Editors help PA sell toll, fare hikes

Image by Mulad via Flickr

At $2.75, the PATH fare would be one of the highest in the U.S.

Hey, Shawn Boburg, you're supposed to be a reporter covering the Port Authority, so why do you sound like an agency spokesman trying to sell a plan to more than double Hudson River tolls and make the PATH rail fare one of the highest in the nation?


Hey, Deirdre Sykes, you're supposed to be the head assignment editor of The Record, so where is reaction from commuters in today's lavish Page 1 coverage? Did you go home early on Friday to get a jump on your weekend?


And where is the editorial condemning the plan from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, seemingly the paper's only advocate of mass transit?


Lazy edition


You know the Woodland Park daily is falling down on the job when a paper like the Daily News delivers a complete package that includes reaction from a Teaneck commuter, and his photo, as well as an editorial.


Boburg, on the other hand, front-loads his story with what sounds like the bi-state agency's press release, complete with justification for the record hikes.


Readers have to wade through the boilerplate and turn to A-6 to hear U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., slam the proposal as "unfair" and "yet another assault on New Jersey's commuters."


Another critic noted Governor Christie redirected $1.8 billion from the Port Authority for use on state roads after he killed the biggest expansion of passenger-rail capacity in memory, the Hudson River rail-tunnel project.


Pay for what?


Why should drivers and PATH riders pay for cost overruns and mismanagement of the World Trade Center site construction, which will be incomplete on the 10th anniversary of 9/11?


Will the increased revenue result in the long-overdue second bus lane on the helix into the Lincoln Tunnel to relieve a standing-room-only commute for thousands? 


Boburg doesn't bother asking those questions and others, and his assignment editor must have merely spell-checked the story before sending it on.


Also on A-1 today, why did it take six days to report July was the second-warmest month ever recorded, dating to 1895?


On A-11, four letters to the editor slam gullible Staff Writer Elisa Ung -- the restaurant reviewer and columnist -- for her July 31 article putting a positive spin on the brutal force-feeding and killing of ducks to produce swollen livers known as foie gras.


However, on Twitter, her editor praised her handling of the story:

susanlsherrill Susan Sherrill 

@BetterLivingNJ's @elisaung handles a tricky subject with aplomb. Her column on Hudson Valley Foie Gras is a must-read bit.ly/p0zcur

1 Aug Favorite Retweet Reply

Second look


One of the best stories in the paper this week was in Sports: Staff Writer Gregory  Schutta turned in a detailed and sensitive piece on the adjustment of Paramus Little League ace Hiro Mizutani after he moved here in June 2010 from Japan.


One of the worst was Ung's review of Joe's Crab Shack in Clifton, with an undeserved rating and headlines that seem designed to keep the chain's ads coming.


Maybe the restaurant should be called Joe's Crap Shack.

See previous post on Hekemian & Co.

Readers want fresh voices for old columns

Image via Wikipedia

North Jersey's future lies in transit -- not cars -- but The Record publishes negative stories or simply ignores problems facing bus and rail users.

Do columns in The Record have to go on forever, especially when the writers ran out of ideas months or years ago?


Staff Writer John Cichowski succeeded Jeff Page as the Road Warrior in late 2003, but he's no Jeff Page.


He soon became obsessed with the problems of drivers to the exclusion of all other commuters, especially those who use mass transit, and often his advice is inaccurate.


This incredibly lazy reporter fizzled out quickly, compared to Page, who wrote the column for 13 years.


His column today isn't even about drivers (L-1). 


Sign off, Chick


Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who picked Cichowski to write the column, need to give him the heave-ho. 


Bust him back to reporter and get his ass out of the office.


Allow another writer to take over the column, especially one who will become an advocate for public-transit users in one of the most congested regions of the country.


The same goes for Columnists Mike Kelly (20 years), Bill Ervolino (10-plus years), Kevin DeMarrais (17 years) and Elisa Ung. 


Readers want to hear fresh voices that reflect their concerns.


Food for thought


DeMarrais is the only consumer columnist at the Woodland Park daily, and I've long admired his work, plus he's the only reporter who writes about food shopping.


But he is stuck in the past, refusing to add organic and naturally raised food to his monthly Marketbasket Survey of supermarket prices.


DeMarrais also destroyed his credibility with a February 2011 column about a wealthy woman who sells $10 million to $50 million business jets by omitting the name of one of her prominent customers: Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg.


Ung, the restaurant reviewer since 2007, also writes a Sunday column called The Corner Table, which is supposed to represent the customer's point of view.


But she ran out of ideas long ago, and seems reluctant to ask restaurant owners hard questions about the origin of the food they serve, the prices they charge and the slave wages they pay their servers.


In fact, Ung devotes too many of her columns to glorifying restaurant owners, chefs and food producers, such as today's piece on a Fort Lee man who produces pricey, controversial foie gras (F-1).


Kelly and Ervolino could be much more effective as reporters. Their columns are more annoying than all those business jets heading for Teterboro Airport.


Kelly has been pushing words around for years. Ervolino is what, in his 50s? His single lifestyle is pathetic, not funny.


Today's paper


Scandale's front page today is dreadful, especially for a Sunday paper.


A Page 1 photo of the Giants quarterback? Boy, I'm glad the world is safe again.


The two local A-1 stories -- one on high-tech 911 hoaxes and the other on public insurance adjusters -- couldn't be duller, and the assignment editors seem only to have spell-checked them before sending them on to the news copy desk.


The story on adjusters doesn't even answer an obvious question: If you have a good insurance company, do you even need a public adjuster?


Staff Writer Shawn Boburg doesn't discuss incompetent police work as a factor in the hoaxes.


In Sykes' Local section, you won't find any Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck news.

See below: Bill Maher on Governor Christie