Make room amid the doom and gloom

Image via Wikipedia

The Hackensack River as seen from Teaneck.

The only ray of sunshine on The Record's front page today reminds readers of how the editors make no special effort to tell us stories about our neighbors.


The update on Angela Logan -- the Teaneck woman who baked her way out of foreclosure -- is a rare find in the Woodland Park daily.


Instead, Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes specialize in profiling and promoting politicians, entertainers, celebrity chefs, restaurant owners and fat-cat friends and business associates of the Borg family.


Sykes' assignment desk -- the laziest in the Northeast -- covers local news by covering meetings, so the only people reporters meet are gadflies and town officials. 


Never mind


Corrections don't get any more embarrassing than the one on A-2 today, declaring that the lead story on Sykes' Local front on Tuesday was totally erroneous. 


The reporting and the lead paragraph were wrong, and so were the headlines:

Feds pull plug on aid program

North Jersey to lose

millions for police

What is really lost is the credibility of the paper. 

Road kill

The same can be said for Road Warrior John Cichowski, who has been beating the same dead stories for years.

Cichowski appears to have formed an auto-erotic relationship with his car, as he notes in his L-1 column today: "When my Honda and I made our own inspection...."

Never mind the shredded truck tires on the highway. What about the trash his column peddles every day?

Christie credibility gap widens

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Hudson River rail-tunnel workers demonstrate.

New Jersey handed Chris Christie a resounding victory over Jon Corzine, based on his campaign promise to save middle-class taxpayers money. But since the Republican bully took office, he's refused to reinstate the millionaire's tax, he's blown $400 million in federal education aid and he told U.S. transportation officials to shove $3 billion for the Hudson River rail tunnel you know where.

Now, The Record of Woodland Park reports, Governor Christie's decision to pull the plug on the tunnel was based on false or erroneous information or he just made up huge cost overruns to justify it. The lead story on Page 1 today declares (with an embarrassing typo in the drop head):

Hudson

tunnel

was on

budget

Documents dispute

cost-overrun claim

It's clear the onetime U.S. attorney is facing a widening credibility gap. If he is so imprecise on the big things -- education and transportation funding -- how can he believed on the little things? Yet just about every move he makes brings praise from The Record's editorial page editor, Alfred P. Doblin, who sighs, "My Hero," at the mere mention of Christie's name.


Is the world ending?

What goes with the lead paragraph on the A-1 wire story about President Obama urging women to vote next month? "In a last-ditch effort to prevent electoral disaster..."

The election is two weeks away, so how would a rally on Thursday be "last ditch"? Who says it will be an "electoral disaster"? The AP reporters? (Is it The Associated Press or The Associated Mess?) 

It just goes to show you how The Record and the rest of the media are bored with any election that isn't really close, and they'll make it close no matter which facts they have to twist. 

On A-11, there's a gushing wire story on the celebrity of a Russian ex-spy who was deported, but no mention of her reported relationship with an Englewood restaurant owner, Michel Bittan, who managed to avoid comment despite the best efforts of The Record's local staff. Maybe head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes should have threatened to sit on him.

With two extra A-sections and a 10-page Local section, it's a big paper today, but there is no Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck news. Road Worrier John Cichowski has another pedestrian column today (L-1).

Restaurant follies

For comic relief, turn to the restaurant review in Better Living. On the cover, a refer says Halcyon in Montclair is "unique" and in the centerfold, it's called a "seafood brasserie," yet two of three photos above the headline show meat dishes.

You immediately don't like the owners, who told the naive restaurant reviewer they opened a seafood place because "having to drive to Point Pleasant for a good lobster was ridiculous." Huh? There is a lot of good lobster around -- at any Spanish or Portuguese restaurant in Newark, at the Sea Shack in Hackensack or Seafood Gourmet in Maywood, so it's the statement that's ridiculous.

The ingredients, we're told in the data box, are "excellent," but  Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung never says whether the salmon she recommends is wild or farmed and artificially colored. The bar is filled with "jabbering neighbors," which I guess would be true if you live in Montclair. 

Two of the best dishes are the all-fried fish and chips ($17) and brioche chocolate banana bread pudding ($8). Of the latter, she says: "Trust me. Just order it." Ah, but do you trust her three-star rating?