sunday, the dessert-obsessed restaurant reviewer devotes her column, The Corner Table, to restaurants, not to the issues restaurant goers face (BL-1).

At least, Staff Writer Elisa Ung should stop pretending she is on the consumer's side and rename her column. 

Frank R. Lautenberg puts Christie, the Borgs to shame

U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg was a vocal advocate of building new Hudson River tunnels to expand NJ Transit rail service. Contrast that with Governor Christie, an enemy of mass transit who killed the project, citing his overweight wife's complaint she would have to walk too far to connect to Manhattan subways.

One thing the editors of The Record carefully avoid in today's comprehensive coverage of U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg is any comparison to Chris Christie, the worst New Jersey governor ever.

Nor do you see any mention of how Lautenberg, who died on Monday, used his wealth to serve the public, as opposed to the Borgs, who have put personal gain ahead of their flagship newspaper's service to local readers.

More politics

Of course, Editor Marty Gottlieb devotes most of Page 1 today to politics -- a sure turnoff for readers -- and took a couple of coded potshots at Lautenberg.

In Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson's appraisal, the senator's career "epitomized liberal politics" (A-1).

"Lautenberg was a reliable -- some might say predictable -- Democrat," Jackson reports, casting a partisan shadow over the senator's work to better the lives of the middle class (A-7).

The real Christie

Christie's many failures are exposed in a letter to the editor from Paul White, a Ridgewood resident who takes issue with a column praising the GOP governor from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, the mouse that roars (A-8).

White says Christie "has made his image by insulting and bullying," and has accomplished little that is positive while waging war against women, the working poor and the middle class.

Lautenberg's death also is the occasion for a cartoon  from Jimmy Margulies, whose work has been appearing only on Sundays since Publisher Stephen A. Borg let him go to cut costs (A-8).

This is certainly not among Margulies' best work.

More appropriate would have been a Jersey Mount Rushmore with Christie cast in the role of dynamiting Lautenberg's image.

More gimmicks

Meanwhile, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, produce a low-quality Local section that relies on the same gimmicks they've been using for years to mask their laziness.

Five of the six elements on the Local front are Law & Order coverage, and the central photo is an overly dramatized auto collision (L-1).

L-3 also is mostly Law & Order stories, and a second accident photo -- a pedestrian hit by a car -- is used as filler at the bottom of that page.

The caption describes a late-model Subaru as "a station wagon," a term that hasn't been used by the automotive industry in decades.

Sykes and Sforza also reprint a story about Hackensack bonding to pave streets and improve pedestrian safety from the weekly Hackensack Chronicle (L-2).

Are editors chained to their computers?

Image via Wikipedia

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
says it's a free country and it can charge drivers and
rail commuters whatever the traffic will bear.

The big story on The Record's front page today -- the surge of Hispanics in North Jersey -- is news only to shut-ins, Editor Francis Scandale and assignment editors who never leave the newsroom.


The off-lead main headline from Liz Houlton's news copy desk seems exaggerated or just plain wrong.


One of five commuters using Hudson River crossings come from Bergen County, as the A-1 chart indicates, so you can't say:

Bergen

would take

the brunt

of toll hikes

Tunnel vision


New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was quoted in radio news reports on Wednesday as calling the Port Authority's toll-and-fare hike plan a "non-starter," but I haven't seen anything on that in The Record.


Both Cuomo and Governor Christie can veto actions by the agency's board. 


Christie has called the agency mismanaged, so why doesn't The Record publish Port Authority salaries, including pay for its spokespeople, some of whom are former journalists?


Reader attacks Doblin


In a letter to the editor on Page A-10, Paul White of Ridgewood says parts of Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin's Aug. 8 column on Governor Christie were inaccurate, adding:


"I would love to see Doblin do a column on the incredible inequality in the U.S. and the efforts of the super-rich to increase that inequality."


With Doblin cashing checks signed by super-rich Publisher Stephen A. Borg, what's the chance of that happening?


Back to school


On the front of Local, a story on the Lincoln School site in Englewood doesn't report a previous city administration decided it would cost too much to turn the 100-year-old building into a community center.


Staff Writer Melissa Hayes -- who is newly assigned to the city -- should ask  officials what they propose to do about all the vacant storefronts on Palisade Avenue or segregated elementary and middle-school classrooms.


Let's hope Hayes isn't taking direction from the laziest assignment desk on the Eastern Seaboard.


That desk, working under the burden of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, thought the biggest local news today is an "update" on a 30-month project to expand Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington (L-1).