Paper's obese editors long ignored our obese governor

A front-page "ANALYSIS" in The Record today credits four officials and declares that NJ Transit bus commuters no longer face long lines and delays in returning home from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, above. Now, will the Woodland Park daily finally take notice of the shortage of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In The Record's front-page story on Governor Christie's weight loss, experts note a candidate needs "to look like the part they are running for."

But the story never explains why Record reporters covering Christie's campaign in 2009 and his inauguration completely ignored his weight and whether he was fit to serve.

That may be because after working side-by-side with at least two obese editors in the newsroom, the reporters covering Christie didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.

And that continued for years as only the national media tried to find out how much Christie weighed, and late-night comedian David Letterman guessed the GOP bully had ballooned to 400 pounds.

See this Eye on The Record post from 2011:

Guess how much Christie weighs 

Better or not?

A front-page story last Wednesday and another one today declare an end to long lines and afternoon rush-hour delays for NJ Transit bus riders leaving the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan (A-1).

But Jay Holahan of Teaneck says in a letter to the editor today:

"As a 25-year commuter, I don't recognize any immediate improvements ...." (A-13).

News or snooze?

Residents of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other Bergen towns won't find anything about them in Local today.

The lead story in the section is a controversial proposal to replace Memorial Field in far-off Washington Township with artificial turf (L-1).

The local editors needed another Dean's List to fill their pages (L-2).

Poor food choices

Free-lancer Kate Morgan Jackson's list of a dozen "great food stores" for home cooks omits Whole Foods Market, Costco Wholesale and two of the best, Jerry's Gourmet & More and Balthazar Bakery, both in Englewood (BL-1).

Jackson appears unwilling to stray too far from her Upper Saddle River home.

On Wednesdays, the food blogger also supplies Better Living with unhealthy recipes, many filled with artery clogging cream and butter.

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He's big news on the front page, misidentified in Opinion

Late for work? On the way to the gym on Tuesday morning, I encountered this driver, who blew through a stop sign in Hackensack, and drove well over the speed limit on Spring Valley Avenue. Here, I was stopped behind the driver on Summit Avenue in Hackensack. One sticker says, "I brake for UFOs." The peace symbol obviously doesn't signal the hippie driver wants to coexist peacefully with other motorists.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's Woodland Park newsroom can't seem to get its accuracy act together.

On Sunday's front page, Bergen County Democratic Chairman Lou Stellato was portrayed as so powerful he could "make or break" a candidate seeking to become New Jersey's next governor.

But in the Opinion section, a photo of Stellato flummoxed everyone from the lowly photographer who took it to the production editor who gets paid six figures to prevent embarrassing errors from getting into the paper.

Lou who?

OK. I wouldn't know Stellato, if I sat next to him on the bus. But he doesn't look anything like James Tedesco, the Bergen County executive-elect.

Yet, the photo of Stellato ran with a caption identifying him as Tedesco, even though Tedesco was correctly identified in a photo caption on A-10 of the same edition.

The editors didn't run a correction on A-2 until Tuesday:

"A caption on Page O-4 on Sunday misidentified a man greeting supporters of Bergen County Executive-elect James Tedesco last Tuesday night. Pictured was Democratic Chairman Lou Stellato."

The problem may lie in how the lazy editors, including Production Editor Liz Houlton, have always relied on staff photographers to provide accurate spellings and identifications of the people in their photos, and have often failed to check the accuracy of the information.

More errors

A second correction on Tuesday noted the paper was wrong in identifying the type of crude oil carried by tanker cars through Bergen County.

The crude is from North Dakota, not Canada, as the L-1 story reported on Monday.

Today, A-2 corrects the misspelling of "the surname" of a high school soccer player that appeared on Nov. 4. "She is Katey Samarro," the editors note.

Bus woes ease?

A Page 1 story today reports the Port Authority has made some changes to ease the delays home-bound North Jersey commuters were facing leaving the antiquated bus terminal in midtown Manhattan during the rush hour.

But the story doesn't address the difficulty of getting to the gridlocked terminal, if you take a North Jersey bus into the city in the late afternoon.

