Hospitals, police gird for 2014 Super Bowl

So many cars and SUVs will pack the roads of the Meadowlands during the Super Bowl a year from now, pedestrians will be able to walk on their roofs. (Dougtone)

The National Football League is giving hospitals and police departments a year to prepare for the fallout from next year's Super Bowl in the Meadowlands, The Record reported on Friday's front page.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of readers and hundreds of thousands of other North Jersey residents are planning cruises or other vacations during Super Tidy Bowl Week in 2014 to escape the traffic chaos that is sure to ensue.

The medical community will be beefing up hospital cardiac surgery units to perform emergency coronary by-passes on all those football fans who consume tons of artery clogging beef at tailgate parties.

Beer, vomit, piss

Meanwhile, police are planning hundreds of DWI patrols to cope with the oceans of beer that will be consumed and the resulting geysers of vomit and piss.

The culture of inebriation will be matched only by out-0f-control corporate greed exhibited by the football league, team owners and the conservative Fox Network.

Friday's Super Tidy Bowl story noted New Jersey has to face "the reality of living in the shadow of New York."

That's especially true with the state being mismanaged by Governor Christie, the GOP bully who lags behind New York State and city on gun control, mass transit and in so many other areas.

More A-1 errors

Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk screwed up big time again on Page 1.

On Friday, the A-1 box on insurance premiums, with a story on new state standards for building in flood zones, conflicted with other information printed on A-6, the continuation page.


But the information was inaccurate. (See "comments" at the end of this post.)

Christie surgery?


The best thing Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg could do for Christie is to finance bariatric surgery for the morbidly obese politician, not hold a fundraiser in his California home (A-3 on Friday).

Besides New York, California is putting New Jersey to shame (A-11 on Friday).

Gov. Jerry Brown has not only balanced that state's budget by raising the sales tax and the income tax on high earners,  he has committed to a $68 billion high-speed rail project.

Christie, on the other hand, killed two Hudson River rail tunnels, setting back the expansion of mass transit a decade, and continues to fight a tax surcharge on millionaires. 

Road whiners 

On Friday's L-1, Road Warrior John Cichowski continued to give voice to traffic whiners like Anthony Bernice of Hasbrouck Heights.

The column, which relies completely on reader e-mails, also contains the usual inaccuracies, according to a concerned reader:

"The Road Warrior's Jan. 25 column continues his unending efforts to mislead readers and make up or grossly exaggerate information to fill up his columns with some crazy "gripes" about everyday road issues.

"In addition to checking his math mistakes, I suggest someone use a calendar to correct Road Warrior's inability to judge how long ago major events occurred.

"The Record continues to sacrifice its own integrity if it cannot prevent these gross mistakes, some of which are inexcusable, such as not knowing it is 12 weeks and NOT 8 weeks, as the Road Warrior claims, since Superstorm Sandy.

"The Record should also NOT publish the rantings of anyone who "wants to blow their brains out" or fictitiously "cry" over frustrating, but trivial road matters. 

"It wouldn't take much for The Record to stop the Road Warrior's mistaken reporting."

The full -e-mail to management can be found on Facebook:

Standing up for road whiners 


Hackensack news

On Friday's L-3, a story reports four of the  Hackensack City Council's five members announced on Tuesday night they would not run for a new term.

A slate of candidates will be running, headed by John Labrosse, the sole incumbent seeking election. 

The story doesn't say what Labrosse has accomplished since he took office in 2009. 

Crumbs for readers

Staff Writer Elisa Ung is taking a break from restaurant reviewing -- hoping to lose weight after consuming hundreds of desserts -- but the new reviewer is as weak as she is when it comes to reporting on food origin.

In  Friday's Better Living, Bob Probert declares the food at The Kitchen in Englewood to be "remarkable," and said the veal rib chop "was the finest I've ever had."

But with chicken priced at $26 and that chop at $39, don't readers deserve to know whether the poultry and meat were raised naturally?

Horse manure

In today's Local section, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, deliver big news -- the signing of "a ceremonial beam" at the site of the new Meadowlands Gambling Addicts Racetrack grandstand (L-1).

Can't you just smell the manure?

The Local front also carries municipal news from Teaneck and Englewood, but nothing from Hackensack.

A filler photo on L-3 shows that a driver dying a slow death from eating McDonald's food escaped injury when the minivan's engine burst into flames.      

Mordaga has little to say to The Record

One of the many Hackensack businesses that suffered after The Record fled the city.

Today's front page carries "a brief interview" with the new police director in Hackensack, Michael Mordaga, a lawman who was never at a loss for words and who was loved by reporters looking for colorful quotes.

But Mordaga, who starts on Feb. 4, had little to say to Staff Writer Hannan Adely and The Record, which has been investigating him since at least 2006 (A-1).

Readers out in cold

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, asked three reporters to cover the coldest weather in 2 years, and the best they could do is write about the homeless and victims of Superstorm Sandy.

What about all those commuters who have to wait in the cold for buses and trains, or people who have to work outside, like cops, firefighters and gas station attendants?

Are they so much chopped liver? Now you know why The Record's assignment editors are known far and wide for their laziness. 

See the editorial on A-18 about the pathetic situation at NJ Transit's Hoboken Terminal, which is closed, and how commuters are barred from warm construction trailers. 

Why isn't that in the weather story on A-1 today?

