Sunday edition is offering little to those untouched by 9/11

A recent photo of The Record's former headquarters in Hackensack shows the fourth-floor newsroom windows that were filled with a column of black smoke rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, as the staff put out an extra edition and worked into the night on the next day's paper.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

True. The Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center was the biggest story I and other staffers at The Record have ever worked on.

But 15 years later, the rising column of smoke I saw through big newsroom windows until night fell, and the ash-covered streets I walked near Ground Zero are but distant memories.

With a major story on nearly every section front today, The Record's Sunday edition wraps up a week of overkill -- exploring the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America from every angle imaginable.

We can only hope The Record's reporters, columnists, editors and editorial writers will return to doing something they've neglected -- putting Governor Christie's feet to the fire for more than 500 vetoes as part  of his war on the middle and working classes in New Jersey.

They should also be asking why state troopers are only now being sent to Paterson to stem the gang warfare and gun violence that has taken so many innocent lives in recent years.

Media agenda

Today's centerpiece -- "Separate stories, shared heartache" -- grows out of the demonization of Muslims by wacko racist Donald J. Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, who claims America remains vulnerable to another major terrorist attack.

In fact, Columnist Mike Kelly says, "Now, 15 years later and in the midst of a contentious presidential election ... we are still trying to stop terrorism" (A-1).

That's nonsense. In America at least, billions spent on homeland security have prevented another terror attack anywhere near the scale of 9/11.

Kelly has been so eager to claim the opposite that in June, he compared the Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub massacre of 49 people to 9/11, when 2,996 people died.

A wire service story that appeared in the paper recently lumped in last December's 14 killings in San Bernardino, Calif., with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In his decades-long Record career, Kelly has written more about 9/11 than any other single event, and readers get the feeling he just doesn't want to let go of being involved in the biggest story of his life.

'Basket of deplorables'

A so-called Analysis from The Washington Post today makes much ado about nothing -- Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton putting "half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables'" (A-5).

She was being kind, and explained herself by noting many of Trump's followers are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it."

Who can argue with that?

9/11 and North Jersey

The most powerful element in the week-long recognition of the 15th anniversary of 9/11 is the page and a half of photos "honoring the North Jersey neighbors we lost on Sept. 11, 2001" (L-2 and L-3).

I didn't know any of them, but those faces and names tell me much more about our loss than the hundreds of thousands of words that have appeared in the Woodland Park daily in the past seven days.

Gannett replaces editor who spent years fighting way to top

In this Jan. 29 photo from NorthJersey.com, newsroom staffers applauded the promotion of Deirdre Sykes, left foreground, to editor of The Record of Woodland Park, succeeding Martin Gottlieb, center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Deirdre Sykes of Harrington Park worked in nearly every desk job in The Record's newsroom before she was promoted in January to top editor of the daily paper she joined in 1987.

Now -- exactly seven months later and less than two months after Gannett Co. bought The Record -- the announcement came that Sykes will be replaced on Sept. 6.

Sykes, who is in her 60s, will be given "a new leadership position in the newsroom," according to NorthJersey.com.

Richard A. Green, who was president and publisher of The Cincinnati Inquirer and The Des Moines Register, will become vice president/news and editor of The Record, replacing the second woman to serve as editor.

In a second appointment announced by Gannett, Nancy A. Meyer, 52, formerly publisher and CEO of the Orlando Sentinel Media Group, has been named president of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record.

Worked overnight

Sykes joined The Record in 1987, when it was an afternoon paper headquartered in Hackensack, editing stories, and writing headlines and photo captions on the copy desk overnight shift -- the most thankless job in the newsroom.

She held numerous jobs over the years -- not all of them promotions -- including Passaic County bureau chief in Wayne, state editor, and day and night news editor, but she always managed to return to a position of control.

Her last job before she was named editor on Jan. 29, 2016, was as assignment director in charge of local news, the Trenton staff and the paper's mediocre news columnists.

