Train station opus raises more questions than it answers

New Jersey-bound commuters in the NJ Transit Waiting Room at Penn Station in Manhattan. The Record's Sunday story on a new train station seemed to have a big hole in it -- about the size of two more Hudson River rail tunnels.

When an NJ Transit train is assigned a track in the Amtrak-owned station 10 minutes before its scheduled departure, commuters scramble to get a seat.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Thousands upon thousands of words on the potential expense of Amtrak buying land for a new midtown Manhattan rail station ran under a big, black headline on Sunday:

The $1B question

But the story on new trans-Hudson rail tunnels for New Jersey commuters by transportation reporter Christopher Maag of The Record raised its own $2 billion question.

Why is there no mention of the Moynihan Station Project, billed as the new Manhattan home for Amtrak and now under construction across the street from Penn Station in Manhattan? 

According to the Moynihan Station Development Corp. Web site:

"This project will create access to the Penn Station tracks and platforms through the James A. Farley Post Office Building for the first time.  The new entrances at the corners of 8^thAvenue and 31^st and 33^rd Streets will provide commuters with access to an expanded and ADA-compliant concourse underneath the Farley Building that will serve tracks 5 – 21 and serve as the commuter concourse for Moynihan Station."

It's also difficult to find a point of view in Maag's story on whether new Hudson River rail tunnels and a new station are essential to help relieve increasing traffic congestion -- no matter what they cost.

In the past decade, The Record's editors and reporters also have ignored the Port Authority's refusal to expand rail and bus transit.

Consumer news?

If Maag's front-page opus on Sunday didn't put you to sleep, a story on the Business front should do the trick:

Retail's brave new world

Inside Business, there is not one but two stories on the Detroit Auto Show (B-2 and B-6).

Izod Center

If you missed two front-page stories on the Izod Center last week, take a look at Columnist Mike Kelly's rewrite on Sunday's Opinion front (O-1).

Is there anything new here? Fresh? No. 

That shit-eating grin in his thumbnail photo is the reporter's way of saying he's pulled another fast on his editors and readers.

Angelo's Ristorante

Sunday's The Corner Table column from Staff Writer Elisa Ung reports Angelo's Ristorante hasn't changed much in 60 years (BL-1).

Waiters still wear tuxedos, a classy touch, but the montage on the Better Living front has readers doing a double take at the photo of founder Angelo Piccirillo, especially around his shirt collar.

Juxtaposed with his white collar is a triangular piece of white tablecloth from the dining room photo. That's pretty weird -- and sloppy.

Today's paper

As property taxes have increased, The Record has ignored the stubborn lack of consolidation in the nearly 90 towns in Bergen and Passaic counties.

Any possible move toward greater efficiency gets the editors so exited they run the speculation on Page 1, as you can see in today's report on a third town joining the Becton Regional High School District.

Second look

Staff Writer John Cichowski clearly didn't spend his vacation trying to make his so-called commuting column more accurate, according to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"In his Jan. 11 column, the Road Warrior awakened from his comatose state of not publishing for four weeks and reached new lows with an unsubstantiated exaggerated claim that current falling gas prices below $2 willkill 9,000 more people annually in the United States due to more driving based on lower gas prices.

"Road Warrior reported on this claim of a sociology professor from South Dakota based on a minor study, which was also not in any way representative of the entire U.S., as admitted by the professor, that was disputed by every demographer and traffic safety expert that the Road Warrior referenced.

"This Road Warrior column repeatedly gave 'false' credence and ended with this claptrap claim, even though the Road Warrior completely forgot that he was working on a column published two days later that showed NJ road fatalities for drivers and passengers reached new historical lows in 2014, even though gas prices have plummeted from near $4 per gallon in 2013 to around $2 per gallon. 

See: Road Warrior poses a danger to credibility

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Stupid headline hides truth about GOP-led Congress

A sign in the unisex bathroom at Pushcart Coffee on Ninth Avenue and 25th Street in Manhattan.

Shivering tourists on a walking tour of Manhattan's Theater District on Saturday, another frigid, sunless day.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A headline declaring "deep divide in D.C." certainly is familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper in the last few years.

But after months of hysteria in The Record and other media about Tea Party radicals and other Republicans taking full control of Congress and dismantling President Obama's health care law and other initiatives, reality has set in.

