On A-1: Fat cats, pregnant pigs and a GOP elephant

The owners of Boomerangs in Hackensack are preparing to open a branch of the Caribbean and soul food restaurant on Palisade Avenue in Englewood, above.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Don't look for local news on Page 1 of The Record today.

Editor Marty Gottlieb tried for balance, but ended up with two stories about Governor Christie, a centerpiece on a nasty ruling-class inheritance battle and the sad story of a battered Hackensack woman who breathed her last.

In the past two months, Staff Writer Kibret Markos has been hanging on every word during the Hudson News inheritance battle in state Superior Court in Hackensack (A-1).

Just imagine what he's been missing -- lawsuits, trials and motions he hasn't had time to cover -- as he does a good imitation of a lap dog for some of the richest fat cats in the world.

Christie, meanwhile, finally got a state Supreme Court nominee past majority Democrats in the state Senate (A-1).

And in a second victory, the GOP elephant backed factory farmers and kept helpless pregnant pigs in metal crates (A-1).

Columnist Charles Stile calls this Christie "wielding power and control, and doing it quite successfully."

Over pregnant pigs?

A third story about Christie appears on A-3 today as The Record continues to do a good imitation of being the GOP bully's personal journal.

More animal news

In the Local section, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza couldn't manage to fill his pages with legitimate news.

So, like Gottlieb, he looked to the animal world and plugged a big hole on L-1 with a story on the Meadowlands Racetrack.

On L-2, Hackensack and school board officials shook hands on a deal to pay the full salary and benefits of a school resource officer.

The City Council dropped a demand for seven years of back pay totaling $1 million -- money the board refused to pay.

In utility pole news, check out that 10.5-inch-high photo of a pole fire in West Milford (L-3).

Lack of mall security gives Paramus nightmares

A new CVS on the ground floor of a luxury apartment building in downtown Englewood, above, replaced two failed food markets. The drugstore and a soon-to-open bagel store, below, are among signs of renewal along Palisade Avenue, but many shuttered storefronts remain. On Saturday night, New Orleans rhythm-and-blues singer Aaron Neville performed at bergenPAC on North Van Brunt Street. The hall looked only half full.

The Record of Woodland Park has largely ignored the struggles of main streets in Englewood, Teaneck, Hackensack and other communities in favor of lavishly promotional coverage of new retailers at North Jersey malls.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

When an armed man or men invade a mall, school or movie theater -- setting off panic -- what good are drills and a massive police response after shots are fired?

That's the question The Record should be asking Paramus Police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg and the Australian owners of Garden State Plaza, the state's biggest shopping center.

Instead, Editor Marty Gottlieb leads today's front page with Ehrenberg's elaborate justification for why police were relegated to performing mall clean-up duties the night of Nov. 4 and early Nov. 5.

That's when Richard Shoop, 20, of Teaneck fired six random shots before fatally shooting himself in the head.

'Shooting' or suicide?

The Record continues to use the words "shooting" and "shooter," even though Shoop fired into the ceiling, an elevator door and a sign or signs, and hurt no one but himself.

A photo caption on Page 1 today uses a weird verb to describe a police assault team outside the mall:

"Police aligning at Westfield Garden State Plaza on Nov. 4" [italics added]. 

What is that copy editor smoking?

The Paramus police chief calls Shoop's invasion a "nightmare scenario come true."

But the potential nightmare remains for shoppers, because Garden State Plaza has numerous entrances and not a single metal detector or any other security measure I am aware of with the exception of cameras.

Biased reporting

Also on Page 1 today, a column on the big campaign war chest that radical Republican Rep. Scott Garrett of Wantage will use in the next election only serves to remind readers of how little coverage The Record gave to his last Democratic challenger (A-1).

Redistricting shoved the Tea Party crackpot down the throats of Bergen County residents, including 80 percent of Teaneck and all of Bergenfield, Fair Lawn, Hackensack and Paramus.

