Football star Victor Cruz ditches Paterson

The Hackensack City Council meeting scheduled for Tuesday has been moved to July 22 at 7 p.m., according to the city's Web site. But the Committee of the Whole is still meeting this coming Monday night at 7. The meetings are held on the 3rd Floor of City Hall, above. 

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Just like the vast majority of readers, I am not one of those sports fanatics who follow every move by that other Victor.

But here is the lead Page 1 story in The Record today telling one and all that pro football player Victor Cruz is just a regular Joe.

Apparently, Cruz has signed a $43 million deal, but still eats mystery meat at the diner, drops off his own clothes at the cleaner and, get this, shows respect to the immigrant Korean owner.

What a guy.

But, hey, when did Cruz move out of Paterson and into a condo in Lyndhurst? The story raises other questions, but doesn't answer them. 

Indigestible

Editor Marty Gottlieb should know that if you are going to use the hackneyed device of a sports star's friendship with a diner waitress, you should say whether that star is a good tipper, too.

Cruz spoke out against gun violence after the elementary school slaughter in Connecticut late last year.

So, will he use a hundred thousand dollars or so of his $43 million to sponsor a gun buy-back program in Paterson, which is known for drive-by shootings and other gun violence?

The city's do-nothing Police Department and its overpaid chief certainly could use his help.

The rest of today's front page is forgettable. 

Column hog

Lane Laggard John Cichowski is back with another silly Road Warrior column, just a day after his wildly hyped Page 1 "expose" of lower-level GWB toll lanes that have been unstaffed for nearly 10 years (L-1).

Today, he blames 265 fatal crashes from 2007 to 2011 on "left-lane hogs" instead of slamming the real culprits -- the drivers who speed 20 mph or 30 mph over the limit in gas-guzzling SUVs and luxury cars, terrorizing and cutting off slower drivers.

Cichowski is so deperate for copy he bases today's inaccurate column on e-mailed complaints from some of those dangerously impatient drivers, including the improbably named Carlo Disney of Woodcliff Lake.

Healthy tweaks?

In Better Living, Upper Saddle River food blogger Kate Morgan Jackson is back with another unhealthy recipe, this time a pasta-chicken dish made with butter and with poultry raised on harmful animal antibiotics (BL-1).

A couple of tweaks -- extra-virgin olive oil instead of butter and the use of organic chicken -- would make the recipe a winner.

She also recommends cooking the pasta in "heavily salted water" when the legions watching their sodium intake have long ago stopped using any salt to cook pasta. 

Cruz betrays Paterson gun victims

Great Falls in Paterson. © 2004 Matthew Trump (Wikipedia)

Paterson's gun violence is well-known, so why did the Giants' Victor Cruz  -- a Silk City native -- traipse up to the bloodshed capital of Connecticut with the media in tow, and why did The Record's Art Stapleton hang on his every word (A-1 and S-1)?

Did I miss the story about Cruz lending a sympathetic ear to victims of drive-by shootings and other Paterson killings, which have claimed the lives of innocent children, off-duty police officers and others?

Does anybody care what the National Rifle Association will say today about 2o children who were shot numerous times in a Newtown, Conn., school, and did anyone bother reading more than a few paragraphs of the long, speculative story on Page 1 today? 

Fender benders

With Sandy, Newtown and so many other compelling stories to cover, why did Editor Marty Gottlieb run a gee-whiz,  A-1 photo of a non-fatal car accident -- a staple of the desperate Local section editors?

This is yet another instance of an older driver mistaking the gas pedal for the brake pedal -- a serious issue that calls for retraining of senior citizens, not a photo op to make light of their confusion.

Greedy Old Party

Gottlieb leads the paper today with a money grab by greedy Republicans, who continue to fight for tax breaks for the nation's wealthy while slashing by more than half the $60.4 billion requested for Sandy relief efforts by Governors Christie and Cuomo (A-1).

In a deft editing move, Gottlieb made this a partisan issue by mentioning the outrage from "New Jersey's two Democratic senators" in the first paragraph, but not telling readers until the continuation page that loud-mouth Christie had no comment about his fellow GOP morons (A-8).

Jets trump Koreans
 
Given all the attention The Record has paid to North Jersey's growing Korean-American community, you'd think Gottlieb would have run the election of South Korea's first female president on the front page (A-15).