Christie's future

Marc Schaeffer of Wyckoff is a letter writer who provides a perspective on Governor Christie's White House ambitions the editors and reporters are unable or unwilling to provide (A-10).

"Imagine the exuberance of the opposition research teams," if Christie decides to run, Schaeffer writes.

"The first vulnerability that will be exposed is the illusion of the New Jersey economic recovery Christie has advanced."

"Then, they will turn to the cesspool of patronage, cronyism and alleged financial impropriety at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey..."

You get the idea. 

Schaeffer analyzes Christie's chances of success in a way you have never seen in The Record, where the GOP bully has received overwhelmingly favorable coverage since he took office in 2010 and began his war on the middle and working classes.

Dead at 57

The Record's obituary writers can't be bothered trying to explain why so many African-American men die in their 50s, as you can see in today's story on rapper Henry Jackson of Tenafly (L-1).

Korean War veterans passing St. Patrick's Cathedral during Tuesday's parade up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Korean New Yorkers who fought in Vietnam also marched in the Veterans Day parade.

Hackensack news

Staff Writer Todd South didn't have anything to report about this past Monday's City Council meeting.

But today, the Hackensack reporter has an upbeat story on a Veterans Day ceremony for the nearly 30 veterans who now work for Hackenack University Medical Center (L-3).

Like thousands of other residents, I thought about the hospital on Monday, when I made my quarterly property tax payment of more than $4,300 to the city of Hackenack.

How much smaller would it have been, if the non-profit but tremendously profitable hospital made payments in lieu of taxes to Hackensack or returned anything in kind, like a couple of patrol cars or paving Prospect Avenue, which is torn apart by ambulances? 

If South is looking for story ideas, the hospital's not paying taxes on more than $180 million dollars in property could be it.

He certainly can't rely on his lazy local assignment editors to wake up one day and suggest the story.

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Investigators left their mark where pedestrian was killed

This is the Leonia intersection and crosswalk where Leyla Kan, 60, of Fort Lee was struck by a school bus on Thursday morning, then dragged and killed. The dark, curving mark visible on the Broad Avenue pavement on Saturday was left by the vehicle's tire as Kan was dragged about 71 feet.

The yellow box marked by investigators on the Broad Avenue crosswalk is said to be where Kan was when she was hit by the school bus, which was turning left from Fort Lee Road toward Englewood. The driver didn't yield to her, police said. The Record's one story on the fatal accident didn't say whether Kan was in the crosswalk.

These markings at the end of the heavy tire skid mark may indicate where Kan's body came to rest.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The door to Picnic Cafe, the pizza-and-pita restaurant owned by Leyla Kan, was open on Saturday and I could hear people seated inside fondly remembering the woman who was killed by a school bus as she crossed the street in Leonia on Thursday morning.

A notice on the window of the Palisades Park cafe said the family of the 60-year-old Fort Lee woman will receive friends from 10 a.m. to noon Monday at McCorry Bros. Funeral Home in Cliffside Park.

Picnic Cafe is on the same street, Broad Avenue, where Kan was killed.

Despite all the unanswered questions surrounding Kan's untimely death, The Record hasn't done a follow-up nor have the editors seen fit to call for a change in the law that would hold drivers criminally responsible for pedestrian deaths.

Only summonses

Esperanza Jaramillo, 54, the bus driver, received summonses for careless driving, failure to yield to a pedestrian who had the right of way and driving a vehicle with badly worn tires.

The poorly reported and edited story on Thursday noted Kan "was struck by the protruding passenger compartment of the minibus behind the door, apparently unseen by Jaramillo."

"Apparently unseen" was the best The Record could do to explain how the turning driver could hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk on Broad Avenue in Leonia, drag the victim 71 feet and not realize it.

Today's paper

The Record's Sunday edition today is one of the thinnest and most disappointing in recent memory.

The main element on Page 1 is a silly report by Staff Writer Christopher Maag on Richard "I Am Not a Crook" Nixon's life in North Jersey after he resigned the presidency in disgrace 40 years ago Saturday (A-1).

