Despite controversies, editors stop covering Hackensack

On Tuesday morning, the crosswalk and curb at Main and Berry streets in Hackensack were clear, but the NJ Transit bus stop was buried under a snowbank, testament to a sloppy job by snowplows throughout the 4.4-square-mile city. One resident complained snow was cleared with "no regard for pedestrians."

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

No reporter from The Record covered Tuesday night's City Council meeting, where Hackensack residents again complained about haphazard snow clearing that endangered drivers and pedestrians.

Staff Writer Todd South, who had been assigned to Hackensack and Maywood, has been promoted, and no reporter has taken his place to cover the most populous town in Bergen County.

Only Hackensack police news has appeared in the Woodland Park daily for several weeks. 

South's last Hackensack byline was on Dec. 12, when he wrote about a dispute over a marriage license involving Richard Salkin, the Board of Education attorney.

The Record seems to have stopped covering Hackensack, where the Borg publishing family prospered for more than 110 years before abandoning the city in 2009 for Woodland Park.

Hospital, downtown

Yet, the county seat is embroiled in a controversy with the tax-exempt Hackensack University Medical Center, and residents have questioned concessions to developers during the biggest downtown rehabilitation in North Jersey, if not the entire state.

The Record also hasn't reported who stands to profit most from redevelopment.

On Tuesday night, four residents appeared before council officials, meeting as a Committee of the Whole, to complain about snow clearing after the blizzard of 2016, and to urge officials to draw up a plan for future storms.

Irrelevant columns

Instead of municipal news, Editors Martin Gottlieb, Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza continue to choke readers with hundreds of inches of type from Columnists Charles Stile and John Cichowski (A-1 and L-1) -- the editorial equivalent of fiddling while North Jersey burns.

Stile and another reporter filed 50 inches to 60 inches of type on A-1 and A-10 analyzing Governor Christie's response to criticism that he left New Jersey too soon after the snowstorm to return to his doomed New Hampshire campaign:

"I don't know what you want me to do , you want me to go down there with a mop?"

Meanwhile, Cichowski continues to distance himself from the pathetically inadequate advice he gave car owners on how to cope with the blizzard.

Sadly, a 23-year-old woman and her 1-year-old son died on Saturday from carbon-monoxide poisoning in an idling car with a snow-blocked exhaust, a hazard that Cichowski didn't mention (L-1).

Abe Vigoda

Staff Writer Bill Ervolino's obituary for actor Abe Vigoda demonstrates once again why The Record's columnists -- including Stile, Cichowski and Mike Kelly -- fail readers day after day (BL-1).

I can't make any sense of the so-called humor columnist's first paragraph that "if you don't have an uncle who looked a whole lot like Abe Vigoda, then you probably aren't Italian," followed by news that Vigoda was a first-generation Russian Jew.

Readers would do better with a sidebar from local obituary writer Jay Levin, who interviewed Vigoda's daughter after the 94-year-old died in his sleep on Tuesday in her Woodland Park park home (BL-3).

The best lines: 

"This is a man who was never sick a day in his life," Carol Vigoda Fuchs told Levin. "He could've waited for his birthday" (Feb. 24).

'Superfoods'

It isn't enough for Staff Writer Sophia F. Gottfried to quote dietitians on hidden sugar, sodium and fat in foods and products many people consider healthy (BL-1).

Her article doesn't name alternatives, making the advice useless, unless readers embark on their own investigations.

And if they are going to do that, what's the point of her article?

Editors gaze into crystal balls, ignore our messy present

This morning, Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, between Main Street and the railroad tracks, remained a one-lane street -- just one of the many spots city plows missed after the snow stopped falling on Saturday night.

On Main Street in Hackensack, between Berry and Passaic streets, parking was banned this morning, above and below, until the city could clear all of the snow in front of parking meters.

Lavash City, an Armenian restaurant, and other businesses on this block of Main are lucky to have a rear parking lot for customers.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's editors are so bored with our dysfunctional state government and the blizzard of 2016 they are already looking into the future.

On Page 1 today, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson and Staff Writer James O'Neill are gazing into crystal balls on November ballot questions and the weather for the rest of the winter.

On the Local front, the moronic Road Warrior, John Cichowski, continues to ignore blizzard dangers -- even as the death toll mounts -- and referees a pissing match over whether residents are obligated to clear fire hydrants of snow (L-1).