Instead, readers are staring dumbly at another silly sports column by Tara Sullivan (A-1). 

More copy desk screw-ups

Production Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk had fun with the caption on the A-15 photo of Park Geun-hye, South Korea's president elect.

She is seen accepting a bouquet of flowers, but the caption says she is shown "during her victory speech Wednesday in Seoul."

Maybe the microphone was concealed in the flowers.

Houlton's mischievous copy editors really fractured a headline about Newtown, Conn., on Wednesday's A-8. Is this English? Is there a word, line missing?

Community

very visibly

in mourning

 

On Wednesday's L-3, a photo caption about the removal of a tree dropped the word "down." It said "homeowners got permission to cut the 125-year-old tree." 

Corrections or clarifications have been running on A-2 in recent days, including today, but none of the Road Warrior column's numerous errors have been corrected.

Murder and mayhem 

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, needed 8 Law & Order stories to fill fewer than 4 pages of local news today.

Two obituaries of prominent local women, including 101-year-old Nina DiLorio (L-3), are a much-needed break from the monotony of court, police and crime stories. 

Half the story   

In the Signature section today, a cover story on the heyday of Hackensack's Main Street omits any mention of The Record, which had its main office on the street for decades before building a larger headquarters nearby on River Street.

Nor does the story discuss how North Jersey Media Group's wholesale abandonment of Hackensack in 2009 accelerated the street's decline.

Spinning out of control

Whether writing about two wheels or four, the Road Warrior continues to play loose and fast with the facts.

Here is another in a long series of e-mails from a concerned reader to management, appealing for accuracy from Staff Writer John Cichowski:

"Once again, the Road Warrior mistakenly reports misleading and false statements and then further confuses or misleads readers by misinterpreting and misstating the facts. 

The Road Warrior's Dec. 19 column is the 24^th article with problems, starting with his 9/12 column, about which I've notified The Record's management & Road Warrior without indication of any preventive actions to address these problems and very few published corrections.

As per his Dec. 19 column, the Road Warrior continues to be plagued by an inability to correctly state and comprehend facts from published studies that should be the easiest type of reporting based on well-presented statements and facts in these studies, including the Tri-State Transportation Campaign's recent report on the most dangerous roads for bicyclists in northern NJ counties.

A highlight of misleading and false statements & facts are noted below.

The Record or Road Warrior should make appropriate corrections and ensure better coverage of this topic.

1.  Misleading statement - Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which produced a report ... titled "Most Dangerous Roads for Bicyclists in Northern New Jersey Counties"

CORRECT FACTS - Their report was titled "New Analysis Identifies Most Dangerous Roads for Bicyclists in Northern New Jersey Counties."  The mistakes start with the report's title and continue to get worse.

2.  Misleading false statement and fact - "it chronicled nearly 20,000 collisions over a 10-year period."

CORRECT FACTS - The report chronicled these collisions over an 11-year period from 2001 thru 2011.

3. Misleading false statements - "The report focused on roads that make travel easy for cars, but awful for bikes. Typically, it said, these arterial roads are wide with two or more travel lanes in each direction, travel speeds of at least 40 mph, and little to no bike or pedestrian infrastructure, such as bike lanes or crosswalks."

CORRECT FACTS - The report clearly stated it focused on the dangerous design of ALL types of roads that puts bicyclists in harm’s way.  The report never suggested it focused on arterial roads. The report had one statement that indicated that many of the most dangerous places for bicyclists are arterial roads based on the data.

4.  Misleading false statements and facts - "Among the most dangerous roads for crashes [from 2009 to 2011] were .... Route 505 in Passaic County — mostly Main Avenue in Passaic and Clifton— with 43.  Route 505 in Bergen... was the scene of 43 crashes."

CORRECT FACTS - Among the most dangerous roads for crashes were Route 601 in Passaic County — from Paterson thru Passaic on Main St./Ave. — with 33. 

Route 505 in Bergen was the scene of 40 crashes.

5.  Misleading false statement - "The Tri-State report called for exclusive bike lanes and sharrows — well-marked lanes that bicycles and cars can share — as well as suggestions for better training for both cyclists and drivers."

