Christie veto of another minimum-wage hike is a sure thing

In February, Governor Christie's endorsement of wacko racist Donald J. Trump for president prompted seven major New Jersey dailies to call for his resignation. The Record of Woodland Park was the exception. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Deirdre Sykes of The Record continues to sanitize Governor Christie's record, especially when it comes to his 500-plus vetoes -- many aimed at bills helping the middle and working classes.

On Saturday's front page, Staff Writer John C. Ensslin reports Christie has "several more weeks to mull over" three dozen pending bills, including one that would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

Of course, Ensslin and Sykes know the fate of this latest proposal will be the same as the hike he killed in 2013, but nowhere in the story do they report that veto.

On the continuation page, Ensslin notes "Democratic lawmakers fully expect Christie will veto ... the bill raising the minimum wage from $8.38 to $10.10 per hour with additional hikes of at least $1 until it reaches $15 by 2021."

If Christie vetoes the bill, the issue won't go on the ballot until November 2017. 

After the GOP bully vetoed the earlier proposal, voters OK'd a hike in the minimum wage in November 2013.

Wasting newsprint

Even hard-core baseball fans think The Record overdid the coverage of Yankee Alex Rodriguez's last game on Friday.

Sykes ran two columns and two news stories about A-Rod on Saturday (Page 1 and the Sports front).

Sports Columnist Tara Sullivan was so desperate for an angle she seized on a thunderstorm during the pre-game ceremonies to declare:

"The human lightning rod getting interrupted by the real thing."

"A-Rod" is a creation of tabloid headline writers who never had the room to write "Rodriguez."

Local news?

Saturday's local-news section was filled with news from Paterson (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

But the local editors must have the missed the exit to Hackensack.

A photo of a man carrying bottled water up the stairs to his Hackensack apartment is all the news city residents got (L-6).

Today's Local section is completely missing Hackensack news.

Transportation writer John Cichowski had to figure out some way to justify a column on traumatic brain injuries from falls so he compares the number of deaths to "being killed on foot in traffic" (Road Warrior on L-1).

Going to pot

Today's front page carries a moving account of veterans who smoke marijuana to find relief from the haunting images of war and death (A-1).

The story by Staff Writer Todd South, himself a veteran, comes two days after the federal government's decision to withhold the approval of marijuana for medical purposes.

Officials said there is no scientific evidence it works. 

Ali's battles against racism, war deserve a banner headline

Appropriately, the family that owned Harley's Irish Pub on River Street in Hackensack, above and below, chose Friday the 13th last November to close after 37 years in business. The pub was the scene of many boozy going-away parties before The Record newsroom moved out of the city in 2009. MyBergen.com published a tribute to Harley's.

On Saturday, worked continued to replace the pub building at 366 River St. with the second location of Chicken Supreme, a fast-food restaurant in Paterson.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One glance at The Record's front page today shows how the once-great local newspaper continues to allow advertising revenue to shape news coverage.

The legacy of Muhammad Ali -- who spent most of his life fighting racism and an unjust war in Vietnam -- is denied a banner headline to make room for another piece on the greedy real estate industry (A-1).

Starting a highly promotional Sunday Real Estate section to boost advertising revenue, and folding the award-winning Food section, were among Publisher Stephen A. Borg's major moves when he took over a decade ago.

Editor Deirdre Sykes wasted more space on A-1 today by running an awful Tara Sullivan column on Ali's "magnificent boxing form."

You'll have to turn to an inside page to see President Obama's tribute:

"Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it" (A-8).

House Warrior

Readers wondered whether Staff Writer John Cichowski -- the so-called Road Warrior commuting columnist -- was offered a real estate commission in return for two front-page pieces last week that tried to sell a house without a driveway in Midland Park, where overnight parking supposedly is "banned."

Sykes and six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton didn't bother publishing an A-2 correction after Cichowski screwed-up and inflated the size of the property on Friday to 12,000 square feet from Tuesday's 3,000 square feet.

Today, Cichowski devotes his entire column to an incorrect street sign and other trivia (L-1).

Two of the many vacant storefronts on Palisade Avenue in Englewood once housed a Wendy's fast-food restaurant and Victoria's Secret. The Record has largely ignored the struggles of downtown merchants in favor of heavy coverage of shopping centers that advertise in the Woodland Park daily.

