Lazy editors let Bush blast Christie for lousy job in N.J.

A sign at Whole Foods Market in Paramus thanks Hackensack Middle School students for "making beautiful artwork in our cafe." That contrasts with The Record of Woodland Park's boycott of school and school-board news from Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Is it really front-page news that Governor Christie has not done "big things" or that "New Jersey hasn't done well," in the words of the inarticulate Jeb Bush?

Yes. Readers of The Record haven't seen a similar assessment from the editors of their hometown paper in the many months Christie has been chasing his White House dreams (A-1).

In fact, Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi, one of those covering the Christie campaign, still hasn't asked the GOP bully the question on the mind of every New Jerseyan:

"Are you saying you want to run the nation the way you run New Jersey?"

Everyone but Editor Martin Gottlieb and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin knows Christie is running the Garden State into the ground.

Bigger fish

Still, Gottlieb has bigger things on his mind today --the health of Target and other retailers who are among the paper's best advertisers.

That's why a story on insomniacs shopping at 2 and 3 in the morning leads Page 1 today.

Gottlieb wastes more space on "Real Housewives" bimba Teresa Giudice, who was released from a "prison camp," a non-story despite the best efforts of Staff Writer Virginia Rohan (A-1).

Local news?

There is so little local news in the paper today head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes devoted most of the L-1 front to a pissing match between Woodcliff Lake and Washington Township officials over a turn lane (L-1).

Law & Order news dominates Local, as it has on so many days in the past, and desperate layout editors had to run two wire-service obituaries and a gee-whiz photo of an overturned vehicle on L-8.

A racehorse chases all local human news off of Page 1

The Forest Avenue ramp in Paramus has no lane allowing drivers to merge onto Route 4 west, above, making it one of  Bergen County's biggest bottlenecks, with cars often backed up onto Forest. Drivers pass the old Forum Diner, below, an eyesore that has been closed for years, and wonder why a merging lane couldn't be carved out of the vacant parking lot.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

After hours of TV coverage on Saturday and the millions of words that preceded it, readers of The Record likely won't bother doing more than glancing at the photo of a racehorse on Page 1 today.

More animal news appears in Local today -- rotting deer carcasses on road shoulders near and far, and coyotes that are frightening Saddle Brook residents (L-1 and L-7).

Local human news is scarce, however.

TV coverage of the Belmont Stakes, the last leg of the Triple Crown, began at 2:30 Saturday afternoon and ran past 7 p.m. -- this for a race that lasted less than 3 minutes.

To fill all that time, commentators ranged far and wide, even telling viewers American Pharoah's jockey grew up on a goat farm outside Mexico City.

Not long after that, a commercial for a cable-TV service showed a beach with a woman whose enormous breasts were spilling out of her bikini, a goat and a horse.

Was that just a coincidence?

Local news?

You know local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza are desperate when they lead their section with a routine post-trial motion to set aside the racketeering conviction of Joseph A. Ferriero, onetime Democratic boss in Bergen County (L-1).

Road Warrior John Cichowski, the so-called commuting columnist, goes on and on today about deer carcasses seen among roadside litter near and far, including Pennsylvania and Minnesota (L-1).

The confused columnist is now referring to every driver, including state troopers, as "road warriors."

Also, does the headline make any sense?

What's "fragile" in the conflict between drivers and deer? "Bloody coexistence," maybe. But "fragile"?

Better Living

One look at The Corner Table column today, and you can tell restaurant critic Elisa Ung ran out of anything meaningful say about readers' restaurant experiences (BL-1).

On Friday, Ung praised the "high-quality" ingredients in a couple of dishes she liked at Sorrento Ristorante in East Rutherford.

But in the lukewarm, 2-star review, she didn't back that up with any information on whether they were naturally raised or grown.

And the Sicilian-born chef lost points because she hated one of his desserts.