CORRECT FACTS - The Tri-State report did NOT call for exclusive bike lanes and sharrows and did NOT suggest better training for both cyclists and drivers.  The Tri-State report quoted various municipal officials on the multiple ways various municipalities are addressing bicycle safety, some of which include bike lanes, sharrows, and public safety education about bicycling.  The report NEVER mentioned anything about training.

The Tri-State report DID CALL for "NJDOT, county and municipal governments to prioritize bicycle safety projects in capital budgets and encourages counties and municipalities across the state to adopt Complete Streets policies with clear goals (and funds) for implementation."

6.  Misleading false statement and facts -  "[report] noted that federal transportation funding for the nation fell 30 percent this year"

CORRECT FACTS - The report noted that federal transportation funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects for the nation fell 30 percent for the fiscal 2013 year.

7.  Misleading false statement and fact -  "in NJ, funding for bicycle-lane improvements dropped from 3% of the capital budget [for transportation] to 2.3%"

CORRECT FACTS - The report indicated that NJ funding for all pedestrian and all bicycle projects dropped from 3% of the capital budget to 2.3%.

8.  Misleading statement and fact - "Three counties and 40 towns have agreed to adopt these criteria [for NJ Complete Streets policy]"

CORRECT FACTS - Report indicated more than 40 towns agreed to adopt these criteria.

9. Misleading statement - "But who in our car-centric society wants to be especially reasonable about an idea that would remake our road system to accommodate two-wheelers?"

[Editor's notes: Cichowski completely fails to mention how many of Manhattan's avenues have been remade to accommodate the bicycles of commuters, messengers and food-delivery workers.]

CORRECT FACTS - Road Warrior appears clueless when asking this question, particularly when there is clear information about the groundswell of support and efforts coming from the NJ public, public organizations, state government, counties, and municipalities to remake many of our roads to accommodate two-wheelers. The support and efforts may be slower than some would like, but that is the way most things get done.

NJ DOT has a Complete Streets policy that also promotes the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists in construction and maintenance of new and retrofit road projects that have federal or state funds.  NJ DOT also promotes and provides training for county and municipal officials to implement these policies in their local work.

Three NJ counties and over 40 municipalities, incl. many of the largest cities, have implemented this policy.  I would not be surprised if many of the guidelines from this policy have also been utilized by other NJ counties and towns.

The Road Warrior should know that NJ is far from being a car-centric society based on all of the public and private transportation alternative options that are available, particularly in comparison to other states.

[Editor's note: If the Road Warrior ever left the office, he'd discovered a well-developed mass-transit system that is a victim of its own success, and how traffic-choked highways and Hudson River crossings have reached the point of no return.]

More screw-ups by the news copy desk

Wide receiver Victor Cruz couldn't find time for a hometown parade until Sunday, nearly three months after the Giants' Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco team. He also hasn't found time to marry the mother of his child.

Leave it to Editor Liz Houlton's news copy editors to embarrass The Record again -- this time on today's front page.

The large photo of Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz appears on Page 1 over a caption that says he is "performing his signature salsa with his mother, Blanca," in Paterson.

If you read that literally, Cruz is performing his signature "sauce." Yes. Salsa also is a music and dance style, but when the word stands alone, it means sauce.

Out of the pot

Staff Writer Jay Levin, who covered the parade, doesn't make that error, being careful in his L-1 story to pair "salsa" with a modifier, as in "salsa-dancing wide receiver" and "his famous salsa steps."

How did Levin, who is the local obituary writer, get roped into writing about Cruz's Sunday homecoming on the same day his triumphant Titanic story dominated Page 1? 

Maybe Levin should stick to writing about dead people.

Another error

Houlton's error-prone copy editors screwed up another caption, this one under a photo of Sen. Frank Lautenberg on A-7.

"The senator will be 90, if he decides to seek reelection in 2014."

How old will he be, if he doesn't run?

The Lautenberg story, which starts on Page 1, is entirely too long, which has been the case with many front-page stories since Editor Marty Gottlieb took over in late January.

In another overlong story -- on the Trayvon mural in Elmwood Park -- the biggest unanswered question is why any one man should be mayor of that borough for 41 years (A-1).

'I'll always have Paris,' top editor says

The Louvre Museum in Paris.

When Editor Marty Gottlieb retires from journalism, he'll always be able to look back with pride to his years at The New York Times, including his editorship of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune.