Downtown news? 

For many years, the business editors have directed the paper's retailing reporter to devote her time exclusively to covering North Jersey malls and luxury stores, which are among the biggest advertisers.

Today, the Business front carries a rare story on Main Street in downtown Hackensack, where a half-dozen wireless stores are competing for customers (B-1).

Staff Writer Joan Verdon describes Hackensack's Main Street as a "downtown retail street with strong traffic, from cars and pedestrians."

Really? The street has struggled since the publisher of the Woodland Park daily closed the landmark building at 150 River St. nearly seven years ago, and pulled out more than a thousand employees.

Governor Christie

In Opinion today, readers find an idiotic Mike Kelly column on the killing of that zoo gorilla in Ohio (O-1).

Has Kelly really run out of ideas for his New Jersey column?

Readers find the strongest disapproval of Governor Christie -- New Jersey's worst governor ever -- in Margulies' Sunday cartoon (O-2), not in opinion columns or editorials.

That's a sad commentary on the paper's Editorial Board, the only one attached to a major New Jersey daily that didn't call for Christie's resignation after the GOP bully endorsed racist Donald Trump.

After the big game, news editors deliver boring coverage

Members of the Palisades Park Senior Citizens Center staged a Lunar New Year show today for seniors at the Jewish Community Center on the Palisades in Tenafly. 

In addition to dancers, a choir of men and women performed several songs, including the national anthems of the United States, Korea and Israel.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm no fan of football or how the editors of The Record are always running sports columns on the front page, displacing far more important stories.

In fact, the first thing I do after I pick up the paper in my driveway every day is put the Sports section into the recycling bin.

I did watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, and the big story for me was how a young, black, overconfident quarterback was humbled by a veteran.

But today, Page 1 is dominated by Tara Sullivan, one of The Record's long-winded columnists, whose first two paragraphs are guaranteed to put you to sleep.

Unedited crap

How Editor Deirdre Sykes allowed this apparently unedited crap onto the premier page of today's paper is a mystery.

Sullivan's first two paragraphs describe Denver Broncos Quarterback Peyton Manning walking to his seat on the sideline after victory was assured (A-1).

"Across the field and down the sideline he strode" is how the first paragraph begins. Yawn.

"Down he sat" begins the second. Give me a break.

And the headlines are just awful, because the main and sub-headline basically repeat speculation the Super Bowl might have been Peyton Manning's last game:

"Manning's magical exit?"

"Super Bowl
win would
be a great
final act"

A far better main headline would get rid of the question mark, which is discouraged on many news copy desks:

"Manning's magical game"

"Super Bowl 
win would
be a great
final act"

Local news?

If Sullivan's pathetic column wasn't enough, the front of the local-news section is dominated by a stale story on the cooking of mystery chicken wings on Sunday at a bar in Passaic County no one has ever heard of (L-1).

That's one of five stories with Passaic County or Morris County datelines in a section delivered to Bergen County readers.

Lady Gaga

On the Better Living front, Staff Writer Jim Beckerman wrote an entire story on Lady Gaga singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (BL-1).

Everyone I talked to today thought she did a terrific job, praising her voice, her delivery and how she made the national anthem her own.

In short, she rocked that old song.

Gottlieb, minions putting little under tree for local readers

Slow-moving landscaping trucks are one of the biggest hazards on local streets. On Monday morning, I got stuck behind this one on Woodland Street, appropriately enough, between Palisade Avenue in Englewood and Clinton Avenue in Tenafly, a distance of more than one mile.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Martin Gottlieb leads today's paper with another in a seemingly endless series of stories about human-bear run-ins, even though tens of thousands of readers have never seen one of the furry creatures.

On Dec. 12, Gottlieb even ran a detailed front-page story on how bears are butchered for human consumption. Gee-whiz.

Page 1 today is dominated by a sensational crime story, as it was on Monday -- one a cold case and the other the murder of a Palisades Park man in his Jersey City store (A-1).

Local news?

On the Local front today, the vast majority of readers search in vain for municipal news from their town, as they did on Monday.

Instead, four of the five stories on L-1 today are crime or court news or news about the police.