Her salary at the time was believed to be $100,000 annually.

Her grandfather was John J. Walters, mayor of Harrington Park in the 194os.

Decline in local news

In her years as head assignment editor, Sykes named Staff Writer John Cichowski to the Road Warrior column, signaling an end to its usefulness to commuters, especially those who use mass transit.

Trenton staffer Charles Stile began writing a political column that appeared often on Page 1, and interpreted every burp, cough and fart from Governor Christie.

Despite Bridgegate, Christie's failed presidential campaign, his endorsement of wacko racist Donald J. Trump for president and more than 500 vetoes, Stile remains the GOP bully's chief apologist.

With Sykes as editor, The Record was the only major daily in the state that didn't call for Christie's resignation after his endorsement of Trump in February.

Mother Hen

Sykes also guided the reporting careers of Staff Writers Jean Rimbach, Lindy Washburn and others who formed a sisterhood under a woman who was widely viewed as a Mother Hen in the newsroom.

Meanwhile, local-news coverage declined, and in desperation, Sykes and her then deputy, Dan Sforza, began to fill holes with numerous accident and fire photos, Dean's Lists, long obituaries of obscure people, and crime and court news -- a practice that continues.

We're stuck with cronies, corruption, patronage, home rule

This 2012 photo from NJ.com focuses on the natural beauty of the Meadowlands.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today -- dominated by two articles on the 40th anniversary of the Meadowlands Sports Complex -- is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

A story on the pivotal role of young voters in the Nov. 8 presidential election completely ignores the real problem -- apathetic voters of all ages (A-1).

And Staff Writer Pat Alex repeats a common theme in media coverage of the presidential race -- that wacko racist Donald J. Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton "are among the most unpopular candidates in the history of modern polling."

The media adore polls -- unreliable indicators that allow Alex and other reporters to portray the contest between Trump and Clinton as a horse race.

And such coverage surely contributes to apathy among readers and voters, because The Record and other media refuse to focus on such issues as gender equality, a higher minimum wage and taxing the wealthy.

Local news?

Law & Order coverage is dominating local news again, as readers can see from today's lead story on Paterson's 11th homicide in 2016 (L-1).

And in recent days, the local editors have needed a long Dean's List to fill holes in news coverage (L-3).

L-3 also carries the Monthly News Quiz, which asks readers, "How well do you know what happened in N.J. and beyond?"

That's a question readers want to ask the editors and reporters who put out the pathetically thin Sunday edition and its Local section.

Margulies

Let's hope Margulies' cartoon on O-2 today doesn't become reality, though you never know with Governor Christie.

"Have you heard about Christie's Motor Vehicle Commission efficiency plan," a wife asks her husband.

"To automatically get a gun license when you renew a driver's license?"

Saturday's paper

Staff Writer Jeff Pillets could have gone deeper in his review of more than a decade of "missed deadlines and broken budgets" on publicly financed projects (A-1 on Saturday).

He shows how Trenton has left "the public on the hook for helping to fund failed or stalled projects," but doesn't explore a system of local and state government that thrives on cronyism, political patronage and corruption.

So, the story played next to it was no surprise:

To help his campaign, Trump tapped Bill Stepien, a former Christie crony "whose ascent in Republican politics was shot down by the politically motivated lane closures at the George Washington Bridge."

Rudy Van Gelder

Editor Deirdre Sykes probably has run more animal stories on Page 1 then the obituaries of prominent local residents.

But below the fold on Friday, she ran a story about a starving pit bull from Paterson next to the obituary for Hackensack native Rudy Van Gelder, who died on Thursday at 91.

Staff Writer Jay Levin and Carla Baranauckas, an assignment editor, called him "perhaps the most influential recording engineer in the jazz genre, who brought to life the sounds of such legendary artists as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard."

The dog got better play, though.

And the Van Gelder obit erred on where he recorded Monk's "Hackensack" and other jazz classics.