On the first Business page, Staff Writer Joan Verdon delivers a breathless report on a German discount supermarket chain that isn't expected to open stores in the U.S. before 2018 (L-8).

Snow clearing

The snow stopped falling Saturday night, but pedestrians continue to encounter third-world snow clearing in Hackensack and many other towns, where bus stops, corners, turn lanes, parking meters and crosswalks remain covered or barricaded today.

On the Local front, the editors published an image rarely seen in the Woodland Park daily -- a Hackensack bus stop blocked by a snowbank (L-1).

On Sunday and Monday, reporters visited a couple dozen towns, but pretty much ignored the amateurish job turned in by municipal crews -- as The Record has done for decades. 

Snow job

One example was reporting from the front lines in Teaneck by resident and Columnist Mike Kelly, the veteran reporter whose work appears regularly on the front page. 

Here is an excerpt from his hard-hitting report in Monday's Local section:

"By noon Sunday, Teaneck's main business district along Cedar Lane was buzzing with traffic and pedestrians."

Kelly probably could have described Cedar Lane the same way on any Sunday, given the large number of Orthodox Jews in town who are forbidden from shopping on Saturday.

He also noted "mounds of snow" were "left at the end of [residents'] driveways by snowplows that worked through the night to clear town streets."

Apparently, Kelly didn't venture very far, because he missed the poor job the snowplows did on Cedar Lane, where only one of two travel lanes was clear between the Hackensack line and River Road on Monday morning.

Wrong headline

Even though a number of people died from shoveling snow, carbon-monoxide poisoning and hypothermia over the weekend, Monday's local front carried an upbeat headline and sub-headline:

Postcards from a wintry land

North Jersey
worked hard
in storm, but 
played, too

This is what a block on Main Street in Hackensack looks like after the snow was cleared from in front of parking meters.

The bus stop at Euclid Avenue and Main Street, where you can board NJ Transit buses to the city, remained buried under snow this morning, including the city provided bench.

Ditto for the bus stop across the street from Sears on Main Street.

Governor Christie

Wow, would you look at all of the ink on Page 1 today criticizing Governor Christie for leaving New Jersey on Sunday and returning to New Hampshire in his futile campaign for the GOP presidential nomination (A-1).

I can't recall headlines this big or similar criticism when he did a number of things as governor -- from cancelling new Hudson River rail tunnels in 2010, waging war on teachers and other members of the middle class, and executing more than 500 vetoes so far to stop bills on gun control and a host of other issues.

Burger King

An editorial today on the response to the blizzard doesn't question why employees of Burger King in Hackensack didn't call police when an elderly New York woman told them she was afraid to drive home in the storm on Saturday afternoon, and planned to park in their Hackensack Avenue lot (A-8).

Police Director Mike Mordaga says in a news story on A-6 today the body of the unidentified woman, 78, was found in her gold Cadillac on Monday morning.

The Burger King had closed at 5 p.m. on Saturday, and didn't reopen until Monday morning.

On Spring Valley Avenue in Maywood, near the Hackensack border, a woman was forced to walk on the pavement this morning, only inches from passing cars on a street that is too narrow for all the traffic it carries in even the best of weather.

The corner of Main Street and Johnson Avenue in Hackensack.

Columnist should have reported carbon-monoxide threat

On Woodland Street and Palisade Avenue in Englewood, snow covered the right-turn lane this morning. Driving between Hackensack and Tenafly and back today, I saw many potentially dangerous spots on streets and highways, including Routes 4 and 80, where plows did their usual half-assed job even though we pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation.

In Hackensack, Euclid Avenue between the railroad tracks and Main Street was down to a single lane, and cars on Main could not turn right onto Euclid, normally a wide, two-lane street.

Not far away, the bus stop on Anderson Street in Hackensack, between Main and River streets, above, was covered by a snowbank. On Teaneck Road in Teaneck, a woman who wanted to walk under Route 4 despaired that the sidewalk hadn't been cleared, forcing her to use the pavement, inches from passing cars.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In October, Record Columnist John Cichowski warned "absent-minded drivers of modern cars" who park in a garage "you might not wake up in the morning," if you forget to push the off-button of your keyless ignition.

