Today and every day, editors play elaborate catch-up game

Maywood Avenue at Passaic Street, above, and State Street near Hackensack City Hall, below, were closed this week, making local driving even more difficult than normal. In Maywood and Hackensack, officers sat in air-conditioned cruisers during the work. Is that the best use of our property tax dollars?

A long trench was cut into the State Street pavement at Central Avenue.

State Street traffic backed up for more than a block as two lanes of drivers had to turn right onto a narrow, two-way street.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Three days after an apparently disturbed man in a speeding pickup truck killed a woman at a farmers' market, readers of The Record find out he has a terrible driving history (A-1 and L-1).

Two days after Robin Williams' suicide, the paper's editorial director writes movingly about his father's struggle with depression and mental illness, but the column is buried in favor of a feel-good story about the comedian "rallying the troops" (A-1).

Courts rely on retirees

This bold Page 1 headline today sounds like news concerning a shortage of judges in Bergen County.

But the reporter comes clean in the second paragraph, noting the courts have used retired judges for 40 years (A-1).

Revel's luck runs out

The $2.4 billion Revel casino hotel was doomed to fail when it opened in April 2012 backed by Governor Christie's $200 million state tax-break package (A-1).

Contrary to today's Page 1 headline, Revel never was lucky, especially in view of $400-a-night rooms and the smallest casino in Atlantic City -- two features that turned off vacationers.

Yet, The Record's John Brennan has ignored them in story after story about its failed history.

More screw-ups

And a moronic news or copy editor actually wrote an awkwardly worded photo caption saying "Revel employees won't be celebrating" when the casino closes and they lose their jobs (A-8).

Who would "celebrate" losing their jobs in New Jersey or anywhere else? What insensitive idiocy.

Production Editor Liz Houlton gets paid six figures to catch such embarrassing work, and to limit embarrassing corrections, such as the one on A-2 today.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg might as well throw the money out of the window.

Razor burn

The lead anecdote in last Sunday's Page 1 takeout on Richard Nixon's life in Bergen County after he resigned the presidency is about a barber who cut his hair every two weeks, Domenic Parisi.

But Staff Writer Christopher Maag wrote in his first paragraph the shop was on "Maple Avenue in Park Ridge."

Below that, a small A-1 photo of the barber and a quote also identified Parisi as "Nixon's former Park Ridge barber."

Today's correction notes the A-1 article "misidentified the town" of the barbershop, but the street also was wrong.

Parisi's shop is on "North Maple Avenue in Ho-H0-Kus," the correction states, not Maple Avenue in Park Ridge (A-2).

Playing catch-up

I'm not sure what is going on at the morning and afternoon news meetings in the Woodland Park newsroom -- led by the august Martin Gottlieb, a big-time former editor at The New York Times.

But day after day, the print edition plays catch-up on so many stories that are full of unanswered questions thanks to the laziness or incompetence of local Assignment Editors Deirde Sykes and Dan Sforza.

The first question reporters should have asked about James T. Woetzel, 48, the man who killed Donna Marie Wine at the Hawthorne farmers' market on Sunday, is does he have a good driving record.

But the initial report on Monday didn't even identify the driver or the dead woman. (!!!!) 

Today's L-1 story says Woetzel "has a long record" of violations, including DWI, speeding and careless driving.

Come to think of it, the single story about the death of pedestrian Leyla Kan, 60, last Thursday in Leona didn't say anything about the driving history of Esperanza Jaramillo, 54, the school-bus driver, nor did reporters seek comment from her employer, Rainbow Transportation of Bergenfield.

Promoting Ervolino

The editors of Tuesday's Better Living cover couldn't wait to exploit the death of comic Robin Williams by promoting Staff Writer Bill Ervolino's 1989 interview with the comic genius.

But today, concern about mental illness and the depression that drove Williams to suicide is all over the paper -- in a letter to the editor, in a column by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and in a story on the same Better Living front (BL-1).

A letter on A-10 today from Robert L. Parker, chief executive officer of NewBridge Services Inc., seemed to speak for many of Williams' most ardent fans:

"We mourn the loss of such a brilliant performer and scratch our heads at how someone who seemed to have it all would end his life.

"Let's try to make something good come of Williams' death. Let's make it a rallying point to value mental health care at the same level of importance as physical health care."

The Record could help by writing about community organizations like NewBridge, instead of seizing every chance it get to promote itself and its staff.

Eye on The Record 

will return next week