The editors are so inept they screwed up the name of the police chief in Rockaway Township, where The Record and Herald News are printed, according to an A-2 correction.

Page 1

Reporting on the poor job Governor Christie is doing in New Jersey seems to come in dribs and drabs.

Today, the front page reports that a panel he created wants to make it easier to carry a concealed weapon and speed up permits (A-1).

Speeding epidemic

Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Foti lectured a man sentenced to 6 years in prison in a road-rage death about the epidemic of speeding -- a story ignored by Road Warrior John "Wrong Way" Cichowski for more than a dozen years (L-1).

"There is no one out there driving on the roadways today who has not experienced someone speeding by at 80, 90, 100 miles per hour and to turn to the person next to you and say, 'That guy is going to kill someone.' It's frightening," Foti told Thomas Vanderwelt of Saddle Brook.

"And speed limits are there for a reason," the judge said. "They are there to save lives."

Pothole chronicles

In his ground-breaking reporting on long lines at the Motor Vehicle Commission and his annual awards for the biggest potholes, Cichowski not only has ignored speeding, but failed to uncover declining enforcement.

In November, Eye on The Record reported that the number of speeding tickets issued on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway had dropped dramatically:

More speeding, fewer tickets

Best restaurants?

The Better Living cover on the top 10 North Jersey restaurants in 2015 contains glaring omissions (BL-1, BL-2).

Critic Elisa Ung never says whether any of the restaurants serve the kind of grass-fed or naturally raised beef, pork and lamb that would justify their high prices.

And there is not a word about the sweet, artery clogging desserts she sampled at all of them -- the kind of food most of her readers avoid like the plague.

Monday's paper

When Gottlieb or his minions put another one of Tara Sullivan's awful columns on Page 1, readers know the editors are scraping the bottom of the barrel, as they did on Monday.

Of course, Sunday is a slow-news day, but there was even more irrelevant filler inside the paper, such as car, bus or plane crash news from several states on A-3.

Pope's visit won't change poverty, immigration and politics

Construction workers adding hundreds of apartments overlooking traffic on Route 4 east in Englewood. Meanwhile, the city's downtown merchants haven't been helped much by the thousands of people who already live in buildings on both sides of the highway.

This storefront on North Dean Street, near Palisade Avenue, Englewood's main business street, has been vacant for months.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

With Governor Christie running New Jersey and other uncharitable Republicans controlling Congress, Pope Francis' message of hope and unity will fall on deaf ears.

You have to wonder why The Record and other media have been publishing hundreds of thousands of words and images for a full week now on Francis' first visit to the United States (A-1, A-6, L-7).

A big break in that coverage is the death of Yogi Berra, but you won't find the best story about the Yankees legend on the front page or in the Sports section today (A-1 and S-1).

On Page 1, sports Columnist Bob Klapisch's first line is an instant turnoff:

"This was way back in the early 2000s...."

On the Sports front, Columnist Tara Sullivan can't wait to tell readers about "my few, if memorable, intersections with Yogi...."

For the most moving story about Yogi, see Jay Levin's piece on his Montclair neighbors, who recall Berra as a regular guy.

The story is on the front of the Local section under a great headline:

"His home field since 1958"

Other news

Also on Page 1 today, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg is telling NJ Transit bus riders a new Manhattan terminal one block west of the current hub will take 13 years to build and cost $9 billion (A-1).

But there's not a single word in his long account about the easiest way to ease delays at the antiquated terminal now -- running two express bus lanes into the Lincoln Tunnel during the morning and afternoon rush hours. 

In the years Boburg has been covering the Port Authority, he has written little about the bi-state agency's rail and bus operations. 

Ken Zisa

On the Local front, Staff Writer Todd South is reporting a judge is giving the lawyer for Ken Zisa and an assistant prosecutor four months to prepare for a motion to dismiss the remaining charge of official misconduct against the former Hackensack police chief and state assemblyman (L-1).

Four months?

Our glacial legal system is a national disgrace that seems designed to line the pockets of defense attorneys, impoverish defendants and deny many others access to the courts.