Kelly loses it

On the Opinion front, Columnist Mike Kelly compares airport security to "a near theatrical experience that is unlike anything else in life -- except perhaps a mosh pit at a rock concert" (O-1).

No one edits Kelly, so he often sounds like a moron, even though he's been writing a column for, what, 20 or 25 years?

And in recent years, he's been avoiding his own near-death experience -- emergency open heart, coronary bypass surgery -- one that could make compelling reading and perhaps help others struggling with heart disease.

When The Record was in Hackensack, Kelly was among dayside newsroom staffers who were allowed to take a break and go outside and jog, and he appeared to be one of the fittest.

If you have any column ideas for Kelly, his contact information appears here:

Contact Mike Kelly 

After 20-plus years, columnist can't hack it

A noisy private business jet takes off or lands at Teterboro Airport and flies over Hackensack every few minutes most mornings, afternoons and evenings. They are driving some residents crazy, but imagine what it's like to live next to the airport, a favorite of the 1%.

Columnist Mike Kelly is back on Page 1 of The Record today, asking the rhetorical questions that allow him to avoid directly criticizing Rutgers officials over the Mike Rice affair.

Questions are Kelly's specialty, but without them, his columns are nothing more than news stories, stringing together quotes from such sources as lawmakers, and state and university officials.

Columnists are supposed to have voices and strong points of view -- damn the attribution -- not ask questions, such as this one in his second paragraph today:

"Why did so many allegedly smart academics seem so clueless to the significance of the coach's abuse and what they needed to do about it."

I need some caffeine.

Editor Marty Gottlieb runs two columns about Rutgers on the front page, and a news story inside -- the fifth day in a row of over-the-top coverage that leaves most readers searching for some other news.

Dissing Hackensack

The Page 1 story on towns holding April school elections makes no mention of Hackensack, where officials censored public questions at a recent forum for candidates and where a school board member is running for a seat in the May 14 City Council election.

In today's Local, the big Hackensack news apparently is the first report about the March 22 closing of a wing at the Fanny M. Hillers School, but the story assumes all 45,000 residents of the city know where it is (L-3).

Second look

On Sunday's Business front, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais praised Whole Foods Market's decision to list genetically modified ingredients on labels, and made a rare mention of organic food -- more than 30 years after the chain was founded (B-1).

Travel Editor Jill Schensul completely ignored the American Littoral Society in her Sunday cover story on volunteers flocking to restore the Jersey shore after Superstorm Sandy (T-1). 

The ALS is based in Highlands.

Gottlieb bats only .500 on Page 1

A medical building at 5 Summit Ave. is in the running for the ugliest structure in Hackensack, above and below, especially after the ground-floor garage was declared unsafe and fenced off. A resident of Thompson Street complains valet parking attendants take up spaces on the block and endanger children. Now, the garage is being demolished.

The entrance and small lobby are in the middle section, above. The building is crammed into the corner of Summit Avenue and Essex Street, near Hackensack University Medical Center.

The building is open during "regular hrs.," according to a sign on the fence blocking access to the parking garage on the Summit Avenue side.

Marty Gottlieb, the New York Times veteran who took over The Record's newsroom more than a year ago, continues to disappoint with his selection of stories for the Sunday paper, and his mindless obsession with sports. 

Today, two out of four front-page stories don't belong anywhere near Page 1.

The best pieces are staff written -- John C. Ensslin's account of the events leading up to the suicide of the son of Freeholder David Ganz, and Scott Fallon's report on a move to cap pollution at Ford Motor Co.'s dumping ground in Ringwood. 

Not much else

The rest of today's paper is disappointing.

On the front of Local, Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to stray far afield from his commuting beat with a column on the Yellow Dot, a bird that targets the cars of seniors with a shower of droppings (L-1).

A story about the Englewood school board race has Hackensack residents wondering what happened to coverage of the city's school election (L-1).

Half a loaf

On the Better Living cover, is this the first story about the high-quality hot- and cold-food bars at Whole Foods Market since the Paramus store opened four years ago (BL-1)?

