Editors buy into Christie's fraudulent weight loss

Bergen County has started to recoup some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars it is paying North Jersey Media Group for 540 parking spaces at The Record's old headquarters in Hackensack while a new Justice Center is going up on the nearby courthouse lot. By Victor E. SassonEditorFor the second day in a row, The Record carries a glowing account of Governor Christie's successful weight loss, hoping readers will forget just how he got there...

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Losing weight and gaining credibility

This fading sign in the bathroom of an old NJ Transit rail car in New York's Penn Station -- part of the 4:31 express to Trenton on Friday afternoon -- includes an object below the lit cigarette that I can't identify. By Victor E. SassonEditorA Page 1 story in The Record today suggests Governor Christie is gaining credibility as a presidential contender now that he has had successful weight-loss surgery.The story appears to be part of the Woodland...

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Courts say Governor Christie is wrong for N.J.

An NJ Transit rail car in 1980 or 2013? This was one of the cars on the 4:31 local to Trenton from Manhattan on Friday afternoon.By Victor E. SassonEditorPage 1 of The Record today and Friday reports court rulings on affordable housing and gay marriage that reject Governor Christie's mean-spirited policies.Now, voters can add those major issues to all of the other areas Christie has been wrong on:Mass transit, hiking the minimum wage,  women's...

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Editing of stories is getting worse and worse

By Victor E. SassonEditorI can remember when The Record's local-news editors grudgingly gave a few paragraphs to report the death of a woman in her 20s who was killed by a car crossing Kinderkamack Road.An elderly driver who died when his car ran off Route 80 and hit a tree got the same treatment.Who were they? Did they have survivors? No, the editors seemed to say, the young woman and old man were just chopped liver.Today, in marked contrast, a report on the Local front goes into great detail about the death of a successful Korean immigrant who...

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Didn't Christie decision affect cost of Obamacare?

The vast majority of readers commute on NJ Transit buses and trains, not on jitneys, such as the one shown above, so why is The Record's John Cichowski spending so much time reporting on the so-called Spanish buses and so little effort addressing public transit problems that affect nearly all of us? See the Road Warrior column on L-1 today.By Victor E. SassonEditorI searched today's Page 1 story in The Record for Governor Christie' role in the cost...

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Mysterious removal of Ridgewood dirt is big news

Cubby's BBQ in Hackensack got a new sign last week, and now the steakhouse and ribs crib is offering "fresh salads." By Victor E. SassonEditorFew local news editors can compete with The Record's Deirdre Sykes.Sykes, the long-time head assignment editor, has ordered photos of nearly every fender bender and non-fatal rollover accident in North Jersey, and her shots of downed utility poles may soon be submitted for a Pulitzer Prize.Pole vaults Today,...

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Is today's local focus on Page 1 just a fluke?

A speeding pick-up truck being driven by a woman on the wrong side of Hudson Street in Little Ferry slammed into the front of an NJ Transit bus on Sunday afternoon, according to the bus driver, also a woman. The driver of the pick-up was taken to a hospital.By Victor E. SassonEditorFor a Monday, the strong local focus of The Record's front page today is a revelation, but is it permanent?What a difference. Readers don't have to suffer through...

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Booker's color -- not sports -- shaped who he is

Creative zoning in Hackensack. You can barely fit a dozen gorditas between a Mexican restaurant and a home on East Broadway, above. Churchgoers can have their oil changed while they're praising the Lord, below.By Victor E. SassonEditorA young, smiling Cory Booker appears on the front page of The Record today -- a perfect example of America's growing diversity.What's all this nonsense about Booker being molded by "North Jersey's gridirons"?I guess...

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GOP radicals deserve swift kick, not banner headlines

Our tax dollars at work. Hackensack Fire Department equipment producing these geysers were parked between Costco Wholesale and Pep Boys on Monday, near the Hackensack River, above and below. By Victor E. SassonEditorThe Record and other media love conflict, as today's lead Page 1 story on Tea Party crackpots demonstrates.Why don't newspaper, radio and TV reporters challenge Republican claims that the Affordable Care Act is a "train wreck" and a "job...

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Editors obsess over the wealthy and well-off

Hackensack residents continue to see the property tax burden shifting to them as Bergen County embarks on a mini building boom. Construction has begun on a new Justice Center and a few blocks away, on a maintenance and fuel-storage depot, above, opposite the county homeless shelter. Both will be tax exempt.By Victor E. SassonEditorLaboring under Production Editor Liz Houlton, The Record's copy editors still haven't mastered the art of headline...

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