Editors expose Christie's pork

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Governor Christie has recommended more than 50 people for jobs at the cash-rich Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The Record has published so many favorable news stories and editorials since Governor Christie took office two years ago that readers are shocked when his true nature is exposed -- as in today's front page report on the more than 50 people he recommended for jobs at the cash-rich Port Authority.


They include donors and Republican Party officials, including one man who is being paid $50,000, plus full benefits, for only three days' work.


Is anybody surprised? When he was U.S. attorney, Christie steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to two others -- his former boss and a former federal judge.


A second shocker is the rare byline of Staff Writer Jean Rimbach on the upbeat Page 1 account of Victor Cruz's rise to football glory from one of Paterson's most dangerous neighborhoods. The continuation of  the A-1 story and a second story fill an entire inside page (A-8). 


Unfortunately, in view of cuts in state aid and dishonest city officials, the celebration of his success will do little to help the Silk City, which the paper has consistently portrayed as a center of drugs and prostitution in North Jersey.


Money laundering? 


It's hard to believe Christie didn't know about illegal deposits totaling more than $2 million in the family business' bank account when he nominated Korean-American Phillip Kwon of Closter to the state Supreme Court (A-3).


On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local, a proposal to extend light-rail service to Tenafly gets lukewarm support from Road Warrior John Cichowski (L-1).


In a rare piece on mass transit, the so-called commuting columnist says "Bergenites are married to their cars." If Cichowski's is "married" to his car, which he calls "Mr. Honda,"  that would be same-sex coupling.


He also blasts "giant SUVs and psychos on cellphones" -- yet fills columns with his inane answers to their e-mails.


His endorsement of mass transit is in the last paragraph on L-3: 


"Somehow, predictions of death, mayhem and excessive trips to ear doctors got lost in a wealth of obvious improvements in commuter convenience." 


Lazy journalism


Sykes continues to cover protest marches in Garfield in the wake of the police shooting of Malik Williams, but readers still do not know the identities of the two police officers who killed him on Dec. 10 or many other details being withheld by the prosecutor (L-1).



That's in keeping with how this lazy editor has covered local news for many years: Wait for the press release.



In Better Living, a column by Staff Writer Elisa Ung on how to eat local through the winter makes readers wonder why she rarely tells them whether the food she samples for her restaurant reviews is naturally raised or grown (F-1).

Politics, patronage, police and the press

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Why is The Record of Woodland Park using the front page today to celebrate the coup of Passaic County's sheriff, who unexpectedly quit for a higher-paying job with the Port Authority?


The accompanying political column makes it clear the move is seen as highly favorable to the Republican Party, and has the apparent endorsement of Governor Christie, but the stories do not connect the dots. Here is a cop who knew how to work the disability system and who sometimes reminds you of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, staying up days to tail a truck filled with tomato paste, not drug money.


Yet the lead story portrays him as a celebrity who danced with Paris Hilton and made a movie with Richard Gere. And do readers really need a third story (A-6) on whether Jerry Speziale will command a nearly $50,000 raise in his new job? 

For the past two days, the Local section reported Speziale was embroiled  in a controversy over whether he had padded his payroll with patronage appointees. "Petty potentate pads payroll" would be a good headline.

Today's coverage shows how newspapers love to shower law enforcers with adulation in return for all the low-down details on crime and punishment. Reporters and assignment editors often cultivate relationships with lawmen, hoping to get those big scoops. Drug busts are promoted as Page 1 news -- to stroke the ego of a prosecutor, police chief or sheriff -- when everyone knows the flow of narcotics will never be stopped. 

A day after A-1 reported that 80% of school districts will have fewer teachers in September, another reporter explains on the front page today that federal aid could save more than 3,900 teaching jobs in New Jersey. Why wasn't that in Tuesday's story?


Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale decided to run a colorful, patriotic photo from a soccer game on Page 1, and bury real news -- that a major food pantry in Englewood handed out nearly 40% more rations of food (a week's worth) than last year (L-1).

And what does the promotion at the top of A-1 mean by "food pantries need your help"? They need the help of Christie or millionaires like the Borgs, who made the recession worse by jettisoning dozens of employees and then moving out of Hackensack. Food businesses on or near Main Street are struggling or have closed. Solari's Restaurant, once favored by former Publisher Malcolm A. Borg, also has seen business plummet.

There is no Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck municipal news today.

With Bill Pitcher out of the picture as food editor, an editorial (A-10) applauds U.S. Senate passage of a school-nutrition bill, and notes the Garden State has the nation's second-highest rate of obesity among low-income children 2 to 5.