On the Opinion front, Mike Kelly asks three rhetorical questions in his first paragraph, completely turning readers off (O-1).


In more than 20 years of writing a column, Kelly still does not get that readers are looking for him to go out on a limb and express strong opinions, not to ask questions.

Second look

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, continue to fall flat on their faces in their struggle to find enough local news.

In Saturday's thin paper, the local-news editors and their minions needed a Dean's List (L-2) and three long wire-service obituaries to fill the Local section (L-5 and L-6).

Debate stories deaden Page 1

The Record's food editor shops at Whole Foods Market, but doesn't pass along advice to buy beef without harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and animal byproducts.

Three of the four stories on the front page of The Record today are rehashes of new and old debates -- on gay marriage, foreign policy and a silly football game.

And the off-lead story on President Obama and Mitt Romney is not even a real debate.

The so-called confrontation was fabricated by McClatchy Newspapers, where bored reporters and editors look for any way to liven coverage of the deadly dull presidential campaign.

Marty Gottlieb, the Times veteran who took over The Record's newsroom at the end of January, sure knows how to cruise into retirement.

Today, Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily has what editors call a "good mix" of stories, but the result is a page so dull, readers' eyelids grow heavy and they start flipping pages, looking for news they can use.

Phony caption

For amusement -- at the expense of the paper's inept copy desk under Production Editor Liz Houlton -- check out the photo with the story on Catholics and gay marriage at the top of Page 1.

Three students are shown with their mouths closed as they stare into the distance, but the caption says they "are discussing Archbishop John J. Myers' statement."

More lazy reporting

On the front of Local today, it's too bad slow-moving Staff Writer John Cichowski confines himself to writing the Road Warrior column from the comfort of his home or office.

Today's laughable effort focuses on a Camden County woman and photo licenses that he must have rewritten from an earlier wire-service story (L-1).

The so-called commuting columnist has been at it for 9 years, yet he's written little about the lack of speeding enforcement on roads and highways, and the other side of that story, the lack of basic road-safety training for drivers and pedestrians.

Ignoring basic safety

Monday's Page 1 told the sad story of Matthew Killen, 25, an aspiring surgeon from Wood-Ridge, whose life was cut short Sept. 7 on a Tennesse highway, where he was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer.

The account sounded familiar -- Gabrielle Reuveni, 20, of Paramus was killed in July by a pickup truck in the Poconos, where she was jogging on the side of the road.

Sadly, both victims failed to observe basic safety rules: 


Killen apparently didn't look in his car mirrors to see if a truck or car was approaching before he stepped out of his vehicle onto a dark roadway, and Reuveni might still be alive if she was jogging toward traffic.

There have been other fatalities like these in recent years, but Cichowski and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes can't be bothered to report on basic road safety.

Where's the good beef?

On the Better Living front, don't miss Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill's recipe of the week -- a dish from a Japanese farm-food cookbook (BL-1).

On BL-2, you'll find the recipe and "Susan's tips," based on a shopping trip for ingredients to Whole Foods Market.

But Sherrill doesn't tell you the whole story. For some reason, she doesn't recommend using beef shoulder that was raised without harmful antibiotics and growth hormones.

In fact, naturally raised beef shoulder steaks were on sale recently for $5.99 a pound at Whole Foods in Paramus.

Where are all those wealthy job creators?

I took this photo at Whole Foods Market in Paramus on Aug. 30, and lived to tell about it. Today, The Record's lazy editors claim the company would "not allow reporters and photographers into any of its three North Jersey locations." What a joke.

The lead story on Page 1 of The Record today doesn't bother exploring why all those rich job creators -- who are enjoying the lowest tax rates in more than 50 years -- are refusing to hire workers and help restore the battered economy.

Instead, The Record and other media are licking their chops as they gauge the impact of the latest jobs report on President Obama's chances of winning a second term.