On Monday's front page, more than two months after the 2014 election, Columnist Herb Jackson reports voter turnout was pushed down "nationally to its lowest point since World War II," and ending gridlock is "overly optimistic, to say the least."

Jackson blames voter apathy on a "bitter election," but the media also are at fault for ignoring issues in favor of conflict and sound bites, and failing to reveal the lies in GOP attack ads.

However, the main headline on his column used the old "deep divide in D.C." and ignored the real truth -- no end to gridlock in the new Congress, despite Republican majorities.

Monday's A-2 carried another long correction of a story in the Local news section, the one on Sunday about Brendan Jordan, 7, the New Milford boy who died in a school accident.

Today's paper

Page 1 today is dominated by Staff Writer John Cichowski's Road Warrior column -- based on press releases, phone interviews and fatal accident reports (A-1).

If the past is any guide, Cichowski likely has committed a number of errors in citing state police data, and he continues to refer to pedestrian deaths as "crashes."

Weak laws

Cichowski should be calling for stronger laws to hold drivers criminally responsible for killing a pedestrian.

Now, drivers can use the excuse that they "didn't see" the pedestrian as a get-out-of jail card.

Older drivers

The challenges facing older drivers is another issue the lazy, demented reporter has neglected in the more than 11 years he has been writing the column.

That can be plainly seen today in the two photos that run in Local, where head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, hold up another older driver to ridicule.

Look at the helpless expression on the white-haired woman's face -- as captured by an ambulance-chasing freelancer -- after she drove her 2009 Honda Civic "over a guardrail and retaining wall and down an embankment at a condominium complex" in Ridgewood (L-3).

Of course, the woman didn't "drive" her car through the guardrail on Monday afternoon.

She likely mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal, a common error for elderly drivers.

Is driver retraining available for older drivers such as this woman? 

Cichowski could care less, and Sykes and Sforza fear any such public service stories would deprive them of the filler accident photos they so desperately need to complete their weak local news report.  

Second look

On Sunday, Columnist Mike Kelly criticized Governor Christie for not attending the funeral of another pedestrian, Cliffside Park Special Police Officer Stephen Petruzzello, who was killed by a driver who claimed she didn't see him (Opinion front).

But Kelly gets absolutely no editing, and thinks readers have nothing better to do than plow through a dozen long introductory paragraphs about Christie the football fan and a gubernatorial vacation.

The criticism appears on the continuation page, and many readers may have been so bored by all the background they never saw it.

It seems silly to tell someone who has been a columnist for more than 20 years: Put your criticism in the first paragraph and leave the background for later.

But it's necessary with Kelly, one of the paper's chief word pushers.

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Another Marty Gottlieb front page that doesn't affect us

In Manhattan, workers are trimming the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, above. The tree-lighting ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 3.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A sensational child-abuse trial in federal court involving an Army couple from Mount Holly. 

Rewrites of two other newspapers -- on sports wagering in America, and the resignation of Governor Christie's chief of staff, who lost hope of ever becoming New Jersey's attorney general.

And a real fluke: A Morris County homeowner who was awarded his house after the creditors missed a legal deadline.

This last story carries an inaccurate headline: The house isn't "free" since Gordon A. Washington paid $131,000 of the mortgage before defaulting, as noted in the A-1 data box.

This is another front page that is irrelevant to the lives of the vast majority of North Jersey readers -- straight from the mind of Marty Gottlieb, the sophisticated New Yorker who is editor of The Record.

Where is the tree?

I guess the staff photographer sent to cover a "living memorial" to Waldwick Police Officer Christopher Goodell was in a rush to get to his next assignment.

The photo appears on Page 1 and the Local front, but doesn't show the copper beech tree planted to honor the cop who died when a truck driver plowed into his radar patrol car in July (A-1 and L-1).

HUMC profits

An L-1 story says nearly 200 Hackensack University Medical Center employees have accepted early retirement packages, but adds the non-profit "will hire far more people in the next 90 days than the number who are leaving."

The story also notes "two credit reporting agencies said that Hackensack -- a 775-bed medical center with $1.4 billion in annual revenue -- was doing very well financially."

As written, this story belongs on the Business page, not the Local news front, filled as it is with financial jargon.

The story also is missing any explanation of why anyone but the affected employees should care.

Nature center

The Record has done a terrible job of explaining the opposition to expansion of the Tenafly Nature Center (L-1).