In another front-page story, The Record is finally getting around to discussing the impact of a shortage of judges on people involved in divorces and other cases in Bergen County (A-1).

I guess from the Woodland Park newsroom, Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza can't see all of the crime victims waiting for justice in Hackensack.

Road litter

On the Local front, the Road Warrior column continues to harp on the unprotected homes along Route 17 south where a Waldwick police radar officer was killed by a tractor-trailer on July 17 (L-1).

For his last Road Warrior column, Staff Writer John Cichowski made a rare trip to the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan -- where North Jersey commuters face long delays in getting home -- and looked for the most irrelevant story he could find among the gridlocked buses.

In the process, Cichowski put his foot in his mouth once again, according to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"In his Thursday column, the Road Warrior takes on the simplest of tasks and messes it up with his inept reporting about the statue of Ralph Kramden, the Jackie Gleason bus driver from 'The Honeymooners' TV series, in front of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and related mass transit issues.

"Road Warrior reports about the virtue of a bus driver calling riders on his cellphone to alert them that their bus was running late, and likened the virtue of this bus driver to Ralph Kramden.

"However, this virtue is contradicted by the facts, which the Road Warrior has frequently addressed in his columns, that the bus driver’s use of a cellphone, hand-held or hands free, greatly increases the risk of an accident and would endanger passengers. It also potentially violates New Jersey cellphone law if the driver is using a hand-held cellphone.

"As Ralph Kramden would frequently exclaim when faced with implausible distortions and sadly worthless statements: 'Har! Har! Hardy! Har! Har!'"

Cichowski also got the bus terminal's age wrong -- again -- and mistakenly reported that $800 million had been proposed to "refurbish" the building when, in fact, the money had been earmarked for a new bus parking garage in the city.

For a full report on the confused Cichowski's continuing ineptitude, see:  

Where am I and how do I get home?

Vegetable high

Readers are staring in disbelief at an Elisa Ung column on the Better Living front about a Sussex County farm, glorious vegetables and the Bergen County chefs who praise and use them in their kitchens (BL-1).

In her many years of food writing for The Record, Ung has shunned salads and become known as the queen of meat and desserts -- and just about any other artery clogging food.

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The Record's laughing stock spins another fictional tale

A bus emerging from the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey late one afternoon, above, as empty NJ Transit commuter buses jam the Route 495 helix on the way into the city to pick up North Jerseyans waiting in long lines at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, below.

What New Jersey commuters encounter most of all when they leave the terminal's Eighth Avenue exit in the morning are homeless panhandlers. Few pay attention to the statue of TV's Ralph Kramden on the way home, despite the silly Road Warrior column in The Record today.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

To address worsening delays faced by North Jersey commuters waiting for their buses home weekday afternoons, The Record sent reporter John Cichowski to spin a fictional tale outside the bus terminal in Manhattan.

It's hard to imagine that a commuter anticipating a long delay on a crowded bus platform -- and maybe even standing the whole way home -- would regard a statue of TV's Ralph Kramden as "a bright spot" (Road Warrior column on A-1).

If they even notice the statue as they race by it into the terminal and up the escalators to get on line and wait, wait, wait ....

"People have been complaining for more than a decade about the service [in the terminal]," Cichowski writes, without explaining why he has been doing his column for more than a decade and only recently started writing about the delays (A-8).

His column is also the first mention I've seen of "those people fainting in extra-long lines in waiting areas without air conditioning on summer afternoons" (A-1).

The Port Authority Bus Terminal -- not "station," as he refers to it on Page 1 -- and most, if not all, of the platforms are enclosed and air-conditioned.

Cichowksi as the Road Warrior has become a laughing stock after years of confused reporting on driving issues and an inability to get anything right.

Home-rule woes

Another story on the front page today -- allegations of physical assault against Bogota Mayor Tito Jackson -- makes you wonder why North Jersey residents seem so content with being ruled by morons (A-1).

For decades, The Record has defended, as well as largely ignored, the home-rule system of government -- with its duplication of services, high property taxes and petty corruption.

Residents have stopped noticing, judging from the small numbers who actually vote in council and school board elections.