The media is obsessed with landing the biggest story of this young century -- the defeat of the nation's first black president -- and will twist the facts to sell papers and mislead voters. 

Danger of sports

Editor Marty Gottlieb continues to squander front-page space on sports and school spirit (A-1 photo package).

But the danger of all this devotion to sports is clear from the death of a 71-year-old Haworth man who went to see his grandson's freshman soccer game (A-1 and L-1).

More Law & Order

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Syke's Local news section today gives readers 12 Law & Order stories or reports on the police, including a gee-whiz cover photo of a teen driver who couldn't handle his Mustang's power (L-1, L-2, L-3, L-6 and L-7).

The only Hackensack news today (L-3) and Friday (L-1) is re-opening of the former Court Street Bridge -- coverage ordered by the Borg siblings, who are dreaming of the many millions they'll reap with the sale of 20 nearby acres.

The old River Street headquarters of The Record and North Jersey Media Group is far more valuable with the bridge's alternate route to interstate highways.

What's the point of today's Road Warrior column on which state has the worst drivers -- based on readers' e-mails and an "insurance report" (L-1)? 

It merely highlights the lack of enforcement by state, county and local police -- a subject The Record has avoided like the plague.

Our dead neighbors

Two local obituaries of interesting residents (L-6 on Friday) makes readers wonder why there is so little coverage of their neighbors while they are still alive, and so much coverage of the Borg family's friends and business associates.

Pure organic food

The Better Living cover story today (BL-1) clarifies a flawed study on the benefits of pesticide- and drug-free organic food that grabbed front-page headlines this week.

But the big photo of organic fruit was taken at Fairway Market, near the Woodland Park newsroom, even though that small chain is a minor player in organics -- compared to Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's.

In a shameless admission, the story actually says Whole Foods wouldn't "allow" reporters and photographers into their stores.

Were they wearing signs? I've taken numerous photos in Whole Foods and many other supermarket chains. What's with the so-called pros at The Record?

In Friday's 3-star rave, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung doesn't explain why the 16-seat Francesca's Pizzeria in Lyndhurst doesn't serve wild-caught fish or say whether the sardines served are fresh or canned (BL-18-19).

This place is perfect -- for takeout.

 

Is it a bird, a plane, a new bridge to Manhattan?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Rapper Jay-Z is said to be a partial owner of the Nets.

Check out the riveting photo of steel girders above the fold on the front page of The Record today.

Could this be a story about the new tunnel to the city eagerly awaited by thousands of NJ Transit rail commuters who have to stand during the morning rush?

No. It's a puff piece masquerading as a construction update for a small minority of the paper's readership who may actually go to see the Nets play in a new arena in Brooklyn, where Editor Francis Scandale was born. 

The piece ends this way: "The days of the New Jersey Nets are numbered."  Too bad the same can't be said for Scandale and Staff Writer John Brennan, who act as if they've been bribed with season tickets.

Crisis of confidence

The most important story on A-1 today is squeezed under a one-column headline: The Christie administration is talking out of both sides of its mouth on the health of state finances, hoping to avert a court ruling that would force it to spend millions more on public schools.

With all of our current problems, is anyone really worried about Sen . Bob Menendez's chances in the 2012 election -- except Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson, who can't hide his desperation for a story (A-1)?

Get off your tushes

On the front of Local, Columnist Michael Kelly complains about the trash piling up at the Great Falls in Paterson almost two years after it was designated as a National Historic Park.

If Kelly is so concerned, why doesn't he and some of the out-of-shape editors in the Woodland Park newsroom volunteer to clean the place up?

Image by Laughing Squid via Flickr

Thirty years after the founding of Whole Foods Market and a surging organic movement, readers are at the mercy of the 20- and 30-year-old bottom feeders who handle most of the paper's food coverage.

How else to explain the celebration of crappy burgers and white bread all over the Better Living front today?

Hey, Charlie, that's your job

Image by dougtone via Flickr

The state might save millions by privatizing toll collections, but tolls won't be cut.