The Van Gelder family home in Hackensack was on Prospect Avenue, not "Prospect Street." 

Schnitzel+

Kosher restaurants usually are more expensive, but do customers get food of higher quality than at non-kosher places?

In Friday's Informal Dining Review, Staff Writer Elisa Ung doesn't bother answering the question.

As is usually the case in her reviews, she doesn't say whether the kosher chicken and turkey served at Schnitzel+ in Teaneck are naturally raised.

And a photo of what she describes as a "huge platter" shows five falafel, a single pocket bread cut into four piece and some hummus. 

The price is an inflated $11.95.

The biggest frauds are perpetrated by Christie, not voters

Even on the best of days, traffic in downtown Englewood moves sluggishly, aggravated by city officials' refusal to install more turn lanes at such major intersections as Palisade Avenue and Dean Street, above. On Tuesday, road and sidewalk work only aggravated the situation.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's reporters and editors continue to do a great job as stenographers -- but fail miserably as journalists -- especially when it comes to Governor Christie's charges of voter fraud.

Today, the sub-headline on Page 1 legitimizes another Christie lie, even though the actual quote doesn't appear until deep on A-6:

"Calls automatic sign-up
a 'cocktail for fraud'" 

Christie and other conservative Republicans aren't really worried about fraud; they suppress voting and count on newspapers like The Record to do a poor job of covering issues, especially in the local elections that determine the size of property tax bills.

Voter apathy is a far bigger problem; in 2013, when Christie was reelected, the turnout was the lowest for any gubernatorial election in New Jersey history.

Lies before truth

Even before reporting that "voter fraud is extremely rare," Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi loads his first paragraphs with charges from Christie and wacko racist Donald J. Trump, the GOP presidential nominee:

"Trump has warned of 'rigged' elections and claimed there could be widespread voter fraud" (A-1).

Today's stories on Christie rejecting a pair of bills that would make it easier to register to vote and on the 10 bills he signed into law don't mention the fate of a bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2021 (A-1 and A-7).

Local news?

Good luck finding local news today in a section called "Local" that is filled with police and court news.

The entire Local front reports on child porn arrests, a judge rejecting a builder's suit, crooks who got away while Paterson police were picking up donuts, a widow's complaint against a driver who killed two pedestrians, and probation in a coin theft case.

In fact, every page in the section is filled with similar Law & Order news.

Slams health focus

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung reports an acclaimed new chef, Christopher Albrecht, is emphasizing health, not just duplicating the dishes served before new owners took over at Park & Orchard in East Rutherford (BL-14).

All of his meats are antibiotic and hormone free, and most of the beef he serves is grass-fed, unlike the original restaurant and -- though Ung doesn't dare say it -- unlike all of those incredibly expensive steakhouses she raves about.

She seems to put a lot of store in complaints from "some regulars," and notes the wine list is "much less ambitious."

And, as usual, she goes bananas over three desserts the vast majority of her older readers wouldn't touch out of concern for their cholesterol and sugar intake.

So, there's no explanation for why Albrecht gets only 2.5 stars out of a possible 4.

Trump's lies, bigotry and hatred are no longer Page 1 news

Nude photos of Melania Trump -- "a potential First Lady" -- weren't out of bounds for editors of the New York Post, above and below. The Oval Office becomes "the Ogle Office," as in "stare at in a lecherous manner."

The photos were from the early years of her modeling career, according to The Post.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

"Another staff shake-up" in the Republican presidential campaign of wacko racist Donald J. Trump isn't front page news.

Of course, that didn't stop Editor Deirdre Sykes of The Record from running a Page 1 story about Trump from her new masters at USA Today.

Trump's lies, bigotry and hatred have been getting a big boost from editors like Sykes, CNN and Fox News.

Is there no end to their mindless promotion of the New York businessman's insanity?

Illegal housing?