Residents voted against the proposal in a Nov. 4 referendum, but today's story notes local officials had called a larger center "a boon to Tenafly."

The story also says "both sides traded accusations of misinformation," but I cannot recall the paper making any attempt to separate fact from fiction before the election.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in Tenafly.

The Woodland Park daily also didn't do much to separate fact from fiction when hysterical Tenafly officials turned thumbs down on extension of NJ Transit's electrified light-rail line to the wealthy borough.  

Second looks

November is Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, but the first story that mentioned the disease likely was the obituary of former Rep. Marge Roukema on Thursday's front page.

Roukema, who was elected to the House of Representatives 11 time, was one of those "socially moderate, fiscally conservative Northeastern Republicans [who] became increasingly rare in the years after she cast her last House vote in 2002."

The obituary by Staff Writer Herb Jackson includes praise from Democrats and Republicans alike, but Christie's name is conspicuously absent.

Roukema retired in November 2001 after narrow victories in primaries "in which challenger Scott Garrett of Sussex County said she was too liberal."

Hollywood reporters

Did you see Thursday's Better Living cover story on "a new spate of movies on journalists"?

Do any of the new or old movies from La La Land even acknowledge the mediocrity of so many local daily newspapers like The Record that are struggling to stay relevant in our digital age?

And where is the analysis of unchallenged "sound bites" that have now migrated to print journalism?

In a brief on Thursday's front page, The Record quoted House Speaker John Boehner, who called the climate deal between the U.S. and China "the latest example of the president's crusade against affordable, reliable energy," an apparent reference to coal.

A longer Boehner quote appeared in The Washington Post story on Thursday's A-10, but that paper never reported whether the ultraconservative Republican is referring to coal generating plants, which are the direct cause of mercury in fish and air pollution.

The latter probably has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. 

More errors

As he has shown so many times before, Road Warrior John Cichowski is unable to accurately report data from the annual state police report on road deaths (Friday's L-1).

Here is a summary from the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"In his Friday column, the Road Warrior goes down his mistake-filled wormhole of reporting about another New Jersey State Police annual report (this time for 2013) on roadway fatalities.

"The Road Warrior indicated that the increase in fatalities for Bergen County pedestrians and truck drivers was part of a 'trend.'

"They are not part of any trend.

"Bergen pedestrian deaths have gone down in 3 of the last 6 years. Tractor-trailer deaths have gone down in 2 of the last 4 years and are on pace to go down this year.

"Road Warrior indicated that the 2010 law requiring drivers to stop for to pedestrians in marked crosswalks has 'driven down' fatalities.

"Unfortunately, pedestrian deaths have gone up every year since 2010, except for last year, and are on pace to greatly exceed last year’s record low number of fatalities."

See: Road Warrior reporting mistakes climb

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Ebola is getting bigger play than the upcoming election

On Friday night, the streets around Clinton Place in Hackensack were packed with cars and costumed children making their trick-or-treat rounds as police directed traffic and watched over pedestrians. Bad weather cancelled Halloween festivities in 2012 and 2013.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Despite all of the front-page headlines, New Jersey still hasn't had a single confirmed case of Ebola.

Yet, Governor Christie and other politicians continue to run off at the mouth, and The Record continues to cover the epidemic that isn't.

Here comes Charles Stile to bore readers with another political column on the Ebola response of the GOP bully and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (A-1).

Another columnist, Mike Kelly, pushes hundreds of other words around on the Obama administration's response to Ebola, but loses readers almost immediately by flashing a shit-eating grin in his thumbnail photo (O-1).

Any journalist who allows his editors to use a dated photo that makes him look like a fool can't be taken seriously.

These Halloween scenes on Clinton Place were photographed on Thursday afternoon, above and below.

What about the election?

The editors haven't been paying as much attention to Election Day on Tuesday, when residents of the 5th Congressional District, which includes Bergen County, can get rid of Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, a Tea Party idol who is against just about everything (L-3).

An e-mail from challenger Roy Cho, an attorney in Hackensack, notes:

Daylight Savings Time Begins Today!

Make Sure You Set Your Clock Back One Hour

Election Day is Tuesday!

Make Sure You Don't Let Scott Garrett Set the Country Back

 

Since Elected in 2002, Garrett Voted Against:

 

Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act

Equal Pay for Women

 Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Protecting the Medicare and Social Secuity Guarantee

Reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act of 1973

Raising the Minimum Wage

Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell

and a whole lot more...