Of course, because Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin has been doing so much public relations work for Christie, the editorial  makes no mention of state cuts that will deny free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches to some of these same low-income kids.

(Photo: Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau.)

Missing the year's biggest story

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Can you believe The Record of Woodland Park missed Monday's best story -- passage of a mean-spirited state budget pushed through the Legislature by our steamroller of a governor? What's all this Cold War-era nonsense about spies who live "next door." In Montclair? The majority of readers live in Bergen County, and we're sick and tired of the lazy editors settling for the sensational over the substantial.

Was the spy headline supposed to make me shake in my bathrobe? I know my neighbors, and they're hard-working middle class families who resent the lack of Hackensack news day after day.


So few of the reporters under head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes do anything, it's a colossal misjudgment to assign four of them to this stupid spy story, then give it bigger play on Page 1 today than the budget story, and for what reason?

Was it early deadlines, which sacrifice getting late, breaking news into the paper to accommodate the dysfunctional home-delivery system? Did Sykes and Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale want to go home rather than get the year's biggest story into the paper? Or was it simply more incompetence?

Governor Christie's budget represents the biggest assault on the middle and working classes, the elderly and the poor in New Jersey history, while benefiting small-business owners and such fat cats as the Borgs. 

Charles Stile's column has run on the front before. Why not today, when he describes the once-moderate state Republican Party's nasty turn? In fact, all of the elements on A-6 should have been on A-1 today. The inconsequential spy story actually gets more space than this historically flawed budget and its impact on our way of life. Even Alfred P. Doblin, the editorial page editor, took the evening off, leaving behind two lame editorials.


On A-10, a letter to the editor savages Doblin for his June 25 column with the headline, "Springtime for Gordon, winter for Teterboro." The buffoonish Doblin, it seems, invoked a comedic song about Hitler to criticize Sen. Robert Gordon, the Fair Lawn Democrat who happens to be Jewish, for sponsoring the proposal to break up Teterboro.

Doblin's juvenile style reminds me of that other jerk on the staff, Bill Ervolino, whose northjersey.com blog was shut down in March after inappropriate references to Malia Obama, then 12, one of the president's daughter. When are the Borgs and Scandale going to dump the offensive Ervolino and clownish Doblin?

The lead story on the Local front has the headline, "Chase ends in crash," that the news copy  editors keep on a save-get key. There is more police news in the section, including Giovanna Fabiano's contribution from Englewood, but no municipal news from that city, Hackensack or Teaneck. 


Should we wait for Fabiano's takeout on the Hispanic community in Englewood -- both legal and illegal -- and how it has added a new dimension to the city? Nah. She's too lazy to tackle enterprise, and her assignment editor is clueless. She spends so little time in Englewood, people are always asking to see her press pass.


But I really shouldn't single her out for criticism when Staff Writer Jean Rimbach trades on her friendship with "Mother Hen" Sykes to write an average of one story a year. When is the last time Shawn Boburg wrote a story? Or Monsy Alvarado?

The reporting staff was basically untouched by the downsizing that started in 2008, so it's likely there are still about 50 reporters or specialty writers in the newsroom. If you see only eight bylines in the paper, what does that mean? What are the others doing to justify their existence?

(Map: Teterboro)

More 'responsible journalism'

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The editors at The Record of Woodland Park love politics, and they want  their readers to love it, too. But most readers are turned off by politics and the telling of so many stories by what the Democrats, Republicans, Tea Baggers or other groups think. 

Still, the lazy, incompetent editors know no shame and don't hesitate to cover Page 1, as they did today, with a story on Jon Corzine's contributions to fellow Democrats, complete with an elaborate graphic. "Corzine closes his wallet" is the headline. Who -- with the exception of Democrats who received his largess -- cares?

Why not devote the paper's resources to reforming a system that allows only the rich to run for office? I guess that wouldn't be the kind of "responsible journalism" espoused by North Jersey Media Group. Apparently, the Borgs like the idea that only rich and powerful people like themselves get elected.

Then, the editors squander more of the front page on a sensational story about pedophile tourists in Thailand, burying the shocking news that protesters in Greece killed three bank employees.

Another story the editors try to minimize quotes a powerful senator saying he won't hold a confirmation hearing for King Chris' nominee to replace the only black justice on the state Supreme Court. Ha, ha, ha.



On the front of Local, Columnist Mike Kelly inadvertently indicts head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and exposes the weak reporting of the team that was chasing allegations against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, who has been suspended with pay.


Kelly says a private investigator (working for an attorney who represented a Hackensack police officer) was the source of the allegations that Zisa covered up an accident involving his then-girlfriend, and that he informed the Bergen County prosecutor. Why didn't The Record's reporters get to this investigator first?