Five staffers from The Record was so busy crediting firefighters and police officers for saving residents from a Little Ferry fire no one asked whether the three-family home is legal (A-1).

A 5-year-old girl and her grandmother died Wednesday from injuries suffered in explosions and a fast-spreading fire late Tuesday night. 

AvalonBay tenants do a slow burn as investors celebrate

An aerial shot of the inferno that destroyed all 240 apartments in the Russell Building of the AvalonBay development in Edgewater on Jan. 21, 2015. Former tenants are still fighting for compensation.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Nearly 19 months after the Avalon at Edgewater apartment inferno filled TV screens and front pages, former tenants are still waiting for compensation even as investors celebrate higher profits and dividends.

The Record's front page today reports that tenants' lawsuits are "still in the discovery stage and it could take more than a year before they go to trial or are settled" (A-1 and A-6).

Staff Writer Nicholas Pugliese focuses on such frustrated former tenants as Marina Rubinstein and husband Fedor Zakharov of Fort Lee, shown in a Page 1 photo with their dog.

However, the reporter doesn't address weak tenant-protection laws; lax building codes that allow AvalonBay to use cheap, lightweight wood construction that does little to stop fires; or lawyers who will walk away with at least a third of any damages tenants recover.

At the end of 2015, AvalonBay Communities -- the nation's second-largest exchange-listed apartment real estate investment trust -- owned or had interests in 285 apartment complexes with nearly 84,000 units in 11 states and the District of Columbia.

AvalonBay now has a total enterprise value of $31 billion, according to REIT.com's Anna Robaton.

Trump aide, ally

Today's A-1 story about wacko racist Donald J. Trump focuses on campaign manager Paul Manafort, and on the continuation page, a related story reports ally Rudy Giuliani's senior moment on 9/11 (A-5).

The New York Times reported handwritten ledgers found in Ukraine show $12.7 million in undisclosed payments to Manafort from a pro-Russia party. 

Manafort, who is guiding Trump's hate-filled White House campaign, denied any wrongdoing.

In an Ohio campaign stop on Monday, Trump said he would bar any immigrant who doesn't believe in the U.S. Constitution "or who support bigotry and hatred" (A-1).

Presumably, it's OK for citizens like Trump to base their entire GOP presidential campaign on "bigotry and hatred."

As for that moron Giuliani, he completely forgot that 9/11 occurred in 2001, when George W. Bush was in office and he was mayor of New York (A-5).

"In the 'eight years before [President Barack] Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States,'" Giuliani said Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, where he promoted Trump's national security plan.

Leonia's Keystone Kops

A story on the Local front doesn't explain why it has taken Leonia Police Chief Tom Rowe two full years after a pedestrian death to figure out a way to protect others "at the borough's most dangerous intersection" (L-1).

On Aug. 7, 2014, Leila Kan, a vibrant 60-year-old restaurant owner, was struck in the crosswalk on Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road, and dragged 71 feet along the pavement by a school minibus "whose driver failed to yield to her while making a left turn."

No police officer was stationed at the intersection to protect Kan and other pedestrians. 

Now, a new "red light phase at Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road freezes all lights for 26 seconds to permit crossing at the intersection, used by thousands of cars and hundreds of pedestrians each day," Staff Writer Svetlana Shkolnikova reports.

'Cost prohibitive'

The reporter quotes Rowe as saying it would be "cost prohibitive" to post a police officer at the intersection, which is inundated by 15,000 cars a day from Route 95 whenever the George Washington Bridge is backed up.

But the truth came out two weeks after Kan's death in a 2014 Road Warrior column, where Rowe admitted only two of the borough's 17 officers were on duty at the time "and they were handling a domestic call."

Leonia Borough President Gil Hawkins also was quoted, blaming "a weak economy and declining tax base" for the loss of six officers "over the years."

Today's upbeat story doesn't explain why Leonia officials haven't hired more police officers in the two years since Kan's death.

