Heroin mills, Christie's bridge hand and bimbos' lawyers

Just in time for Christmas, red stickers are appearing on many vehicle windshields, but do they mean the car or truck failed a state-mandated inspection? Road Warrior John Cichowski has provided no clues in his column for The Record, nor has he written about the smaller E-Z Pass tags or the temporary paper license plates on new vehicles now used in place of much larger pieces of paper taped to rear windows.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Here another front page from Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record that offers so much news for so few readers.

The second part of an expose on North Jersey's suburban heroin mills dominates Page 1, noting that laborers rely on "coffee grinders" that burn out "after being used thousands of times to pulverize the drugs into sniffable powder."

But nowhere in the graphics, photo captions and thousands of words on A-1 or on two continuation pages do readers with more legitimate goals in mind learn which brand of coffee grinder is the most reliable (A-6 and A-7).

This three-part series on heroin mills is the kind of story newspapers do in a bid to win the Pulitzer Prize, not serve readers.

A note at the end of today's piece says that funding for the project came from a grant for investigative reporting at Long Island University (A-7).

Fort Lee tempest

Staff Writer Herb Jackson is the fourth or fifth Record columnist to report on the political impact of Governor Christie's crony closing Fort Lee access lanes to the George Washington Bridge (A-1).

Was it a "traffic study" or political retribution against a Democratic mayor who refused to endorse the GOP bully for a second term?

Does anyone but The Record care? 

Ignoring the region's mounting transportation crisis and Christie's role in aggravating it since he took office in 2010, the Woodland Park daily is covering this Fort Lee traffic jam on four days in September as if the Port Authority suddenly declared all of its crossings toll free.

Bimbos' lawyers

What can you say about the third story on Page 1 today about the wealthy defense attorneys who are getting even richer acting as mouthpieces for one of those bimbos on "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" and her husband?

Gottlieb really knows how to waste readers' time.

Sloppy reporting

The story on the Local front today doesn't say the 16-year-old driver who "panicked" and drove in front of an NJ Transit train on Sunday had only a learner's permit (L-1).

Isn't it more likely the teen girl was texting or listening to loud music and didn't hear the train's horn before the crash?

Cake walk and talk

From the photo on BL-3 today, it looks like Marissa Lopez has the good sense not to eat any of the fattening, artery clogging cakes she sells for her wealthy boss, Buddy Valastro, who has gotten rich by hawking unhealthy food (Better Living front).

The same can't be said about Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, who wrote the breathlessly promotional story and thinks dessert is one of the two main food groups.