This is transportation coverage?

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Let's all thank Staff Writer Tom Davis and clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes for more cutting-edge transportation coverage. The editors at The Record of Woodland Park gave him a big part of Page 1 today for his non-story on training simulators used by drivers for the small PATH system.


Davis and the other transportation writers, including Road Warrior John Cichowski, have been simulating journalism for years. They've long ignored the shabby local bus service and the huge quality-of-life impact in Hackensack, Maywood and other towns from the business jets that bring fat cats to Teterboro Airport.

Davis, Cichowski and Staff Writer Karen Rouse have consistently refused to report how inferior local buses are when compared to the newer NJ Transit fleet that carries mostly white commuters to Manhattan. Of course, the local buses are patronized heavily by minorities, many of whom can't afford cars, so they may not be the paper's "demographic."


This is undoubtedly in keeping with the "responsible journalism" practiced by the Borgs' North Jersey Media Group from Woodland Park.


At least the editors found room on A-1 for another pissing match between Governor Christie and teachers, and the launching of a criminal probe against BP and the company that operated the oil platform that blew up and sank in the Gulf on April 20. But the paper and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin have virtually ignored the slow death of an ecosystem.


Local has a detailed story on cuts to the Teaneck school budget, but readers in Hackensack are still waiting for a story on the proposed city budget and tax hike from Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado. But like a pit bull that won't let go of its prey, she has another story on a hearing in the Ken Zisa saga, and that's all she wrote about Hackensack for the umpteenth day. 

The only Englewood story -- a homicide -- leaves readers in the dark on a motive three days after the crime.


Marketplace returns to Better Living today, but only one new food outlet is featured, in contrast to the two a week that ran in the past. Is this column going to run only once a month now? That saves freelance fees, but cheats readers. Maybe a better solution would be to cut Food Editor Bill Pitcher's inflated salary.

More truly boring news

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Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park is telling us today that a bid for a Super Bowl at the new Meadowlands stadium in 2014 is more important than our kids' education now. I see Super Bowl and think Toilet Bowl. 

The editors are telling us a tedious story on highway workers who can cash in vacation and sick days should concern us more than the possible layoffs of thousands of teachers. By comparison, the newspaper's own vacation and sick-day policies were a slap in the face when I was a news copy editor there.


No matter what story Staff Writer John Brennan works on, he sounds like he is doing public relations for the subject -- whether it's Jayson Williams, who killed his limo driver after a night of drinking, or the Jets and the Giants. Today, he is true to himself -- 99.6% public relations man and .4% journalist.


I can't get too excited about employees for an agency that doesn't use tax money who decide to work, then cash in unused vacation and sick days. At The Record, if you didn't use sick days, you'd lose them, and the newsroom had an antiquated system for requesting vacation time. 

At one time, the paper offered $100 to any employee with a perfect attendance record. After a few years, the reward ended and the number of workers taking mental-health days soared. Even today, some reporters manage to write one story a week -- or in the case of Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, an average of one story a year -- and the editors don't seem to notice or care. Rimbach is said to be a favorite of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, the newsroom's clucking Mother Hen.

For many, many years, one of my colleagues on the news copy desk fell asleep regularly and had to be awakened to write headlines. He also came in late 20 minutes every day, claiming he was delayed by traffic, but it was clear he didn't leave the house until 5:30 p.m., the start of his shift. He wanted to be paid for his commute, but in the process, he worked two weeks a year less than the rest of us. Another colleague edited three or four stories a night, while the rest of us did 10 to 15, yet the slacker was given supervisory duties.

The place was so dysfunctional and short-staffed that when I wanted to go on vacation for three weeks or more, I needed special permission from Editor Frank Scandale. If my early November birthday fell on the same day as the general election, I had to get special permission to celebrate with a night out.


The A-1 story on teacher layoffs reports that Englewood handed out 88 this week. Surely, fewer teachers will improve education in the segregated elementary and middle schools the paper has ignored for years. The story makes no mention of layoffs in Hackensack.


Inside Local, there are education stories about Dumont and Ringwood, but when was the last time a Hackensack education story appeared?


A story on the election Tuesday of a new mayor in Paterson -- which usually is covered far better than Hackensack -- apparently was delayed for a day.

Rising disappointment in Christie

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It's good to see rising discontent with Governor Christie reflected in the news and editorial columns of The Record of Woodland Park (map), but some reporters still are being fed pablum.

How does a Page 1 piece with the headline, "Turnpike as moneymaker," get published today with only vague references to "roads should be subsidized by the trucking companies that use the roads"?  