Private concert

Staff Writer Jim Beckerman must have had blinders on when reporting on today's private master class and concert by Miri Ben-Ari, the young, glamorous Israeli-born violinist "and R&B, pop and hip-hop trailblazer" (Better Living front).

Ben-Ari will be stopping at The Elizabeth Morrow School, where her "Symphony of Brotherhood" -- a musical meditation on Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- will be performed on Thursday by 230 student violinists, age 4 to 13.

Isn't that rich? 

I guess Ben-Ari doesn't know or care Elizabeth Morrow is a private school on the East Hill, not far from the city's segregated elementary and middle schools.

Those black and Hispanic children haven't realized the dream of integration more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education. 

Christie veto of another minimum-wage hike is a sure thing

In February, Governor Christie's endorsement of wacko racist Donald J. Trump for president prompted seven major New Jersey dailies to call for his resignation. The Record of Woodland Park was the exception. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Deirdre Sykes of The Record continues to sanitize Governor Christie's record, especially when it comes to his 500-plus vetoes -- many aimed at bills helping the middle and working classes.

On Saturday's front page, Staff Writer John C. Ensslin reports Christie has "several more weeks to mull over" three dozen pending bills, including one that would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

Of course, Ensslin and Sykes know the fate of this latest proposal will be the same as the hike he killed in 2013, but nowhere in the story do they report that veto.

On the continuation page, Ensslin notes "Democratic lawmakers fully expect Christie will veto ... the bill raising the minimum wage from $8.38 to $10.10 per hour with additional hikes of at least $1 until it reaches $15 by 2021."

If Christie vetoes the bill, the issue won't go on the ballot until November 2017. 

After the GOP bully vetoed the earlier proposal, voters OK'd a hike in the minimum wage in November 2013.

Wasting newsprint

Even hard-core baseball fans think The Record overdid the coverage of Yankee Alex Rodriguez's last game on Friday.

Sykes ran two columns and two news stories about A-Rod on Saturday (Page 1 and the Sports front).

Sports Columnist Tara Sullivan was so desperate for an angle she seized on a thunderstorm during the pre-game ceremonies to declare:

"The human lightning rod getting interrupted by the real thing."

"A-Rod" is a creation of tabloid headline writers who never had the room to write "Rodriguez."

Local news?

Saturday's local-news section was filled with news from Paterson (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

But the local editors must have the missed the exit to Hackensack.

A photo of a man carrying bottled water up the stairs to his Hackensack apartment is all the news city residents got (L-6).

Today's Local section is completely missing Hackensack news.

Transportation writer John Cichowski had to figure out some way to justify a column on traumatic brain injuries from falls so he compares the number of deaths to "being killed on foot in traffic" (Road Warrior on L-1).

Going to pot

Today's front page carries a moving account of veterans who smoke marijuana to find relief from the haunting images of war and death (A-1).

The story by Staff Writer Todd South, himself a veteran, comes two days after the federal government's decision to withhold the approval of marijuana for medical purposes.

Officials said there is no scientific evidence it works. 

Political gridlock is slap in face to long-suffering taxpayers

Thousands of residents of Hackensack and other towns were scrambling this week to meet the deadline for payment of property taxes, but I haven't seen a single story in The Record of Woodland Park about them or all of those inefficient home-rule communities. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In New Jersey, you have to pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation, but you still get jerked around by some of the sorriest politicians anywhere.

The lead story on Page 1 of The Record today reports no progress in breaking the political logjam in Trenton over transportation funding.

Democrats in the state Legislature still don't have enough votes to override Governor Christie's threatened veto of a 23-cents-a-gallon hike in the gasoline tax.

Meanwhile, The Record reports a statewide freeze on transportation projects "is likely to stretch into the fall and past the November elections" (A-1).

Ford Motor Co.

North Jersey residents can only hope Ford Motor Co. will be forced to excavate tons of contaminated soil, if voters approve a November ballot proposal (A-1).