I can see him sipping a glass of vintage Bordeaux and sighing, "I'll always have Paris."

But if he keeps turning out front pages like the one in The Record today, it's unlikely he'll ever say, "I'll always have Woodland Park."

I can't think of a bigger waste of space than the overlong Page 1 story on how Giants player Victor Cruz is enriching himself with endorsement and book deals after the team's victory in the Super [Toilet] Bowl.

I don't see anything about an endorsement that would have real meaning for Cruz, an unwed father who pulled himself up from a poor Paterson neighborhood: a reliable brand of condoms.

Odd couple

And what was Gottlieb, who is 64, thinking when he created the Odd Couple who reported and wrote the Cruz story -- local obituary writer Jay Levin and sports writer Art Stapleton?

At least Gottlieb saved part of the front page for a non-profit expose from Staff Writer Harvy Lipman and two stories on Governor Christie's proposed budget and income-tax cut.

But I'm certain "RINO" is a reference to Christie's ballooning waistline, not a criticism of his conservative credentials (see A-4 photo).

And Gottlieb certainly won't ever wax nostalgic about Editor Liz Houlton's news copy editors, judging from a photo caption on A-3 today that doesn't tell readers anything about what is going on in the photo.

Racist layout

Was it Gottlieb or head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes who decided to lead today's Local section with the thefts of unlocked luxury vehicles (L-1) and bury an upbeat feature on Jordan Coleman, 16, an African-American Hackensack High School filmmaker (L-6)?

If anything, Road Warrior John Cichowski's same-old Black Hole pothole awards on L-1 should have been buried or spiked. He's the ultimate black hole on the staff.

On L-3 today -- in contrast to Cichowski's car-centric coverage -- transportation reporter Karen Rouse has a rare commuting story, exploring NJ Transit's regressive policy on allowing riders to bring bicycles onto platforms and trains. 

Good job

Staff Writer James M. O'Neill saves L-1 with his bright, well-written rendition of a onetime Local section staple: a local barber who seems to go on forever.

Of course, I would have liked it even more if O'Neill explained how South Hackensack barber Tony Joe D'Ambrosio and his customers have been able to reach their 80s and 90s on a diet of McDonald's, pull-pork sandwiches and tiramisu. 

Only the trite headline lets down readers. It's likely a story this good wasn't handled by Sykes or one of her incompetent assignment-desk minions, Dan Sforza, Christina Joseph and Rich Whitby. 

Out to lunch

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's column errs on the pricing policy at most Korean barbecue restaurants, where customers who want to cook meat or seafood on the table are required to pay for a minimum of two orders -- a total of $50 to $60 or more (F-1).

Such a restaurant is a better value than Picnic Garden buffet in Englewood Cliffs, where each person pays $26.95 to $29.95 for dinner, because three or four people can share a meal at a traditional barbecue restaurant.

Seeing the light

In Opinion, an editorial urges extension of NJ Transit's light-rail service to Leonia, Englewood and Tenafly -- contradicting several years of negative news coverage from Sykes' assignment desk (O-1).

Last Sunday's paper

Staff Writers Colleen Diskin and Rebecca D. O'Brien, and three staff photographers did a beautiful job on Whitney Houston's funeral on Page 1 last Sunday.

On L-1, the Road Warrior column continued to rely on readers' e-mails, showing once again Cichowski long ago ran out of energy to do any original reporting.

No Hackensack news appeared in Sykes' Local section.

In Business, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais explained to puzzled consumers that Tropicana quickly stopped using banned orange juice from Brazil in its Pure Premium product and added the phrase "100% pure Florida Orange Juice" to labels.

On the Opinion front, couldn't news Columnist Mike Kelly find anything else to write about than Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American pro basketball player everyone is sick of hearing about?

I enjoyed Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn's Japan story on the front of Travel, but wonder why she didn't mention restaurant meals or food safety in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.

Readers are familiar with all of Travel Editor Jill Schensul's food phobias, but this omission is ridiculous.

'New York' Giants play big joke on Jersey

Image via Wikipedia
Cranberry bogs in the glorious Pine Barrens are one of the things that make New Jersey great. The New York Giants, on the other hand, play the ultimate Jersey joke on the state.

The Giants have been playing football in New Jersey for 35 years. Yet, they play the ultimate Jersey joke on the Garden State by keeping "NY" on their helmets.