Christie apologist

On the Local front, Staff Writer Charles Stile is mildly critical of Governor Christie's "play-it-safe" strategy on gun control, but spends too much of his column explaining away the GOP bully's inaction (L-1).

Municipal follies

There are two municipal stories from Teaneck in the section, on L-2 and L-3, but nothing from Englewood, Ridgewood and many other large towns.

Law and Order stories predominate once again, with fire and accident photos used as filler (L-1 and L-3).  

Defending speeders, criminals and adulterers

These motorists didn't need a sign to tell them they were going nowhere during the rush hour on the Garden State Parkway north, which narrows to three lanes from five.

The Road Warrior column on Wednesday raised the possibility of electronic ticketing, using data from individual E-ZPass tags and global-positioning systems, and called it "Big Brother."

Well, for the vast majority of sane, law-abiding drivers, such a system couldn't come fast enough, given the dramatic decline in the enforcement of traffic laws.

The Record's John Cichowski gives voice to drivers who believe Dynamic Message Signs are "an invasion of privacy."

Rich Pederson of sleepy Bloomingdale (the town, not the store), is quoted as saying, "This information had best not be stored in a database somewhere."

E-ZPass account information has been used to impeach the testimony of a criminal defendant who claims to have been home watching TV at the time of a crime.

And I'm sure E-ZPass information has been used in divorce cases.

The rest of us have nothing to worry about, especially Cichowski, who has mastered the art of using reader e-mails as the basis of numerous columns written from the comfort of his desk.

For another take on Wednesday's Road Warrior laugh-fest, consider the comments of a reader concerned about all of the inaccuracies in the column:

"The Road Warrior embellishes reporting around inane questions, discredited conspiracy theories, and comments that defy common sense and facts in his Jan. 23 column about Dynamic Message Signs, which display updated driving times to points down a highway.

"The Record does NOT appear to care about its integrity or have oversight to stop publishing unsubstantiated and unqualified feedback that does not belong in a Road Warrior column. 

"Please direct these people & their feedback to one of The Record blogs.

"Road Warrior also repeatedly likes to scare readers with his unsubstantiated "dark conspiracy" theories.

"Most drivers understand the benefits and reject any fears about Dynamic Message Signs."

See the full e-mail sent to management at:

Road Warrior paranoia runs rampant 

 

Originally posted from my iPhone at the Riviera Bakery in Newark's Ironbound.

Paper's target gets new post in Hackensack

Michael Mordaga's "heroics" as chief of detectives in Hackensack "propelled him to near legendary status," Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports today. (Wikipedia)

Michael Mordaga, the decorated former chief of detectives in Hackensack, has been under investigation by The Record since at least 2006, three years before the paper moved out of the city and assigned it the news value of an obscure foreign country.

On Tuesday night, Mordaga was named as the city's $150,000-a-year civilian police director -- at a salary that is less than what disgraced former Police Chief Ken Zisa was making. 

In Hackensack, Mordaga will be running a force that is about the same size of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office staff he supervised until 2007, when he retired. 

A clean break?

The lead story on Page 1 today doesn't discuss whether the city manager's appointment of Mordaga is the kind of clean break residents were hoping for after the sordid criminal charges and lawsuits filed against Zisa, whose family has ruled the city for decades.

On A-6, the paper's clueless copy desk identifies Jamayla Scott, who spoke in support of Mordaga, as an "Englewood public school teacher," never explaining why an out-of-towner would appear at the City Council meeting to do so.

Scott is a Hackensack native, she told council officials and the audience.

Crooked city seal

People who attended the meeting on Tuesday night noticed that a large city seal showing Chief Oratam -- which hangs on the wall behind council members -- is crooked, which may be fitting depending on your view of the honesty of city government. 

Christie sellout growing

Editor Marty Gottlieb wastes a large part of the front page today on a photo of Devils hockey fans, minimizing a report on Governor Christie's sellout to special interests (A-1).

Staff Writer Melissa Hayes says the GOP bully raised $2.14 million in the last quarter of 2012, and names the donors, including Big Tobacco, a sports team and the Port Authority police.

Hayes' story doesn't say what Christie is expected to do in return for the money, if he wins a second term in the November election. 

But readers now have an explanation of why Christie -- who appears to be eating everbody's lunch -- and his wife, Mary Pat, didn't attend a New Jersey themed gala on Sunday night to celebrate President Obama's second term (A-6 on Monday).

Christie, who passed up "authentic Jersey diner" french fries at the party, said he was traveling, presumably to collect more money for his re-election bid. 

Goodbye, Silk City 

Also on A-1 today, a decision by Greenbaum Interiors to close its 100,000-square-foot showroom in downtown Paterson is called "the latest blow" to the Silk City. 

I guess that includes the designation of the city's Great Falls as a National Park, which will draw visitors from all across the country and around the world, not just from North Jersey and New York State, as the high-end furniture manufacturer did.

Is this what head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes of The Record calls local journalism?

Runaway column

On Sykes' Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski again substitutes the opinions of cranky drivers for his own reporting, in a familiar Q&A that is pathetically thin on information about commuting problems (L-1).

Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, needed a gee-whiz photo of a non-fatal rollover accident to fill out the Local front.

Her salad days

On the Better Living front, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, who often promotes recipes filled with artery clogging cream, butter and bacon, has a welcome feature on winter salads (BL-1).