The only Hackensack news in Local today is the arrest of an illegal immigrant on charges of stabbing another man (L-3).

A shuttered restaurant on Englewood's Palisade Avenue. The storefront where Victoria's Secret operated for many years also remains vacant.

Choking response

In Better Living, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz invites readers to choke on the wordy first paragraph of her Ridgewood bartender profile (BL-1).

The story is the latest in an occasional series called BEHIND THE KITCHEN DOOR.

Too bad that door didn't open to reveal someone who could edit her long-winded prose.

Playing doctor, greedy homeowners, bad journalism

The George Washington Bridge as photographed through a tinted windshield.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Today's Page 1 story about an anesthesiologist who performed spine surgery goes on and on in the tradition of Editor Marty Gottlieb, who brought to The Record his former paper's practice of writing incredibly long stories.

Here, more than two full pages of the paper are devoted to Dr. Richard Kaul and the cases of 11 North Jersey patients he operated on (A-1, A-10 and A-11).

24/7 phone line

Maybe medical writer Lindy Washburn should be exploring whether the 24/7 phone number for getting insurance under the Affordable Care Act (1-800-318-2596) is working better than the federal Web site.

Instead, Gottlieb is running another negative story about President Obama's "legacy" -- this one from McClatchy Newspapers (A-1).

In a couple of years, when tens of millions of uninsured Americans are covered for the first time -- easing the burden of emergency room care on taxpayers -- no one will remember all of these roll-out glitches.

Football greed

If you lose interest in the "pain doctor" story -- as I did after just a few paragraphs and a glance at the continuation pages, wondering what relevance it has to me -- you can shake your head over greedy homeowners who are charging out-of-town football fans as much as $10,000 a night during the Super Toilet Bowl in February.

Let's hope that Bobby Adamo's North Arlington home, which will cost $30,000 for a week, is trashed by the bunch of slobs he will be exploiting (A-1).

Is The Record trying to say there are no municipal regulations that bar renting out your house to people you aren't related to?

And what about the liability homeowners face, if one of the fans consumes too much alcohol at dinner and mows down a neighbor?

And that's it for Page 1 of  the Woodland Park daily. Another disappointing Sunday edition. But there's more.

Despite all of  the errors in Saturday's Record, no corrections appear on A-2 today.

Seeing red

On the Local front today, the Road Warrior column is the latest attempt to demonize red-light cameras (L-1).

Staff Writer John Cichowski, aka The Addled Commuter, doesn't tell readers the cameras are the last line of defense against speeders -- those lead-footed drivers who believe they have a constitutional right to go as fast as they want to and, in the process, maim or kill pedestrians and other drivers.

But driving is a privilege, not a right, and the cameras surely will proliferate amid a dramatic decline in traffic enforcement, bringing towns sorely needed revenue as property taxes continue to climb.

We'll all be safer when hundreds of red-light cameras are in use around North Jersey.

Top of his game

A far better read is Staff Writer Jay Levin's masterful portrayal of Michael Oprihory, a former Elmwood Park police lieutenant who died on Nov. 3 at 89 (L-1).

Read that first paragraph, and ask yourself why the drivel from Cichowski and The Record's other columnists, most of whom can't put together a coherent sentence, get so much better play than Levin's local obituaries.

Word pusher

Wow. Mike Kelly attended President John F. Kennedy's funeral 50 years ago, and here he is today, complete with his dated column photo and shit-eating grin, to bore readers with his recollections (O-1).

Zisa family

An editorial endorses Governor Christie attempt to end payouts for unused sick and vacation time, including the $4.7 million Hackensack had to fork over to public workers in 2010 (O-2).

A photo of the city's famously corrupt former police chief and state assemblyman, Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa, appears with the editorial.

Imagine if the sports-obsessed Record paid as much attention to Hackensack during the many years the Zisa family ran the city and sucked it dry.

From hunger

In Travel, a story about Vancouver's natural splendors ignores its reputation for culinary splendors and dining out, one of the joys of exploring the world (T-1).