Cho has been endorsed by The Record, The Star-Ledger, the New Jersey Jewish Standard and other newspapers, but Garrett hasn't received any editorial support in his bid for a seventh term.

Losing facts in the dark

Today, Road Warrior John Cichowski reports on dark street lights and highway lights, suggesting they are the reason he has completely lost sight of accuracy (L-1).

In his column last Sunday, Cichowski discussed reports of "teen violence" when he meant to say "violence against teens" tied those red decals on the license plates of young drivers, according to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers.

The page pits a fact-loving retired engineer against an addled columnist who has failed miserably to focus on issues important to commuters:

"In his Sunday column [Oct. 26], the Road Warrior continues to repeat mistaken and meaningless information and deadly, unsafe, and illegal advice for parents and teenagers about New Jersey's Graduated Driving License (GDL) laws and its impact on young drivers.

"Road Warrior indicated that GDL safety restrictions bar teenage drivers from loading cars with more than one teen passenger only if another experienced driver is present.

"The GDL law only allows for more than one passenger (teenage or otherwise), who are not dependents, only if a parent or guardian is present.

"He stupidly indicated that New Jersey has not documented any reports of 'teen violence' related to the GDL red decals on their cars.

"He should have stated there were no documented reports of violence against teenagers rather than teen violence, which means violent acts committed by teenagers."

See: Confusing teen drivers and parents

Why no one votes

A page and a half of Local is filled with the names of candidates in municipal, county and school board races, but for the vast majority, the paper hasn't reported what issues are at stake or what they stand for (L-6 and L-7).

Christie coverage

Staff Writer Melissa Hayes, who is traveling with Governor Christie's entourage, continues to report on his out-of-state fundraising in the same, breathless tones you'd find in a press release from the Republican Governors Association (Page 1 on Saturday).

Hayes quotes so-called experts as she tries to nail down whether Christie, who heads the group, is going to seek the GOP nomination for president in 2016.

What about the perspective of environmentalists, mass-transit advocates, women and Democrats in the state Legislature who have been stiffed big time since Christie took office in 2010?

What about voters in northern New Jersey? Do The Record's editors ever think to ask them who they want as their next president?

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A fading Christie lacks the temperament to be president

On Saturday, The Record reported twice on the front page that Hackensack University Medical Center's mobile treatment unit for potential Ebola cases is "behind" a McDonald's on Essex and South Newman streets in Hackensack. But that's not the case. The hospital-owned lot is actually between the McDonald's and NJ Transit's Essex Street Station.

In today's paper, a front-page photo caption says the mobile treatment unit is "near a McDonald's." City officials want the hospital to move the unit, above. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

"Sit down and shut up."

With those words, Governor Christie dismissed another protester, even though everyone but The Record thinks the GOP bully has bungled the recovery two long years after Superstorm Sandy (A-3).

"Why isn't he [Christie] in Ship Bottom today?" protester Jim Keady of Spring Lake said. "Why isn't he in Ortley Beach, where people aren't back in their homes? He's got to finish the job."

Keady held up a sign -- "STAY IN NJ & FINISH THE JOB" -- an apparent reference to Christie's travels raising money for conservative politicians like himself who have been waging war on the middle and working classes. 

Well, is there really any chance Christie will even get the nomination, given his far-from-presidential temperament and his low approval ratings in New Jersey?

If he can't veto bills, he just tells his critics to shut up and sit down.

Voter apathy

He was elected to a second term last November, but the turnout was the lowest for any gubernatorial election in state history.

Christie won, because droves of voters stayed home.

In fact, none of the election coverage so far has addressed how much voters are turned off by the partisanship in New Jersey and Washington, and the Woodland Park daily's relentless focus on politics.

Take today's Page 1 column on the challenge to Rep. Scott Garret, R-Wantage, in the 5th Congressional District, which includes Bergen County (A-1).

Columnist Charles Stile and other staffers give the most coverage and credibility to the candidate who raises the most money, but never say why that is so important.

And this year, I haven't seen one analysis of the distorted and false attack ads big campaign money buys.

Even such an eminence as Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson left out damaging information about Garrett in the first front-page piece on the challenge posed by Democrat Roy Cho, an attorney who lives in Hackensack.