Who can feel sorry for an automaker that has shirked its responsibility to clean up toxic paint sludge and other waste dumped into abandoned mines and a landfill in the 1960s, with the borough's approval?

Excavating the contaminated soil, which is near reservoirs, would cost Ford and the borough's insurance carriers $32.6 million, compared to $5.4 million for a plan to cap it.

Let's not forget Ford was the only major Detroit automaker that didn't declare bankruptcy and didn't need a bailout from the federal government.

Trump the 'flamethrower'

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman compares Donald J. Trump's inflammatory words about Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment to those that led to the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

The wacko racist GOP presidential nominee declared "gun rights supporters might still find a way to stop ... Clinton, even if she should defeat him and then name anti-gun Supreme Court justices," AP reports (A-1).

Trump's trickle-down economics revisit old GOP disaster

The cover of today's New York Post claims it's a "tax revolution," but GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump's plan recalls the trickle-down economics President Ronald Reagan tried more than 30 years ago with disastrous results. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Desperate to save his sinking GOP presidential campaign, wacko racist Donald J. Trump is promising to cut taxes for "workers and businesses."

The Record's headline writers were sold:

"Trump touts tax

reform in Detroit"

That awkwardly worded headline ran over a brief on Page 1, but Trump was speaking in Detroit, not promising to reform taxes in the Motor City.

The full Associated Press story on A-5 quotes Democrat Hillary Clinton predicting Trump would trigger another recession.

"His tax plans would give super big tax breaks to large corporations and the really wealthy," Clinton said, labeling the proposals more "trickle-down economics."

Even editor is tired of exploiting insane Trump campaign

A mural in downtown Hackensack has been given a face lift by artist Stephanie O'Connor, owner of The Artistic Giraffe Art Studio Gallery at 193 Main St. The historical plaque in the sidewalk lists names for Main Street and State Street in the 1700s and 1800s, below. The passageway connects Main Street to the city owned Atlantic Street paring garage.

Main Street was once called King's Highway and later Front Street. State Street was called Back Street -- "to the west were farms and pasture land," according to the plaque.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A front page dominated by Law & Order news is a sure sign Editor Deirdre Sykes is desperate to avoid having The Record labeled as just a partisan political rag.

Still, she is not ready to give up politics altogether, as readers can see from A-1 stories on the insane presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump and the continuing stalemate over New Jersey's Transportation Trust Fund.

Transportation reporter Christopher Maag continues to disappoint, focusing on well-to-do construction workers and contractors who were thrown out of work by Governor Christie -- instead of on how the impasse affects drivers and the environment.

On the continuation page -- if you ever get there -- you'll learn the gasoline tax has paid for road, bridge and rail improvements since 1988, but that the fund now owes $30 billion in principal and interest (A-8).

A proposed 23-cent hike in the gas tax would still allow New Jersey to have lower pump prices than New York and Pennsyvania, but is not expected to slow the sale of gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks.

Local news?

The front of the local-news section carries a banner headline with a word you haven't seen lately, "Mafia" (L-1).

Declaring the Mafia "alive and well," federal prosecutors and a grand jury charged 46 people with "a multitude of crimes up and down the East Coast."

Sykes and the local-news editors are so desperate they continue to run gee-whiz drive-by photos without bothering to identify drivers or say whether summonses were issued (L-1 and L-8).

And today, they need another long Dean's List to fill columns that should be devoted to local news (L-5).

Cheating readers

Today's Informal Dining review cheats readers who may want to know how the beef at Steve's Burgers in Garfield was raised (BL-14).

As it is, Staff Writer Elisa Ung's silence can only mean the fare at the roadside stand -- burgers "made simply from a ground beef blend" -- is just a step above the low-quality stuff served in fast-food restaurants.

The hot dogs? Don't ask.

If important story is incorrect, what else did staff get wrong?

