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| A center divider has been added to Bergen Turnpike in Little Ferry, near the entrance to a shopping center. It's not clear whether the new barrier is related to the elimination of the nearby Little Ferry Circle. The badly buckled, flood-prone entrance road to the shopping center and its lone tenant, a Korean supermarket, was repaved. |
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
Saving heroin addicts from overdoses is a worthy cause, but it affects far fewer people than the environmental and quality of life news readers find below the fold of The Record's front page today.
And you've got to wonder why Editor Martin Gottlieb gave into Republican hysteria over Benghazi, and led the paper with the arrest of the suspected leader of the September 2012 attack, unleashing even more political debate (A-1).
Garfield Manager Tom Duch and Englewood Cliffs Mayor Joseph Parisi Jr. appear on the lower half of Page 1 today -- and Parisi is urging "compromise" on the height of the LG Electronics building on top of the Palisades (A-1).
The first paragraph describes "a 143-foot-tall office building." Why not give the number of planned floors or stories?
Lazy local editors
The local assignment editors are squandering an opportunity to examine whether such political dynasties as the Parisis of Englewood Cliffs and the Calabrese family of Cliffside Park are really running their towns in the best interests of residents.
That certainly wasn't the case in the decades Hackensack was run by the Zisa family, but the Woodland Park daily's exposes came too late and delayed reform.
Now, the paper runs stories filled with the sour grapes of Zisa family allies who find themselves out of power, including Lynne Hurwitz, the Democratic municipal chairwoman.
See no Christie
On A-3, a story on New Jersey residents paying the highest premiums for health insurance has been carefully edited to eliminate all mention of Governor Christie.
The GOP bully, as you may recall, refused to set up a state marketplace or even use millions in federal funds to promote the federal Affordable Care Act.
As a result, residents of New Jersey and 35 other states with conservative, anti-Obama leaders were thrown onto the clearly overburdened federal marketplace.
Minor controversy
On the Local front today, the big news is the Ridgewood Planning Board rejecting the expansion plan of The Valley Hospital, a story that is of interest to a small number of residents who live near the campus (L-1).
The first paragraph contains an extra word, testament to the careful editing found throughout the paper.
Readers who wonder why The Valley Hospital controversy got so much more press than the far larger expansions of Hackensack University Medical Center might consider the onetime presence of Jennifer A. Borg on the HUMC board.
Borg is vice president and general counsel of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record.
She is listed as a board member on LinkedIn, which also says she serves on the hospital's Foundation Board and Advisory Committee, but that listing may be out of date.
The Hurwitzes
Another L-1 story -- on the reappointment of Howard Hurwitz as the $136,000-a-year executive director of the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority -- doesn't mention Lynne Hurwitz, his wife, who is receiving a state pension of $2,499.70 a month.
According to The Bergen Dispatch Web site, the pension is based in part on her annual salary of more than $97,000 as deputy chief of staff for Dennis McNerny, a Democrat who was then Bergen County executive.
Lynne Hurwitz, often called the power behind the Zisa family in Hackensack, lost her job when Republican County Executive Kathleen Donovan took over.
Critics said one of Lynne Hurwitz's duties was to water the plants in the county administration building.
More filler stories
Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza rely on police, court and related news to fill their thin local-news section, as they did on Tuesday.
They also run two wire-service obituaries of obscure people.
Not good for you
Someone should tell food blogger Kate Morgan Jackson of Upper Saddle River that it doesn't make sense to run a recipe for "squash sushi" filled with artery clogging goat cheese and then urge readers to "drizzle the teeniest amount of [heart-healthy] olive oil" over the rolls (BL-3).
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