Bridgegate delays won't help Christie's doomed campaign

Are high rents keeping storefronts empty on the 300 block of Main Street in Hackensack, above and below?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie is in 10th or 11th place in the polls on who will win the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

But The Record tries to stir reader interest in his doomed campaign with an A-1 teaser suggesting a delay in two Bridgegate scandal trials could make a difference (A-1 and A-3).

After three of Christie's associates testify next March, the GOP bully will not only be knocked out of the race for the White House he might have to defend himself against impeachment proceedings.

9/11 photos

Readers can't help but be moved by staff photos on Page 1 and elsewhere in today's paper showing the enduring grief over the loss of loved ones in the 9/11 attacks (A-8, L-1, L-3 and L-5).

The A-1 photo by Chris Pedota is especially powerful.

Contrast today's coverage to the sorry Mike Kelly column on the 14th anniversary ceremony that led the paper on Friday.

For a dramatic opening sentence, Kelly chose only three words: "Time moves on." So should he.

No editing

Kelly's long, meandering columns demonstrate how little editing is going on at the Woodland Park daily, but other writers get away with awkward writing, too.

On the front page today, sports Columnist Tara Sullivan has this gem:

"Vinci's best moment -- a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory over world No. 1 Serena Williams -- authored a most shocking moment in the sports world .... [italics added]."

In the photo caption with her column, an editor insisted that "Serena Williams had her run for a calendar-year Grand Slam ended Friday .... [italics added]."

That's like saying Williams "had" her arm broken.

Money talks

Why are leases with two department stores at the long-stalled American Dream Meadowlands complex front page news today?

Because The Record, the flagship of North Jersey Media Group, is being kept afloat by advertising revenue from Macy's, Saks, Lord & Taylor and other big chains (A-1).

And those ads are why the editors order reporters to cover the malls in North Jersey almost exclusively and ignore struggling downtown merchants in Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood.

Week after blown forecast, hardly a peep about new storm

More snow fell on Hackensack overnight than a week ago, when the widely predicted Blizzard of 2015 fizzled, shaming The Record and other media after they indulged in hysterics that prompted people to panic shop for food and other supplies.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When this reader awoke today, there were two surprises -- more snow had fallen than a week ago, when a blizzard was widely predicted, and I found a copy of The Record in a bag on top of the white stuff in the driveway.

Go figure.

The Woodland Park daily's front page on Sunday carried only a few words in small type about today's storm, and even though more snow fell, North Jersey Media Group was able to deliver the print edition I never saw last Tuesday (see L-2 today). 

Boring page

Not there is much to read on Page 1 today, given all the space wasted on Super Bowl game coverage and an obituary for Anna Mara, "the matriarch of the New York Giants" (A-1).

We've all heard about elderly people falling and fatally injuring themselves, as the 85-year-old Mara did.

But instead of just mentioning the cause of her death in passing, how about a sidebar on the phenomena, and what seniors can do to prevent such misfortune?

Gone with the wind

And if Editor Marty Gottlieb expected to grab readers who didn't see the end of the game or who have little interest in the sport, the last writer he should put on Page 1 today is Columnist Tara Sullivan.

She sounds like she is writing a novel, not describing the dramatic end to a great contest (A-1).

Another surprise

Sending Staff Writer Melissa Hayes to cover Governor Christie's visit to London is a colossal waste of money, assuming NJMG paid for the trip and other expenses (A-3).

All she got was a no comment on Mitt Romney's withdrawal from the 2016 presidential race, and lots of nonsense about a trade mission, foreign policy and the GOP bully attending his first soccer game instead of the Super Bowl.

Big influence

Christie's expenses are being paid by Choose New Jersey, a non-profit formed at his behest in 2010 that has many big businesses on its board in return for a $450,000 contribution.

Most of them do businesses with the state, some have received tax breaks from the Christie administration and since last month, the non-profit's leader is Michele Brown, former head of the state Economic Development Authority and the governor's adviser and friend.

Brown, who was a federal prosecutor under Christie, when he was U.S. attorney for New Jersey, is getting a $450,000 salary, double what she earned with the EDA.

In Sunday's Page 1 story about Choose New Jersey, Brown's first name was incorrectly spelled with two l's and the EDA was incorrectly called an "agency."

Hackensack news?