Why hasn't the Woodland Park daily reported on the causes of voter apathy locally, in the state and in the nation?

The editors might find out their coverage --which emphasizes politics while ignoring issues -- might be to blame.

We're drowning

The front of Local brings the third straight day of coverage of Ridgewood's Charlotte Samuels, the grossly overweight 16-year-old swimmer who now appears to face competition in her bid to be the youngest to complete the "Triple Crown" (L-1).

That's open-water swimming, not horse racing.

An 18-year-old college student from Australia, Lachlan Hinds, has completed the three long-distance swims, including the 20.2-mile Catalina Channel in California, according to swimming reporter Abbott Koloff.

Hinds did it in 9 hours and 31 minutes -- less than half Samuel's 20 hours and 20 minutes.

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I take an NJ Transit bus from hell into Manhattan gridlock

An hour and 15 minutes after I boarded NJ Transit's 165 local in Hackensack on Wednesday afternoon, the driver was jockeying for position at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. In a few minutes, a Port Authority police officer ordered the driver -- who was trying to get into the left lane of the tube -- to use the right lane, denying us direct access to ramps of the midtown-Manhattan bus terminal and consigning us to gridlock hell on city streets.

My bus was immobilized on West 35th Street at 10th Avenue, where the traffic light turned red, green, red and green, but the driver couldn't turn the corner because of other buses blocking the way. I got off here and walked the seven blocks to the terminal, where I had to catch a subway uptown. Many other passengers asked to get off even before we reached this intersection.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I've taken NJ Transit buses into Manhattan for many years to enjoy restaurants, Broadway shows and jazz concerts, but my trip on Wednesday afternoon took me directly into gridlock hell.

After more than 90 minutes, my 3:02 p.m. local from Main Street and Euclid Avenue in Hackensack was stopped dead on West 35th Street at 10th Avenue.

And we couldn't turn the corner, because we were blocked by other buses that were frozen in lines heading to the ramps of the Port Authority's midtown Manhattan terminal.

Many of the buses had no passengers and were returning to the terminal from New Jersey to pick up weary commuters heading home to the suburbs.

Drivers' newspaper

Empty buses frozen in traffic have been cited as the chief reason for weekday afternoon delays at the antiquated terminal -- a story The Record ignored until late last year, when the paper published angry letters from commuters.

That led to a state legislative hearing, and a decision by the Port Authority board to approve $90 million in emergency terminal repairs, but the problem of empty buses caught in gridlock is expected to remain.

Beneath contempt

The Record's lazy local editors, including Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, have treated North Jerseyans who use mass transit as lower forms of life not worthy of the editorial coverage given drivers in the lame Road Warrior column, which once appeared at least three times a week.

No transportation reporter in memory has ever ridden a rush-hour bus or train to or from the city and reported on the quality of service, and the paper refuses to call for expansion of PATH, light rail and bus operations -- despite mounting traffic congestion.

Reverse lane needed

One change that could speed the empty buses into the city during the weekday afternoon rush hour is a reverse lane into the Lincoln Tunnel like the one that usually accommodates hundreds of commuter buses heading to Manhattan during the morning rush.

But an afternoon reverse lane wouldn't have helped me on Wednesday afternoon, because my bus approached the tunnel from Boulevard East, not the Route 495 helix.

The trip through the tunnel was smooth, but even buses that use the helix can get caught in Manhattan gridlock, if PA police deny them access to terminal ramps.

Bus trip from hell

Despite the nightmarish trip, I enjoyed a wonderful seafood dinner at Fulton Restaurant on East 75th Street, then walked uptown to the 92nd Street Y to hear Cecile McLorin Salvant perform the songs of Newark-born Sara Vaughan, backed by a quartet. 

The young singer was just divine.

But next time, if I want to go into the city at mid-afternoon, I'll drive, despite the traffic and extra cost.

The MCI Cruiser buses I rode to and from the city on Wednesday have seen much better days. 

They are noisy, with screeching rear brakes; the ride is rough and interior panels rattle. It took several tries to find a seat back that wasn't broken. 

And when drivers speed around curves on Boulevard East, there is nothing to hold onto. 

