Showing posts with label three local obituaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label three local obituaries. Show all posts

Friday, March 20, 2015

Why do the editors think all of us live in nursing homes?

The Record continues to ignore the lack of seats for North Jersey commuters at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, above, but runs another photo of missing ceiling panels on A-3 today.

Meanwhile, the Woodland Park daily hasn't reported such improvements as the addition of touch-screen terminals to help commuters locate the platforms where they can catch their buses, and the renovation of second-floor restrooms with automated Toto urinals and new tiles.



By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Nursing home reporter Colleen Diskin is back on the front page of The Record today.

Is this the fate awaiting the baby boomers and seniors who make up the majority of the readership?

What about dementia, Alzheimer's and heart disease -- issues you rarely see explored in the Woodland Park daily, even though its editor is in his late 60s.

To get into The Record, you have to be dying or dead, as suggested by the three local obituaries on L-5 today.

Age spots

A look at the mix of soft and hard news on Page 1 today and Thursday suggests Editor Martin Gottlieb is suffering from a mental infirmity that blinds him to the concerns of a majority of North Jersey seniors.

Gottlieb and his minions, local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, should have assigned a medical reporter to the story of Brian Beutel, a father of five daughters and a lieutenant in the Bergen County Sheriff's Office (A-1).

Beutel, who was only 47, collapsed and died during a fund-raising basketball game, yet today's story is silent on whether he had any medical conditions or problems that contributed to his death.

That's what readers get when an overworked police reporter, Stefanie Dazio, is assigned to the Beutel story.

Photo puzzle

A front-page caption with a photo of Rutger's women's basketball team in a bus doesn't explain the presence of two men, but includes a meaningless over line:


"N.J. Battle on Connecticut Turf"


Hiding heroin

The Record continues to explore where alleged drug dealers and others hide heroin -- to the exclusion of more legitimate local news.

Today, Dazio, the police reporter, says Fair Lawn police "seized 43 bags of heroin found in a woman's underwear" (L-3).

The Record has reported a male suspect hid heroin in his sock, and Cliffview Pilot.com broke the story of a pregnant woman who used her vagina as a stash.

Sykes and Sforza, the supremely lazy local editors in Woodland Park, relied on an unusual amount of police and court news to fill their Local news section today and Thursday.

In fact, Dazio had six other bylines in Local today (L-2 and L-3), in addition to the front-page story on the sheriff's officer.

Have a heart

Readers who are watching their cholesterol and sugar intake won't be able to enjoy three of the four recommendations of Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung today (BL-14).

At the 2-star Delvina in Cresskill, only the Dover Sole, for an outrageous $39, would be suitable for a heart-healthy diet.

Readers know they are in trouble when Ung says nothing about the food in the entire first half of her tepid appraisal. 



Buyers of Tesla Motors' all-electric Model S pay no sales tax in New Jersey, a savings of $5,000 or more, and qualify for a $7,500 federal tax credit. Now, staff at this Tesla gallery in Garden State Plaza and at a showroom and service facility on Route 17 north, both in Paramus, can resume selling the zero-emission luxury cars directly to the public.


Second look

On Thursday, The Record reported Governor Christie took a baby step to help the environment by signing legislation to allow the direct sale of zero-emission Tesla automobiles.

New Jersey automobile dealers opposed Tesla's direct sales and last April, the state Motor Vehicle Commission required new-car dealers to have a franchise agreement.

The new law rolls back those regulations.

Dealers representing domestic and foreign automakers in New Jersey feared Tesla's no-pressure showrooms would expose their greedy, high-pressure sales and service practices.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Christie to Paterson: Make more cotton

This drainage grate on Club Way, across from the Nellie K. Parker Elementary School in Hackensack, shows why drivers who throw filtered cigarettes out of their car windows should be heavily fined. It's a problem that gets little attention.




What was Governor Christie thinking when two African-American clergymen laid their hands on him and blessed him at a Baptist church in Paterson on Tuesday?

Was he dying for another extra-large pepperoni pizza and a few bottles of beer? Was he thinking, Get me out of here?

You won't find a clue in The Record's Page 1 story today on Christie's latest community meeting.

But the GOP bully came off as a benevolent master promising residents of the plantation a better future, if not freedom from their greedy mayor and his fellow overseers. 

Mixed messages

Wait a second. Isn't Christie just pedaling his usual brand of "reform" B.S.?

Didn't Christie cut aid to Paterson and other crime-ridden cities, forcing them to lay off police officers?

And didn't he cut the school breakfast program for poor children? So, why aren't those cuts mentioned in the story? 

Silk City schools 

The story also leaves another big question unanswered: Who has failed to lift Silk City schools after 21 years of state control and oversight?

And why isn't Christie talking about the crucial role of parents in their children's education instead of constantly beating up on teachers and administrators?  

Commuters be damned

With commuters caught in nightmarish traffic jams or crammed aboard rush-hour trains and buses, readers can always count on Road Warrior John Cichowski to take the easy way out and invent another irrelevant column, like today's musings on highway littering (L-1).

Of course, Cichowski tries to deflect attention away from all of the drivers who e-mail him with their inane questions in hopes of seeing their names in print.

These slobs are the real problem, treating roads and highways as if they are in their own unkempt homes.

Sellout, not buyout

The Borgs offered a buyout to Cichowski and other newsroom workers who are at least 60 years old, but he didn't take the hint.

Production Editor Liz Houlton even offered part of her six-figure salary to sweeten the pot and end her embarrassment over her copy editors missing all the errors Cichowski makes in nearly every column.

Houlton published two corrections on A-2 today, following a correction and clarificiation on Tuesday, but none of them acknowledged Cichowski's mistakes. 

Today's Local section seems to be reserved for the dead, with three local obituaries, the most I've seen in one edition, plus more than two pages of death notices (L-1 and L-6).

How many of them were subscribers who died of boredom?