Why is a story on a Hackensack apartment developer saving $1 million by using a "rotary carousel parking tower" the biggest element on the Local news front today (L-1)?

Such a rotary parking system was used in Manhattan in the 1960s.

The rotary parking system doesn't benefit the public or property tax payers.

Real news would be city officials announcing they are getting $1 million in givebacks from such non-profits as Hackensack University Medical Center, which pays no taxes on more than $100 million in property.

The parking carousel was even promoted in a streamer at the top of Page 1 -- a sure sign of desperation from the local assignment editor who got stuck working on Sunday.

(201) magazine

A well-known Hackensack fast-food restaurant appears on the cover of (201) magazine's "The Best of Bergen" -- results of its 9th annual Readers Poll.

A strange choice, because White Manna on River Street serves not one of the best, but one of the lowest-quality beef "sliders" around.

No copy editor is listed among the magazine's editorial staff on Page 10, so it's no wonder that under Fine Dining, the Best Korean Restaurant, So Moon Nan Jip, is misspelled two out of three times (Page 93).

Under Specialty Food Shops, Peter's Fish Market in Midland Park is chosen best for the ninth time (Page 87), even though the Seafood counter at Whole Foods Market in Paramus puts it to shame.

And to show how little the magazine's well-heeled readers know, Seafood Gourmet doesn't even rate a mention.

The Maywood favorite goes small fish markets one better by having a great cook and a dining room where you can enjoy all of that fresh fish and other delights.

Cliche-filled column rehashes 10-day old domestic dispute

Meridia Metro Hackensack at 94 State St. as it looked on Aug. 6. The completion date for the 222-unit building -- called the "first significant residential project ... downtown" -- has been pushed back several months to May 2015.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Is there anything new in Mike Kelly's front-page column today rehashing a 10-day-old domestic violence incident in Saddle Brook?

This is vintage Kelly, The Record's appointed sage, eager to report the lessons he sees in routine police news (A-1).

"Sometimes small local disputes can touch on deep, divisive national debates," Kelly says in the third paragraph.

He must think we're morons. 

Home arsenal

Police found nearly 200 guns and more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition in the home of Robert and Eileen Lintner.

OK. The old guy is off his rocker, but he certainly doesn't look like a revolutionary or terrorist or guns-right advocate, and his wife didn't use a gun; she allegedly stabbed him in the neck with a knife.

Word pushing

Once you start the fourth paragraph, the rest of Kelly's long-and-winding column is just recapping all the details of what amounts to old news.

It's just a rewrite. What's the point, Editor Martin Gottlieb? Slow news day? We get it. But a colossal waste of space.

Would you have stood for Kelly's cliche-ridden introduction at The Times? 

"When they sped to a quiet neighborhood of well-trimmed lawns ...."

Page 1 is boring

What a crappy front page.

Below Kelly is a golf column from Tara Sullivan in Sports.

The first paragraph is filled with puzzling detail: 

"A perilously setting sun," dueling golfers and "a battle rife with drama and thick with tension."

The A-1 story on Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale makes one passing reference to his nearly nine years as Passaic County sheriff (deep on A-6).

But there is no mention of all of the controversy he generated in that job -- reported in detail by The Record's old Passaic County Bureau.

Lynne Hurwitz of Hackensack at a May 20 meeting of the City Council. Her husband Howard is executive director of the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority.

Hag of Hackensack

Kelly's Page 1 column on Saturday focused on Lynne Hurwitz, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Hackensack.

The columnist calls her "the key strategist behind the Zisa family political machine, which ruled the city for three decades until its slate of candidates was defeated last year."

In other words, she is the "Hag of Hackensack."

Now, Kelly quotes the grandmother in her mid-70s as saying she is back in the Bergen County political game.

Christie the manipulator, Hackensack High roaches

Student art from Bergen Arts and Science Charter High School displayed at Johnson Public Library in Hackensack, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie has been a master manipulator of the media ever since he took office more than four years ago, and The Record's editors, columnists and reporters have been his chief dupes.

For months, the GOP bully's $33 billion budget plan has been endangered by shortfalls of hundreds of millions of dollars, principally due to his refusal to tax the wealthy (A-1).

But The Record's reporters are still waiting for the press releases detailing programs cuts Christie will make by the June 30 deadline to balance the budget on the backs of the middle and working classes, as he has done since 2010.