Today's paper

On the conflict in Gaza, The Record continues to run sensational body count stories from The Associated Press, denying readers the kind of insight provided by WNYC-FM and other media outlets (A-1).

This morning, National Public Radio reported Hamas was able to acquire sophisticated arms, including rockets, that crossed the border from Egypt during the year-long reign of another militant group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

As for the cement and other material that went into building the tunnels Hamas uses to send terrorists into Israel, they were brought in when Israel eased the blockade of Gaza.

Sanitizing the news

Another front-page story -- on the resignation of the state's chief economist after optimistic tax-revenue predictions -- doesn't mention that Governor Christie vetoed a surcharge on millionaires at least three time, shooting the state Treasury in the foot (A-1).

The densely written, complicated story, from Trenton reporter John Reitmeyer, seems aimed more at accountants and actuaries than long-suffering property tax payers.

Doughnut delivery

What can you say about the Bergen County sheriff's plan to acquire two armored vehicles, weighing nearly 15 tons each, except that they can carry a lot of doughnuts and boxes of Joe (A-1)?

All the armored vehicles and SWAT teams in the world couldn't have prevented a gunman from invading Westfield Garden State Plaza last Nov. 4, and firing random shots that panicked shoppers and employees before he committed suicide.

For that, you need good security at the mall, not military surplus.

Law & Order section

I suppose Editor Marty Gottlieb intended the Page 1 armored-vehicle story as an appetizer for today's Local Section, which is filled with Law & Order news.

The most sensational crime is the theft of "nine luxury cars" in Paramus since January, with drivers inviting the disappearances by leaving their keys in the unlocked vehicles or the engines running (L-1).

That is just one of more than a dozen police stories in the thin section, which is devoid of Hackensack municipal news for yet another day.

There is even a photo of three officers being promoted to sergeant in the city of Passaic just to show the editors don't ignore the impoverished city (L-2). 

On Wednesday afternoon, this line of buses on 10th Avenue and West 38th Street stretched back to West 35th Street -- where my bus was frozen at the light -- and beyond.

Bus drivers say you can't get to the terminal from here.

Empty buses on the way to the terminal were immobilized on a side street.

Another empty bus.

Buses stretch as far as the eye can see, above and below.

As I walked to the terminal, I passed buses that had finally reached access ramps, above and below. A pigeon scored a direct hit on the top of my baseball cap, adding insult to injury. But I was able to clean my cap in a terminal restroom before getting on the subway.

One small improvement inside the bus terminal are touch screens listing departure times and gates, but that doesn't guarantee your bus home will leave on time. 

After 10 p.m., North Jersey residents have to catch NJ Transit buses home at one of the 300 gates, above. My 165 local was scheduled to leave Gate 325 at 11:35 p.m. on Wednesday, but was about 15 minutes late. A young woman says the 165 is "always late." On board were 56 people, including standees, and even though the driver was speeding most of the time, the trip back to Hackensack, with frequent stops, took more than an hour.

Seen from the bus: On the way to the city on Wednesday, I saw that the Little Ferry Circle is history, though construction continues.

Late Tuesday morning, I rode a packed 7 train from Queens to Manhattan. Another passenger said it is even worse during the rush hour.

A homeless man taking a nap on Tuesday, oblivious to his surroundings on the subway platform at 42nd Street.

At Penn Station in Manhattan, noisy fans are needed to help cool the hall used by NJ Transit train riders.

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It's not enough to criticize the PA behemoth from afar

The Record has written thousands of words criticizing the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, but no reporter has actually boarded a bus to the city or joined the long lines of home-bound commuters who face delays on the platforms, where spring-loaded seating resembles a torture device outlawed by the Geneva Convention, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How does a North Jersey newspaper cover the region's crowded public transit system?

If you are Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record, you buy into what the lazy local assignment editors have done for decades:

You send reporters to cover the meetings of the mass-transit agencies, including NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

In recent months, thousands of critical words about the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan have merely parroted complaining letters to the editor, a state legislative hearing and the experiences of the bi-state agency's new chairman.

Rouse et al.