The main entrance to the Hackensack Performing Arts Center at 102 State St. clearly shows its origins as a Masonic Temple, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you don't live in Hackensack, you probably didn't pay much attention to the A-2 correction in The Record today.

On Wednesday, Editor Deirdre Sykes ran a story in Local, reporting a special meeting of the Hackensack City Council "to introduce nearly $3 million in funding for renovations" to the Performing Arts Center on State Street.

Coincidentally, city taxpayers are scrambling this week to come up with their quarterly tax payments, which are due next Wednesday.

But the story turned out to be wrong, according to today's correction, which said nearly $2.2 million -- not nearly $3 million -- is need for renovations of the former Masonic Temple.

And today's meeting was a no-go, because city officials fell two hours short of the necessary 48-hour notice, and will be held next week.

Hackensack readers can only speculate what else the staff got wrong, given the reputation of six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton to shrug off errors and to publish corrections only reluctantly.

Not much else

Burned-out political Columnist Charles Stile is a day late with his endless ruminations over Governor Christie's image now that the GOP bully was abandoned by his former top aide, Maria Comella.

Still, Sykes is wasting precious front-page space to lead the paper with his boring column (A-1).

Comella spoke to CNN on Tuesday, calling wacko GOP nominee Donald J. Trump a "demagogue" and saying she will vote for Hillary Clinton, so her comments were broadcast and published nationwide on Wednesday.

Residents of North Jersey who fear Trump will be elected president on Nov. 8 will find their dollars go a lot further in Canada: Take refuge from Trump insanity

A big gamble

Also on A-1 today is a story on the closing of the Trump Taj Mahal casino hotel in Atlantic City and the loss of 3,000 jobs after the Labor Day weekend.

That's expected to help put a nail in the coffin of efforts to build casinos in North Jersey, despite the upbeat story on L-3 today.

'Ringwood travesty'

At the bottom of Page 1 today, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports Ringwood officials still are treating the Ramapoughs like dirt (A-1).

An editorial with the headline "Ringwood travesty" urges the Borough Council to allow a November ballot referendum on removing rather than capping 166,000 tons of pollutants linked to Ford Motor Co. dumping that dates to the 1960s (A-8).

Early Wednesday, the council challenged the referendum on legal grounds in yet another blow to the mixed-race neighborhood of Upper Ringwood.

In nod to evil Christie-Trump axis, editor is ignoring issues

A cartoon by Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News sums up the controversy nicely.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The baby boomers and retirees who are The Record's core readership certainly want to know whether wacko Donald J. Trump would cut their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

But Editor Deirdre Sykes could care less, as she continues to focus on what a Page 1 story refers to as "the partisan whipsawing" following Trump's war of words with the parents of a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq (A-1).

And Sykes continues to allow Governor Christie, transition chief for the racist GOP presidential nominee, to call everyone else a crook and to demand release of their emails (A-1).

What about Christie's emails and text messages, especially the ones that were erased in the Bridgegate scandal? Or his cellphone, which went missing for two years after the September 2013 lane closures?

Doesn't The Record have any interest in them?

Meanwhile, Christie's former top aide and image maker told CNN on Tuesday she will vote for Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8.

Maria Comella called Trump "a demagogue ... preying on people's anxieties with loose information and salacious rhetoric," according to WNYC-FM News.

The largely favorable coverage of Christie shows Sykes continues to bow to The Record's editorial board.

The Woodland Park daily declined to join The Star-Ledger and six other major New Jersey dailies in calling for Christie to resign after he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump.

For Trump's stance on Social Security, see:

GOP nominee ducks AARP questions

Local news

In Local, Sykes buried another story on L-3 that could have been played on the front page to give readers a break from all the partisan political coverage, and news from the Vatican.

The headline over Staff Writer Jim Norman's upbeat account of National Night Out events in Hackensack, Paterson and other communities said it well:

A time for cops, residents
to find common ground