Don't such reporters as John Reitmeyer, Melissa Hayes and Charles Stile have sources in state government departments that can tell them about anticipated cuts?

Now, Christie is playing the blame game to explain away the drastic decline in tax revenue, just as he has for every crisis his administration has faced, up to and including the George Washington Bridge lane-closure/political-retribution scandal (A-1 and A-3).

Tabloid news

A sensational story on today's front page is designed to sell papers.

The follow-up to a double suicide leap from the George Washington Bridge doesn't say whether drug addicts Nickie Circelli and Gary Crockett, her boyfriend, were holding hands when they jumped (A-1).

It also is unclear from the stories whether the 11 a.m. Monday double suicide affected traffic on the bridge, which has gained worldwide exposure from the Christie administration's lane closures last September.

Suffern, N.Y., police say the couple stole money from Circelli's uncle, William Valenti, then killed him during an argument over the theft.

Today's A-1 story and Wednesday's gee-whiz account on the Local front is a lot of coverage of a couple who lived way outside the circulation area.

What is bigger news -- that the Little Ferry Circle floods decade after decade or that a highway collapsed near Pensacola, Fla.? 

Why is the Florida photo on Page 1, and the North Jersey weather story and flood photo buried on the Local front?   

Race for ratables

The lead story on the Local front today doesn't mention what is obvious to every resident of North Jersey's inefficient and wasteful home-rule communities:

Borough officials' approval of LG's 143-foot corporate headquarters atop the Palisades in Englewood Cliffs is a naked grab for tax ratables (L-1).

At 9 feet per story, the building would be nearly 16 stories high.

On the first Business page today, there is no mention of Englewood, where the construction of downtown apartments has done little to prevent vacant storefronts and high turnover among Palisade Avenue merchants (L-7).

Staff Writer Joan Verdon, whose byline is most often seen on stories about highway and mall retailers, reports "real estate experts" say the key to reviving downtown Hackensack and Paterson "is to get more people living downtown."

Roach patrol

Meanwhile, a student at Hackensack High School reports the building's basement cafeteria was invaded by a "horde of cockroaches" during Wednesday's heavy rain.

Students jumped up from their lunches, screaming, and headed for the exit, he said, adding that roach and mice sightings are nothing unusual in the old building.

The food is so bad many students eat or buy lunch elsewhere, including at nearby pizzerias, Starbucks on Essex Street and the cafeteria of Hackensack University Medical Center.

Editorial hemorrhoids

The Record has done its best to ignore Hackensack's Board of Education and food service in the schools.

Before the school board election last month, the Woodland Park daily didn't bother telling readers anything about the four, unchallenged candidates or report what they stood for, and residents didn't receive any campaign mailings.

It is believed that in the last month alone, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza acquired a couple of new hemorrhoids from sitting on the toilet reading tabloids and ignoring local news.

Staffers make blog

Better Living today debuts a new feature -- Name-Dropper -- to give readers "the lowdown on some of the people whose names you see on public statues, memorial plaques, park signs, highways and even some local streets around North Jersey" (BL-1).

The first piece is on Paul J. Foschini, who was mayor of Hackensack in 1933 and from 1937 to 1953. Today, his name is on a 28-acre park near The Record's old headquarters in the city.

The editors took freelancer Jeffrey Page, a former staffer who was the original Road Warrior columnist, out of mothballs for the new feature.

Page also wrote reviews of so-called budget restaurants before that column was dropped last year, likely a good move for his waistline if not for his bank account.

Throughout the profile for some reason, the City Council in Hackensack is written in lower case: "city council."

Sampson, Markos

Another change that has been evident recently is assigning Peter J. Sampson to cover the busy Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack (A-1).

It's not known whether Sampson is filling in for a vacationing Kibret Markos or has replaced Markos, who could be seen smoking outside the 10 Main St. courthouse entrance several times a day.

Sampson is a veteran reporter who once worked for United Press International at the federal courthouse in Newark, where he also covered the U.S. Attorney's Office.

He also covered the federal beat for The Record.

Second looks

Page 1 reported matter of factly on Wednesday that drivers are "zipping along -- often at speeds exceeding 75 mph" on the Garden State Parkway near two Route 17 exits in Paramus.

