Sports, politics and apologizing for Christie

You won't read anything in The Record about improvements to the local bus system, such as the NJ Transit "talking bus" stopping in front of the South Paterson Library and Community Center on Main Street in Paterson, above. The paper's transportation reporters, including Road Warrior John Cichowski, have been ordered to write only about drivers and cars to boost sales at automobile dealers, whose advertising is keeping the Woodland Park daily afloat. 

By Victor E. Sasson

Editor

The Record's front page today has a strong New Jersey focus, but glosses over all the damage wrought by Republicans in Trenton and the nation's capitol.

The lead story on campaign donations to Republicans in the Garden State begs the question of how many millions lobbyists for health insurance and medical device companies are spending to get the GOP to shut down the government (A-1 and L-7).

New Jersey lags

The Page 1 story on a Chinese company bringing 500 to 600 jobs to Wayne notes that "while the state of New York has regained all the jobs lost during the recession, New Jersey has regained only around 60 percent."

But it doesn't link that to Governor Christie's failed policies of giving businesses hundreds of millions in tax breaks, but denying low-wage workers a hike in the minimum wage.

Further evidence that The Record's editors and the greedy Borg family are in bed with the GOP bully is burying the story on the second debate between Christie and Democratic challenger Barbara Buono (A-6).

Buono made another good showing, but the editors hope to obscure how Christie's favors millionaires and corporations over the middle class and small businesses.

Super Toilet Bowl

The front-page story on the delayed Route 3 project appears aimed at the out-of-towners who will be attending the Super Bowl next winter, and to hell with North Jersey commuters who -- thanks to Christie -- face the triple hells of worsening traffic jams, rising tolls and an overburdened mass-transit system.

In Local today, a photo over line says a granite sculpture is the "New Focal Point in Town," but the caption doesn't provide an address for the Leonia sculpture garden (L-6).

An A-3 story makes readers wonder what Christie is hiding about his health as he campaigns for a second term, and why The Record hasn't obtained his records in the more than two years since his June 2011 asthma attack.

Second look

The Borgs are so desperate for advertising revenue they got Deputy Assignment Flunky Dan Sforza to run a story on Monday's Local front, purporting that Bergen County residents are driving up to Nanuet, N.Y., to shop at a new mall.

I wonder if Sforza -- in the interests of synergy -- will be asked to get off his ass, drive across the border and solicit advertisements from mall tenants.

Editors are in a tizzy, but not over local news

Two bus shelters and an NJ Transit ticket machine are all the services available to commuters who rely on the Anderson Street rail station in Hackensack, above, during the glacial construction of a new building, below. I didn't see any activity behind the fence on Tuesday afternoon, but a man in the bar next door said the site is an active one.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The Record's coverage of local news continues to suffer as Tea Party crackpots hold the media and the country hostage during a partial government shutdown.

The only national park in North Jersey to close in the crisis is the litter-strewn Great Falls in Paterson, so why is so much of the front page today and Tuesday devoted to a brouhaha that hardly affects us?

Today's front page also focuses on Tea Party ire with so-called Obamacare, jammed Web sites and other glitches -- not on the pent up demand of poor schmucks without health insurance or people who can't afford to buy coverage from greedy employers like North Jersey Media Group (A-1).

A lot is missing

The lead story in Local today is so poorly reported and edited that readers who saw TV news video of a road-rage accident on the West Side Highway are shaking their heads in disbelief (L-1).

Video on Channel 2 News on Tuesday night clearly showed a Range Rover accelerating and literally driving over motorcycles and their riders, but The Record reports only that the SUV "rammed several motorcycles."

More errors

Also on L-1 today, addled Staff Writer John Cichowski continues to allow a single moronic reader to dominate the Road Warrior column, and commits several errors in reporting on a special E-ZPass that gives discounts to drivers of hybrid cars (L-6).

Today's minor commuting problem, which Cichowski hypes and exaggerates, is "long, long detours." On Sunday, he hyped to no end a lone reader's complaint about glare from a 47-story high-rise going up in Fort Lee near the George Washington Bridge.

On L-6 today, Cichowski reports only 2,000 motorists have signed up for a Green Pass, the special E-Z Pass that gives toll discounts to drivers "whose cars get good mileage."

That's likely because he has rarely, if ever, mentioned the discounts since they went into effect in 2008.

What an idiot. Only hybrid cars, plug-ins and electrics get the required 45 mpg, but Cichowski doesn't mention that, and he is also wrong on the amount of the discount and where it is available.