And that's OK with their legion of New Jersey fans, The Record and other media, which continue to support and glorify the team instead of organizing a boycott to force a name change.


Editor Martin Gottlieb has me doubled over with laughter. Can you imagine all the money fans waste on a team that rejects them?


Look at today's nonsensical coverage on Page 1 and in Sports about how the Giants "came home" to East Rutherford and there's "no place like home." LOL.


Limp Christie


Even our brash Governor Christie seems powerless, lamely referring to the team as the "New Jersey Giants." In your wet dreams, governor.


The Port Authority is another institution Christie has been unable to control since he took office in 2010, as shown by today's lead story on an audit that condemns wasteful spending at the agency -- which is packed with the governor's cronies.


In letters to the editor on A-10, two readers, Casey Connors of River Edge and Mary Blum of Paramus, say the real heroes are veterans, not the Giants. Amen to that.


Leaves a bad taste


But on the same page, Margulies' cartoon on the pro-Democracy movement in Egypt is in bad taste, especially in view of the brutal crackdown on protesters and recent soccer riot that killed more than 70.


No one there is trying "to build a network of Super PACs" by any stretch of the imagination. Previously, I was incorrect in saying the cartoon was about Syria, but my objections remain.


How could Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin approve such an wildly exaggerated, callous cartoon?


The Local news section continues to disappoint. Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes seems to endorse the Road Warrior's lazy method of assembling another column from reader e-mails.


Today's laughable piece addresses hoaxes and other false information on the Internet (L-1). How lame.


Screw the locals


The section also is light on municipal news from many towns, including Hackensack, but Sykes found room on L-2 for the photo of a diner fire that injured no one.


What was Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill thinking with a recipe for chocolate pancakes with chocolate maple syrup (Better Living front)?


Victor Cruz


I published a long comment from Jerry DeMarco at the end of Tuesday's post, Sports section glorifies unwed father, about Victor Cruz of the Giants.


Click on the following link to read the comment:


"I have a beautiful, amazing son ..."

Sports section glorifies unwed father

Image via Wikipedia
On Sunday, freelancer Mark Greenbaum focused on the ages of Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr., above, and Steve Rothman, but said the latter is 7 years younger than he is. The Opinion editors completely missed the error.

You've heard of movies that go straight to video. In  my house, The Record's Sports section goes straight to recycling, though I can't avoid all the sports blather that lands on Page 1.


Glancing at today's Sports front, I noticed the missing comma after "Victor" in the main headline, "To Victor go the spoils." 


The headline runs over one of those relentlessly sunny columns about Victor Cruz of the Giants, a Paterson native who has become a role model for children trying to escape poverty.


Cruz caught the only Giants touchdown pass at the Super Bowl on Sunday, and showed with his celebratory salsa moves that he had more rhythm than anyone else on the field. 


On Cruz control


But at the gym this morning, a friend complained that today's column by Staff Writer Art Stapleton never explains why Cruz isn't married to the mother of his infant daughter. 


My friend believes the editors deliberately glossed over that issue.


The majority of readers don't know Cruz from beans, but with today's front page, Editor Martin Gottlieb keeps shoving Giants coverage down their throats, as he likely will do on Wednesday with stories on the parade in Manhattan.


Age discrimination


On A-2, an embarrassing correction shows the editor of a piece on Sunday's Opinion front missed catching a major error by freelance writer Mark Greenbaum on the age of Rep. Steve Rothman, who is 59 years old, not 52. Rothman was born in 1952.


The error also undermines one of Greenbaum's arguments for why Rothman has a political edge over his fellow Democrat in the 9th Congressional District race, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.: 


"Rothman's age bestows on him time to rise, while Pascrell has no shot of chairing a full committee."


Hot-air editor


The paper's intense focus on the Super Bowl has been evident in the past couple of weeks, and readers haven't even had a good Local section to turn to.


The major element on the Local front today is a non-fatal car fire on Route 17 in Rochelle Park. 


After publishing a non-story on possible solar-panel regulation in Hackensack on Monday, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes returns to journalism as usual: no Hackensack news, and no news from many other towns.


Related articles

• Cowardly Rothman is heading for a fall (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)
• Royal screwing of Hackensack is complete (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)

Editors expose Christie's pork

Image via Wikipedia
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).