But this winter, Cichowski, The Record's so-called Road Warrior, forgot to warn drivers of another potentially deadly carbon-monoxide threat -- warming up a car when the exhaust pipe is covered by snow.

Two die in car

And on Saturday, a 23-year-old mother and her 1-year-old son died inside an idling car on a Passaic city street as the husband tried to dig it out of the snow left by the blizzard of 2016, as The Record reports on Page 1 today.

Deep in today's news story, the paper reports "the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning in a snowbound car is one of several wintertime hazards on the list of safety tips published every year by ... Rutgers University" (A-6).

Yet, a day after the woman and her son died, and her 3-year-old daughter was listed as "very critical" in a Paterson hospital, Cichowski's lighthearted column on snowstorm risks was silent on how to safely dig out a snowbound car (Sunday's Local front).

He did have a warning for pedestrians:

"When skipping along in Timberland boots, people are not nearly as light-footed as they are when wearing Nikes. They tend to fall, too, so stopping for them in time is harder than ever."

Really? Boots would make them more sure-footed in snow -- not less. 

Just that excerpt shows why thousands of readers call Cichowski a moron, and demand the firing of his editors, Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, who have allowed the addled columnist to waste readers' time for more than a dozen years.

Snow clearing

After every winter snowstorm, drivers realize what a terrible job municipal crews do in clearing corners, crosswalks, bus stops, sidewalks over or under highways and other places that can keep pedestrians safe.

Still, after every winter storm, The Record's supremely lazy and incompetent editors, as well as Cichowski, never issue report cards to Hackensack, Teaneck and all the other towns that do a half-assed job of clearing streets and intersections.

This morning, on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, drivers were lucky if both lanes were clear in each direction.

This morning on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, one lane was covered by snow as drivers approached River Road.

Highways, streets

On Route 4 east, the deceleration lane for the Jones Road exit ramp in Englewood was covered by snow, forcing drivers to slow down in the travel lane and turn sharply right, setting up the possibility of getting rear-ended.

On Route 80 west, drivers exiting in Teaneck, near the Glenpointe complex, also found the deceleration lane covered by snow.

On local streets, such as Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, between Main Street and the railroad tracks, you could assign partial blame for the terrible snow clearing on apartment dwellers who leave their cars parked on the street during a storm.

But ultimately, city planners were shortsighted in caving into developers and approving multi-family housing without enough off-street parking spots.

Editors deliver superficial coverage of another big storm

In Hackensack, dog walkers and other pedestrians were stymied today, if they planned to leave their own block. As in years past, city plows and crews don't do corners or crosswalks. Meanwhile, The Record's lazy editors shrugged and went back to sleep rather than cover the blizzard of 2016 in any detail.

Hackensack homeowners who cleared their driveways to the curb or paid someone else to do it found that city plows then threw up an impenetrable blockade -- this only two weeks before several thousand dollars in property taxes are due.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

By noon today, the print edition of The Record still hadn't hit my cleared driveway in Hackensack.

The paper's dysfunctional home delivery unit struggles to deliver a dry paper when it's raining, so I guess I should cut it some slack after more than 2 feet of snow falls.

But that's no excuse for the lazy local Assignment Editors, Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, who once again deliver spotty coverage of winter's first blizzard, judging by the digital edition I am looking at online.

The biggest fear of residents who lived through Irene, Sandy and other big storms was the loss of power, light and heat, but Page 1 and the Local front carry little or nothing about outages.

Town coverage?

On L-1 -- the main responsibility of Sykes and Sforza -- readers are bewildered by a story on how the storm altered plans for Saturday funerals.

What about Jewish families who must bury their dead within 24 hours? The story is silent on that score. 

There are about 90 towns in The Record's circulation area, but the staff appears to have done reporting from only a couple of dozen of them (L-1, L-3 and L-6).

Hackensack?

Staff Writer Kibret Markos, who usually is assigned to the state courthouse in Paterson, reported on Prospect Avenue high-rises in Hackensack, a city that covers an area of nearly 4.4 square miles and is the most populous in Bergen County (L-3).

Markos interviewed two building employees, a resident of the Blair House, and two pedestrians who said they were Russian and shrugged off the "thigh-high" snow.

Here is one of the sentences in his superficial report:

"The neighborhood of high-rises along Propsect Avenue remained mostly barren, with a few cars driving by every few minutes."