A much better story for that space would have been the bigger-than-anticipated cuts in state school aid.

Christie's new transportation commissioner condemns politics in transportation decision-making, plans reform of turnpike employee work rules and pensions, and wants to form public-private partnerships to make infrastructure repairs. But he won't raise our low gasoline tax or tolls for drivers, and didn't discuss specific mass-transit improvements.

Moreover, the story contains no revenue projections or when the extra money is expected to pour in. Is this piece by Staff Writer Karen Rouse nothing more than a bunch of trial balloons by Transportation Czar James S. Simpson?

Is it a coincidence that a story on a 604-pound woman appears on Page A-8, next to a photo of Christie in Wayne? Or that the words "promise" and "promises" appear in two headlines on the same page about flood solutions and turnpike revenue?

The Record's editorial today acknowledges the paper's past support for ending blue-law shopping restrictions in Bergen County -- absent from yesterday's news story. But can't you just see the Borgs salivating over all that possible new ad revenue, especially in view of what some observers are calling a financially ill-advised abandonment of Hackensack -- phyiscally and editorially.

There is really bad news in Local, where proposed cuts in state aid to school districts are listed on L-3. Rich districts like Ridgewood, Tenafly and Alpine would get no aid, but middle-class districts are calling the plan disastrous.

Will cutting 24% percent help Englewood desegregate its elementary and middle schools -- or does it even have such a plan? That's a story Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano and her clueless assignment editor have ignored.

Eight reporters contributed to the story on school aid, but Hackensack (-28%) , Teaneck (-59%) and Englewood officials aren't quoted. Did the Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck reoprters call in sick? In contrast to their lack of productivity, a single staffer reported and wrote three expanded local obituaries in today's paper.

If you're looking for Publisher Stephen A. Borg's highly touted "every day" coverage of food in Better Living, you won't find any today, as is the case Thursdays and most Saturdays. Mondays will get you a single recipe for vegetarians -- about the only concession to that lifestyle I have seen in the food pages in the past few years. At least the house ad claiming the paper provides such seven-day food coverage hasn't appeared for many months.

Anti-mass transit tirade

Especially in this economy, newspapers like The Record of Woodland Park love the revenue they get from automobile advertising. But The Record goes further, employing reporters who write endlessly about the woes drivers face on the road and at the motor vehicle agency, but ignore the low quality of most bus and rail service.

In congested North Jersey, the former Hackensack daily stubbornly refuses to recognize that mass transit -- not the automobile -- holds the key to residents' future mobility. So here comes so-called transportation reporter Tom Davis today with a Page 1 tirade against the proposed light-rail line that will connect Tenafly, Englewood and other communities to Hudson River ferries and PATH trains. They haven't had passenger rail service since the 1960s.

If you read this lavishly illustrated story carefully, you'll notice how much positive information is missing and how the reporter quotes  only a few people's fears about noise, pollution and traffic jams -- conditions that have existed for decades from busy freight-railroad traffic along the very same Northern Branch. This reporter is not much of a journalist.

One crucial detail Davis is careful to omit to make his anti-mass transit case is that trolley-like, electric-driven light rail will be far quieter than the polluting diesel locomotives originally proposed, as well as more efficient and user-friendly. Plus, systems like it will help cut our dependence on foreign oil. Have you ever heard about how General Motors bought up trolley lines in major cities and closed them down to juice the sales of automobiles?

The first critic the reporter quotes is a man who only occasionally commutes into the city. The second critic is a bus patron. The third is Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes, a relentless self-promoter and immigration lawyer, who says people are concerned about runoff from cars left in parking lots all day. What about runoff from all the cars in the huge parking lot between Palisade Avenue and the old Englewood railroad station?  Why hasn't he ever expressed concern about runoff before?

Davis has been a transportation reporter for many years, but he has refused to expose the incredible noise, pollution and waste of fuel  from all the moguls, fat cats and hip-hop stars flying their multimillion-dollar private jets into and out of Teterboro Airport.

You won't find any education, development, municipal or quality of life news about Hackensack or Teaneck in the paper today -- none was reported -- but you'll find about 10 court, crime and traffic mishap stories, plus two more about cops. Giovanna Fabiano, the Englewood reporter, comes up with a story about security alarm fines upsetting residents and business owners. She continues to ignore downtown traffic jams, an open-air police firing range and the segregated elementary and middle schools, though.

Northern Branch light-rail Web site