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| Construction or reconstruction continued on Tuesday in front of Starbucks Coffee in Hackensack, which is on the ground floor of the Alfred N. Sazari Medical Arts Building at 360 Essex St. Let's hope the doctors in the building have a better record than the company that built the sidewalks and parking lot, which seem to need repair every couple of years. The garage in another Sanzari medical building across Summit Avenue was closed for more than a year while repairs were made. |
Editor's note: My copy of The Record was delivered about three hours late this morning, and weighed more than 4 pounds. Most of that was advertising, and the news, features and sports sections weighed only about 7 ounces. Today, I present Big Turkey awards to the paper's staff. Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers.
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
The first Big Turkey award goes to the biggest tom in the newsroom, Editor Marty Gottlieb, who seems intent on putting out a suburban edition of The New York Times, where he had a long, successful career.
That can be seen almost every day in front pages that mix soft and hard news; and international, national, state and local stories.
Page 1 stories and columns also have gotten longer in the style of The Times -- way too long, in many cases -- but the quality of the editing has declined dramatically
Gottlieb gets a second Big Turkey award for not cleaning house after he took over in January 2012 nor taking away column-writing duties from burned-out Staff Writers Mike Kelly, John Cichowski, Charles Stile, Bill Ervolino and other toms, each of whom get their own award.
Haggard hen
Production Editor Liz Houlton also gets a Big Turkey award for all of the serious errors that routinely appear in Cichowski's Road Warrior column -- and are never corrected -- as well as all of the corrections published on Page A-2.
The news editors, copy editors and page proofers under her supervision miss too many screw-ups to be taken seriously, and the paper's credibility suffers as a result.
Houlton also can be faulted for continuing to use outdated thumbnail photos for some of the columnists, including Kelly, whose unflattering shit-eating grin can be seen on Page 1 today.
Assignment turkeys
Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, get Big Turkey awards for using the police blotter, court news and non-fatal accident and fire photos as crutches to fill pages that should have more local news on them.
The Record of Woodland Park is doing a better job of covering Hackensack, but not in identifying many critics of the current City Council as those who were thrown out of power and lost patronage in 2013.
Trenton turkeys
Stile, Staff Writer Melissa Hayes and other members of the Trenton staff each get Big Turkey awards for channeling Governor Christie, including his Reform Agenda, Jersey Comeback and Stronger Than the Storm public relations campaigns.
How many stories and columns on Christie's politics and his chances to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 are readers expected to stomach?
In the process, these reporters and their editors have irresponsibly ignored how Christie rules by vetoes and bullying, not by the compromise he claims, and how he has wrecked the state economy.
Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin also gets a Big Turkey award for using mass transit, but not blasting Christie for policies that have increased traffic congestion and tolls, and hurt train and bus service.
Plump food hen
Staff Writer Elisa Ung gets a Big Turkey award -- this one pumped full of the harmful animal antibiotics she routinely ignores -- for her split personality.
As chief restaurant reviewer, her Friday columns are supposed to critically evaluate restaurants, but she devotes too many of her Sunday columns to promote wealthy owners and chefs who advertise in the paper.
(The Record's 2015 Dine Out Guide to local restaurants was produced by the advertising department, and the 72 glossy pages included only advertisers.)
The Corner Table column Ung writes should be renamed, if she isn't going to get serious about fighting for consumers on such issues as tipping, low food quality and high wine markup.
Food Editor Esther Davidowitz and freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson each get a Big Turkey award for unhealthy weekly recipes that recommend large quantities of artery clogging butter and heavy cream.
Stephen A. Borg
Publisher Stephen A. Borg gets a Big Turkey award for allowing news coverage that promotes the fortunes of his biggest advertisers, including mall and highway retailers.
In the process, North Jersey Media Group and The Record abandoned Hackensack in 2009 and virutally ended coverage of that city's downtown, as well as other struggling Main Streets in Teaneck and Englewood.
The year before, Borg also enriched himself at the expense of employees, who were hit by the biggest downsizing in company history only months after he used an NJMG mortgage to buy a $3.65 million McMansion in Tenafly.
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