Columnist Charles Stile is becoming increasingly strident in his assessment of Governor Christie -- a welcome antidote to Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and others at the paper who have served as the governor's chief apologists in the past year.

On Page 1 today, Stile slams Christie's "hypocrisy" for being linked to the Republican-inspired Reform Jersey Now, which offered politically connected law firms and businesses a way to sidestep the state's landmark "pay-to-play" restrictions. In the next paragraph, Stile says:

"Reform Jersey Now had the reek of an old-fashioned slush fund oozing from Jersey's political sewer. It raised nearly $642,000 to do campaign hit jobs on Democratic legislators."

Stile's Political Stile column begins with his call for a new group to issue daily alerts on how "lawmakers and their naked hypocrisy have paralyzed campaign finance and ethics reform."

Hey, Charlie, that group already exists and you're in it. So are Editor Francis Scandale, The Record and the rest of the media, which have dropped the ball so irresponsibly on alerting readers to what you call "below-the-radar lobbying schemes" to defeat such reforms. 

Stile is not the only one reassessing Christie. On Sunday's L-1, Staff Writer John Reitmeyer actually juxtaposed the governor's loyalty to his wealthy supporters with his disdain for the middle and working classes, the first time I've ever seen that in The Record:

"Governor Christie ... cut education aid, picked a fight with teachers and other public workers, shelved property tax rebates, raised NJ Transit fares and came to the aid of millionaires while also taking away money from the state's working poor."

Toll lovers

Would you look at that huge front-page story on possible savings from privatizing toll collections in New Jersey. What a joke. Look at that banger head:

Road to savings? 

Oh, I hope that didn't hook you into thinking you'd get lower tolls. There's nothing in Staff Writer Karen Rouse's story about such savings for drivers. She reports that Florida -- in the fourth year after privatization -- saved $2 million and "put it back into the system." The system? 

She never explains why such savings aren't passed onto consumers.

Disorder in the court

The third A-1 story today is from The Star-Ledger, which reports Associate Supreme Court Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto has told Christie he won't seek renomination. 

Unlike recent stories by The Record, The Star-Ledger notes that John Wallace Jr., who was denied renomination last year, is black, and the departure of Soto, who is Hispanic, could make the high court a lot less diverse.

Of course, an editorial on A-8 today ignores the diversity issue completely, and doesn't even identify Wallace as black. Here's a brilliant line from it: "Although we believe Christie should have appointed Wallace to the court, he didn't." 

Huh? When and where did Doblin, the Editorial Page editor, lose his balls?

 

On A-2 today, a "Clarification" notes a Saturday article on prominent New Jerseyans who died in 2010 should have included Harold Dow, 62, of Upper Saddle River -- a five-time Emmy-winning CBS News correspondent.

That oversight is in keeping with the newspaper's report of his Aug. 21 death. The story failed to say he died of an asthma attack while driving in his native Hackensack and that his condition may have been linked to his coverage of the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan. 

Also on A-2 today, the former Hackensack daily finally corrects Friday's errors in an editorial on the size of the state budget and cuts in education aid, acknowledging they are in the billions, not millions.

Local yokels

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her clueless minions turn out a Local section with hardly any municipal news from Bergen County. Is the section still her pride and joy or is it a burden she has tired of bearing?

Besides police and fire reports, there hasn't been a Hackensack story by Monsy Alvarado in the section since Dec. 22, an Englewood story by Giovanna Fabiano since Dec. 21 and a Teaneck story by Joseph Ax since Dec. 16.

Eight days after the blizzard ended, The Record reports that angry Clifton residents are calling the cleanup effort "deplorable, pathetic" (L-2). 

Food for thought

Thirty years after the founding of Whole Food Market, The Record's North Jersey Market Basket Survey still does not track the prices of any organic or naturally raised food (L-7). Where has Staff Writer Kevin DeMarrais been?