Commuters will cheer news the Port Authority board on Wednesday voted to approve $90 million in emergency repairs this year (A-1).

But that emergency spending could have come a lot sooner, if only the paper's transportation reporters actually rode mass transit and reported on the quality of the service, as the New York papers did for years with their subway columns.

A couple of years ago, Staff Writer Karen Rouse did report firsthand on the afternoon stampede for trains at New York's Penn Station, but Rouse apparently has never actually tried to get a seat on a city bound train or bus during the morning rush hour.

She also refused to ride the decrepit local buses in North Jersey -- relied on mostly by people who can't afford cars -- in the years before NJ Transit replaced them with new "talking" buses.

Boburg, Cichowski, Sforza

Shawn Boburg, who covers the Port Authority, has never reported on the need to expand the PATH commuter rail system or the reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel -- two parts of his beat.

The befuddled Road Warrior, John Cichowski, is hopelessly lost in the suburbs, and the so-called commuting column he has written for more than a decade has been taken hostage by drivers whose sanity is questionable. 

Anti-transit reporting

Of course, none of this is a surprise to readers who remember long, anti-light rail stories aimed at Englewood and Tenafly readers from then-reporter Tom Davis that were ordered by Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, himself a failed transportation reporter.

Lines of home-bound commuters are as long as ever at the Manhattan hub, but the Port Authority did install touch-screen terminals on the main level that show bus routes and, more importantly for occasional users, the number of the gate where they can catch a bus.

I haven't seen that improvement reported in The Record.

Today, an editorial on the new Port Authority chairman, John Degnan, and emergency terminal repairs is careful to avoid reviewing all that Governor Christie has done to hurt mass transit (A-12).

Forgotten responsibility

I chuckled at Boburg's lead paragraph this morning:

"For years, the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan has seemed frozen in time, a forgotten giant in the agency's vast portfolio of transportation facilities" (A-1).

Indeed. The terminal has long been forgotten in the Hackensack and Woodland Park newsrooms, too.

More corrections

Three long corrections appear on A-2 today, including a rare error in a local obituary.

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In today's thin Sunday paper, more cockeyed columns

If you have an off-road vehicle, race over to Berry Street, a single block between Prospect and Summit avenues in Hackensack, where the potholes stretch along nearly half of its length, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One definition of "news" is a report about something that has happened.

But Page 1 of The Record today is remarkable for stories that speculate or try to predict the future.

Surely, Staff Writer Scott Fallon could have led the paper with a story about the environment that didn't try to panic readers in a dozen towns over the potential derailment and explosion of trains carrying "millions of gallons of highly combustible crude oil" (A-1).

More stonewalling?

Cristina Renna will probably take the Fifth when she appears before the state legislative panel investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures, just like other Governor Christie insiders (A-1).

Doesn't Charles Stile have anything better to write about? This isn't a news column; it's a short story.

Forced busing

On the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski has finally emerged from a fog to report on the long lines of commuters waiting for buses every weekday afternoon at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan (L-1).

The crowding had been evident for about two years, but you can tell from his rambling column he has never taken an NJ Transit bus to or from the city, and has no idea what he is talking about.

This piece on major delays appears months after angry commuters wrote letters to The Record's editor, asking for relief. 

He commits one major error -- Christie killed the construction of two rail tunnels into the city, not one, as he reports on L-3 -- so you have to wonder what else is incorrect in his long, winding column.

More space to park buses in Manhattan would be great, but a reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel during the afternoon rush hour would provide an immediate solution to the delays caused by the need to return empty buses to the city.

The Port Authority, which operates the tunnel and bus terminal, has refused to add a second express bus lane in the morning to boost capacity, and would probably oppose one in the afternoon.

Any expansion of the bus lane would deprive the bi-state agency of toll revenue from drivers.

Break it up

A permanent solution would certainly follow breaking up the behemoth agency into one unit that operates public transit -- including an expanded PATH rail system -- and another that handles toll operations.

In the entire eight-page Business section, there is only one story carrying the byline of a reporter working for the Woodland Park daily.