The reporter didn't bother saying the speed limit there is 55 mph or that state police have apparently stopped enforcing the law along the entire length of the parkway and turnpike.

Bad photos

Also on Wednesday, I was struck by the reptilian image of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and the thumbnail photo of Tara Sullivan, a sports columnist reporting on the NBA's lifetime ban of the racist (A-1).

Sullivan's lopsided smile -- and Columnist Mike Kelly's shit-eating grin -- suggest that a single thumbnail photo doesn't really fit all subjects.

PA change?

Other Page 1 news on Wednesday -- Governor Christie naming former Attorney General John Degnan to be chairman of the Port Authority -- doesn't address the need to break away the bi-state agency's transportation functions.

The Record refuses to cover commuting by train and bus or call on the Port Authority to expand its PATH system or express bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.

Bill the driver?

On Wednesday's Local front, the duplication of emergency services in North Jersey, where property taxes are rising steadily, is evident in the photo of more than a dozen police and fire vehicles that responded to a single-vehicle crash.

This despite non-life threatening injuries suffered by an unidentified Garfield woman, 30, whose SUV broke through the guardrail on the parkway in Woodcliff Lake.

If the woman was texting or speeding before the crash, she should be billed for the emergency response.

Boring columnists are almost everywhere you look

As of Thursday afternoon, this sidewalk hadn't been cleared, even though it is between Hackensack High School and a pizzeria at First Street and Central Avenue that is popular with students who walk there during their lunch period. The New York City media is filled with critiques of snow removal, but similar reports never appear in The Record, once North Jersey's premier local daily paper.

The block of Euclid Avenue between Main Street and the railroad tracks resembled a country lane late Thursday afternoon. The city's policy of approving apartment buildings with insufficient off-street parking comes back to bite officials and residents after snowstorms.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Readers looking for something interesting and informative to read in The Record today are stopped dead by two boring sports columns on the front page (A-1).

On the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski complains NJ Transit's rail service "disappointed [Super Bowl] fans from around the country" -- this from a columnist who in a decade has never reported on the daily disappointment of North Jersey rail and bus commuters (L-1).

And in Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung is so reluctant to discuss the tough filet mignon and other poorly prepared food at the pricey Zestt in Tenafly, she squanders the first half of her column on the owner's resume and the decor (BL-14).

No editing

The abysmal lack of editing is evident in Tara Sullivan's Page 1 column, which declares that a text message from an athlete left her former male coach with "his insides quivering, his heart exploding."

The only three words that would cause such a reaction are,  "I love you!"

Cichowski's columns swung from non-fiction to fiction years ago, and he has probably committed more errors than any other single staffer in the history of the paper.

There also appears to be no editing of Ung's unfocused columns, as this meandering sentence from today's appraisal shows:

"A light, modern space accented with dark slatted chairs, the 45-seat dining room is laid back enough that you can show up in jeans by yourself or go out with several bottles and friends [italics added] who don't need trappings like tablecloths or multiple hovering waiters."

What she needs are hovering copy editors.

Maybe, the dessert-obsessed reviewer gets drowsy from all that sugar, heavy cream and butter she stuffs her face with -- such as "an apple tart with a mealy crust" and "French chocolate cake ... a mousse-filled treat."

More fiction

Cichowski's Sunday column set a new standard for newspaper fiction, according to a concerned reader:

"In his Sunday column, the Road Warrior did a super job in one of his most embarrassing columns of all time with his most outrageously false, senselessly made-up, impossibly fictitious, and crazy, tall-tale descriptions about potential traffic jams on Super Bowl day.

"He repeatedly and endlessly prognosticated about so many traffic jams before, during and after the Super Bowl. He completely ignored all known TV and Internet news reports and predictions that completely contradicted his super flubs since most people going to the Meadowlands stadium were going to use mass transit and not passenger vehicles.

"Road Warrior also made false claims that people should have been worried about traffic jams driving to Manhattan or Newark Airport. He did not realize these people would be traveling four to five hours before game time when there would still be reduced traffic."

See the full e-mail to management and editors on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers: 

Avoiding Road Warrior's Super Toilet Bowl