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| While New Jersey got socked with a blizzard, did the Christie family ride the buses at Disney World or travel in a limo with state police body guards? Or did they use a couple of rented SUVs? |
Jeez. Where the hell is the photo of Governor Christie busting out of his Bermudas in Florida? Maybe at poolside, watching his four children play as his wife sunbathes. Did no Jersey tourist make a photo of our famous governor, did no Jersey paper ask an Associated Press photog to track him down?
Nearly a week after the blizzard he skipped, all we get today on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park is the chief executive back in New Jersey, carefully navigating a path between snowbanks. And, finally, his absence during the botched cleanup is Page 1 news.
On A-1, Columnist Charles Stile calls Christie's explanation for his Disney World vacation -- which began as snow began falling last Sunday -- "a snow job" and says the governor should have stayed home. Stile also says Christie gave the state's cleanup effort an A and the result a B+. We also get five photos of Christie in a suit and tie.
With the exception of a Mike Kelly column on Thursday -- questioning the absence of both Christie and the state's lieutenant governor during the storm and cleanup -- why did it take Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes so long to fully cover the controversy? Are they, along with Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, so in awe of this man?
And why -- during all the blizzards that have socked North Jersey -- hasn't Sykes sent out her reporters to rate each town's cleanup effort?
Weak tea
The top stories of 2010, supplied by the Associated Press, appear on A-8 today. But didn't any editor at the former Hackensack daily question the photo of a Tea Party member singing the national anthem at a rally in Iowa? Where is the photo of Tea Party members holding a banner comparing President Obama's health-care plan to the Holocaust?
If you want a good laugh, read the editorial credo on A-13. You know it's just B.S. from the lead signature at the end: Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, who has been pushed aside by his two spoiled brats, Jennifer and Stephen Borg.
Mac's role in the company may have been put in perspective by a former NJMG employee, who alleges in a sexual-harassment lawsuit that he sent pornographic e-mails to managers and supervisors, and that he knew she would see them.
With the ascendancy of marketing wizard Stephen A. Borg as NJMG president and publisher, promotion of advertisers' products and services is now common in news columns, and readers see the results every day in the business, real estate and food pages.
And with Doblin, the Editorial Page editor who also signed the credo, readers don't know where his personal opinions of Christie end and the paper's official position begins.
More Teterboro whitewash
On the front of Local today is a package of text and photos giving us an intimate look at North Jersey "notables" who died in 2010.
But why are the allegations uncovered by a federal investigation of a fatal air crash at Teterboro Airport buried on L-3? Pilots make Quest Diagnostics sound like a sweat shop and allege they are forced to fly in bad weather and attempt risky landings.
Scandale and Sykes ignore Teterboro-related safety issue until a plane crashes. As for quality of life issues, about the only stories you see are highly promotional ones about air charter companies and luxurious business jets -- while residents' complaints of unrelenting noise fall on the editors' deaf ears.
There is no Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news in Sykes' Local section today, but she did find room for a West Milford story reporting "a major bridge project" -- the widening of a two-lane bridge in the sticks (L-3).