And the 2014 Dine Out Guide is mislabeled "a reader's guide," when it should be called an "advertiser's guide."

Dozens of North Jersey restaurants are missing, presumably in retaliation for not advertising in the guide.

Page 1 story hides elaborate Hackensack correction

The glass exterior of a 47-story residential tower overlooking the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee is nearing completion, above. The building as seen from Main Street, below. Some residents fear more traffic, though in a borough that already has nightmarish traffic, how will they tell?

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

A Page 1 story in The Record today exposes more payouts for unused time in Hackensack, but also hides an elaborate correction of Friday's front-page story on similar payments to the corrupt Ken Zisa, onetime police chief and state assemblyman.

And the dominant story on today's front page -- video frames of the man who committed suicide at Garden State Plaza in Paramus -- again ignores the irresponsible lack of security at the state's biggest shopping center.  

Cashing in

The Hackensack story reports more than 30 employees rushed to retire and cash out unused sick and vacation time as Governor Christie "tried to cap sick-leave pay for retiring public workers" (A-1).

But on the continuation page, Staff Writer Hannan Adely takes back Friday's front-page story, which claimed Zisa was paid twice in 2010 for unused time (A-6).

Now, Adely reports Zisa received $94,513 for unused sick days or $53,671 after taxes. On Friday, they were reported as separate payments.

Today's story contains new errors: 

That Zisa received the payment "just before his arrest on charges of insurance fraud," when Adely previously reported it was after his arrest at the end of April 2010; and that he is appealing his conviction on official misconduct charges, when he is appealing two convictions, one for official misconduct and another for fraud, as well as a 5-year prison sentence.

$2.4 million deal

The lawsuits against Zisa reported in today's story -- and the millions of dollars paid to settle them -- prompt long-suffering residents and taxpayers to wonder why the City Council didn't move to fire him years before his arrest.

On A-6, Adely reports the former girlfriend of then-Deputy Police Chief Frank Zisa Jr., the chief's brother, won a $2.4 million settlement from a lawsuit alleging Ken Zisa retaliated against her because she refused sexual advances by him and Frank Zisa Jr.

More A-1 errors

Also on Page 1 today, video frames of Richard Shoop, 20, an armed Teaneck man who entered Garden State Plaza on Nov. 4 to commit suicide, drive home the pathetic lack of security provided by the mall's Australian owners and Paramus police.

The Record has ignored that story, and today (Nov. 16) describes the events of Nov. 4 as "last week." 

Though that is technically correct, it is confusing and a more precise phrase, such as "12 days ago" would have been better.

The Woodland Park daily quotes police as saying Shoop "did not appear to be intent on killing anyone but himself and avoided confronting" officers, who arrived minutes after he fired random shots into an elevator door, the ceiling and signs.

Still, burned-out Staff Writer Mike Kelly distorted the incident in three columns, comparing Shoop to the gunmen at Columbine High School and in Newtown, Conn.

If police weren't summoned until shots were fired, does that mean no one was monitoring security cameras or that a man in black wearing a helmet and carrying a rifle didn't alarm guards who were?

Today's story and photo caption variously describes the part of the mall where Shoop's body was found as "a back hallway," "an area of catacomb-like hallways" and the "basement."

Where is Houlton?

The confusing time element and fuzzy reporting in today's story again dramatizes the incompetence of Production Editor Liz Houlton, who is paid a six-figure salary to supervise news editors, copy editors, copy desk supervisors and page proofers.

Their job is to act as a last line of defense against factual and grammatical errors in stories that are missed by the local assignment desk, notably Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, who is running this farce in the unexplained absence of lifer Deirdre Sykes.

They seem incapable of catching even the most obvious errors, as today's Page 1 screw-ups and two more corrections on A-2 demonstrate.

Another story that exposes copy desk incompetence appears on L-5 today, where the headline suggests that only one taxicab operates in Paterson.