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A top New York editor loses his way in the suburbs

NJ Transit has been slammed by the media, but the agency may not be to blame for vastly underestimating the number of Super Bowl fans who took the train to and from the game in East Rutherford (33,000), resulting in hours-long waits for some of them, The Record reports today. About 2,000 parking passes and 300 charter bus permits, which could have accommodated 15,000 fans, were never used, the newspaper says.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

A little over 2 years ago, Marty Gottlieb ended a stellar career at The New York Times and took over The Record's cramped Woodland Park newsroom.

But it soon became evident the Borg publishing family didn't give the new editor the go-ahead to clean house after a disastrous tenure by Francis "Frank" Scandale, his predecessor, who was fired.

The same lazy, incompetent local-news editor kept their jobs, the same burnt-out columnists wrote endlessly and often inaccurately about all manner of nonsense, and -- in the absence of any meaningful editing or fact-checking -- the quality of the paper declined dramatically.

Today, it's clear that Gottlieb, who traded Paris for Paramus and Paterson, has lost his way in the suburbs.

On top of news?

The New York City media are obsessed with snow removal and the quality of mass transit -- two big North Jersey issues Gottlieb hasn't touched.

The paper's chief transportation reporter, Road Warrior John Cichowski, suffers from early Alzheimer's or dementia, and writes almost exclusively about driving.

Karen Rouse, the reporter who covers NJ Transit, has spent most of her time trying to find out who was responsible for putting hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment in harm's way during Superstorm Sandy.

TV's local scoop

On Monday night, CBS 2 News crowed about an exclusive -- the belated bulldozer clearing of bus stops on Route 4 in Hackensack and Route 3 in Clifton that had been marooned by high snowbanks.

Hackensack Mayor John Labrosse braved the sub-freezing weather to tell the TV reporter he acted when he saw the CBS 2 video of the dangerous conditions a few days earlier. 

Filler, not news

Today, the Local section doesn't carry any photos of dangerous bus stops. 

Instead, there are photos of uncollected Christmas trees in Ridgewood (L-3), and pothole repairs on Route 46 west in Little Falls (L-6), where the local editors had to fill a big hole with a long obituary for actor Clint Eastwood's agent, a man no one has ever heard of. 

Missed story

On Sunday, a letter to the editor complained of long lines and missing NJ Transit rush-hour buses leaving the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

Richard G. Simon of New Milford said that for the past three weeks, the waiting time for the No. 167 and No. 177 buses averaged about 45 minutes.

Last Thursday, he wrote, there was a line of several hundred people that snaked down the escalator to the floor below the platform, but only two of the scheduled buses arrived between 4:50 p.m. and 5:40 p.m.

You've never seen transportation reporters Rouse or Cichowski reporting on the continuing problems in the crowded bus terminal or the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains. 

NFL screw-ups

Today's front-page NJ Transit story is about the disappointing Super Bowl, suggesting the media was too hasty in piling on the agency for keeping thousands of fans waiting to board trains to and from the game (A-1 and A-6).

Apparently, the National Football League screwed up by vastly overstating how many fans would drive or take buses to the East Rutherford stadium.

Another front-page story breathlessly reports on "new or amended subpoenas" in the Bridgegate scandal (A-1), even as pedestrians have to walk in the street because of uncleared sidewalks.

More errors

Readers are familiar with cost overruns on public projects, but with Cichowski, they've seen numerous factual overruns, as in his L-1 Sunday column on removal of the Little Ferry Circle and safety improvements on the Route 46 bridge over the Hackensack River.

The addled Road Warrior reported the project will cost $39 million, but The Record's earlier story and the state Department of Transportation Web site list the cost as $30 million.

Cichowski said a man's sister was killed "near the proposed work site," but later noted she was killed by a car while walking across the bridge, which is a major part of the proposed work.

Irrelevant detail

And the befuddled reporter wrote that "despite the construction of two interstates ... in the 1960s (Routes 80 and 95), Route 46 has remained a popular route to Teterboro Airport."

That's likely because neither interstate goes to Teterboro.  

See a full blow-by-blow exposing Cichowski's errors and hilarious exaggerations on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Readers are ready to pull out their hair

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