With my Green Pass-equipped Prius, I get a toll discount of 10% off peak on the Garden State Parkway, 30% off on the New Jersey Turnpike and I pay only $4.75 off peak at the GWB, other Hudson River crossings and other bridges, such as the Goethals.

Local yokels

Local carries no Teaneck, Hackensack or Englewood news today, as Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza wilts under the demands of his once-cushy job now that his boss, Deirdre Sykes, has been sidelined with a mysterious health problem.

On Tuesday, Sforza managed to scare up three Englewood stories, all from the police blotter (L-2 and L-3), but continued to ignore the struggles of the city's downtown and its notorious traffic congestion, a solution for which has managed to elude the police for years (more turn lanes).

The last big story from Hackensack reported that two bricks had fallen from the facade of a Prospect Avenue high-rise -- as Hackensack reporter Hannan Adely has been asked to cover 9/11 stories and other general assignments.

Dead news

Local today and Tuesday is filled with Law & Order news.

The not guilty plea of former Bergen County Democratic boss Joseph Ferriero could have been covered in a few paragraphs (L-1 on Tuesday).

Ferreiro is a perfect example of why the Democratic Party in Bergen County resembles a fish -- it stinks from the head down --and explains why lifelong Democrats liked me voted for a Republican county executive.

The last two expanded local obituaries I saw ran last Wednesday and last Thursday -- retired Superior Court Judge Harvey Smith, called a preservationist; and Joan Schaefer of Bergenfield, founder of a girls athletic league.

They were worthy subjects, but like many locals whose life stories appear in The Record, they made plenty of headlines when they were alive.

I'm wondering if the editors aren't setting the bar too high, excluding many of our neighbors from special attention when they die. 

Leaving readers in the dark again

Image via Wikipedia

Fridays are sentencing days at the Bergen County Courthouse, above, and other courthouses, but that doesn't fully explain why The Record of Woodland Park is filled with Law & Order and court stories day after day.

"It's Bergen County's 'Miracle on the Hudson'!" "It's Bergen County's 'Miracle on the Hudson'!" Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes shouted in the newsroom as they jumped up and down at word that a small plane landed undamaged and with no injuries Jan 31 on Route 80.

"Hold Page 1, hold Page 1!"! they screamed, even though it was many hours until deadline, before Sykes collapsed on the floor in hysterical laughter.

Clipped wings

Well, here's a follow-up story with old photos  -- about what the pilot did wrong -- on Page 1 of The Record today, and it goes into excruciating detail. (Yet, Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, who spends much of the year on vacation, fails, as she did in the original story, to name the town where the plane landed.)

You'll also find lots of detail in a second A-1 story today -- this the appalling account of how Fort Lee police left two Korean-American teenagers in a police van overnight.

But at the top of the front page, arguably the most important story of the day -- a deal to avert the shutdown of the federal government -- is a slipshod one from The Associated Press with no details on $37 billion in cuts.

A graphics-photo package laying out the cuts on A-1, below the story, would have been welcome, but Scandale decided opening day for the moronic Mets was more important, so he squandered the space with a big photo of the losers.

On A-2, a correction notes the wrong photo of a multimillionaire appeared in the Business pages on Friday. He's still laughing all the way to the bank, along with the Borgs.

About a dozen Law & Order and court stories appear in the paper today, including nine in Sykes' Local section, as the editors rely less and less on municipal news to fill their sections.

Charles Gibney

A reader of Eye on The Record says Charles Gibney has retired after 30 years as CFO and treasurer. Indeed, his name has been replaced on the Editorial Page (A-11).

Newsroom staffers remember Gibney well for the monthly profit-and-loss reports he gave after automatic profit-sharing ended.

Month after month, Gibney reported North Jersey Media Group was making some of its biggest  bucks  in Rockaway -- printing the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Irish Echo and other publications.

But when Stephen A. Borg took over as publisher from his father in mid-2006, he promptly shut down that highly profitable operation and moved printing of The Record and Herald News to Rockaway. 

Fuel costs for the converted German tanks NJMG uses to deliver papers to Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties skyrocketed, but Borg was able to get rid of 55 press workers.

'Behind the Green Door'

The Second Helpings food blog on northjersey.com reports Green Door Cafe, closed by a fire in Tenafly, has reopened in Manhattan.

Staff Writer Elisa Ung says the name has been changed to Greensquare Tavern, though she  doesn't mention that's a good thing: "Behind the Green Door" is a notorious, hard-core porn movie starring Marilyn Chambers, not a documentary on serving organic and locally sourced food.

Ung also doesn't say why the restaurant abandoned their Bergen County customers, presumably because she abhors healthy food and doesn't care one bit about them.