What The Record reported as Garrett's initial opposition to federal Sandy aid is now being called  "raising questions about the potential for wasteful spending" (A-11).

Wednesday's paper

High school football has such a grip on Editor Martin Gottlieb that he ran a two-year-old story about a Paramus Catholic player and his mother all over Wednesday's front page.

Gottlieb again led the front page with lots more on Ebola, even though not a single case has been confirmed in New Jersey.

Two more embarrassing corrections appeared on A-2.

In Wednesday's Better Living section, clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson continues to recommend recipes that turn healthy ingredients into artery clogging nightmares (BL-2).

Her Lobster Frittata includes five whole eggs, a half-cup of cream, 2 ounces of cream cheese and 4 ounces of Swiss cheese.

Jackson should visit a hospital cardiac ward, and talk to patients who have had heart attacks from clogged arteries before she pushes another unhealthy recipe.

Third look

How can Road Warrior John Cichowski be so wrong about so many things in column after column, escaping even basic fact checking by his assignment editor, the copy desk and six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton?

In last Friday's column, which I discussed on Tuesday, Cichowski was relating the history of George Washington Bridge construction.

Then, the clueless transportation writer said:

"Until the Holland Tunnel was completed in Hoboken in 1927, the main method for drivers to get their cars across the Hudson River was by ferry...."

Of course, the New Jersey entrance to the Holland Tunnel is in Jersey City, not Hoboken.

And, of course, no correction appeared.

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The Borgs to Christie: You're our kind of guy

A hazy morning greeted drivers inching along 34th Street toward the East Side of Manhattan on Friday. Construction and a bus-only lane made rush-hour traffic even worse than usual.

By Victor E. Sasson

Editor

A Page 1 story on Governor Christie's meeting with The Record's editorial board sounds just like another well-edited campaign appearance.

The upbeat Friday story, reported by Staff Writer Melissa Hayes, minimizes The challenge posed by Democratic state Sen. Barbara Buono.

And it tells readers nothing about the composition of the editorial board, which here sounds bored and lazy.

Is Publisher Stephen A. Borg on the board? Does Borg or his father, Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, still have to sign off on the paper's editorial endorsement of candidates for public office?

Spin city

Basically, Christie is allowed to tell voters what he'll do, if he wins a second term, with nary a word about his many failures in his first term.

On A-2 Friday, Christie also addressed the disastrous decision that led to $120 million in damage to NJ Transit's rail fleet during Superstorm Sandy, but his comments are contradicted by a story on the front page today.

National Public Radio reported on Friday that Christie had changed his story about the rail fleet a number of times.

The GOP bully also deflected blame for the loss of $400 million in federal education funds a couple of years ago, blaming it on a clerical error.

On A-5 today, readers learn that Christie has ignored a $7.7 million federal grant to educate state residents about the Affordable Care Act, just as he vetoed legislation that would have allowed New Jersey to set up its own health-care exchange.

That led to less competition and is likely to mean smaller savings for people buying health insurance.

Hackensack and Teaneck news go missing for another day today.

Capitol madness

Friday's front page was dominated by the distraught woman who rammed her car into barriers in the Capitol before she was shot dead by police.

Initial reports were that the car was being driven by Michele Bachmann, one of the Republicans blamed for the partial government shutdown.

On Friday, Mike Kelly, the reporter with the shit-eating grin, shows he's more comfortable dealing with answering machines and Rep. Scott Garrett's aides than interviewing disadvantaged people who are being hurt by Garrett and other Tea Party crackpots (Friday's A-6).

More GWB hype

An editorial on Friday's A-22 backs up the hysteria in the Road Warrior's highly exaggerated column on the closing of some George Washington Bridge upper-level toll lanes recently.

The editorial doesn't mention that the vast majority of drivers experienced no delays, especially if they used the truck-free lower level.

Friday's Road Warrior column continues to explore the many aspects of "glare," a minor commuting problem (Local front).

In his previous column on Wednesday, Staff Writer John Cichowski took a "long, long detour" from the truth, according the concerned reader who created the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers.

To read the full e-mail to management and top editors, click on the following link:

Reporter cedes column to cranky drivers

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza also brought readers the latest report on utility poles (Friday's L-1).

Spreading untruths

Friday's restaurant review reminded me that the hummus at Hamsa was devoid of garlic and possibly the worst version I have ever tasted in decades of eating the Middle Eastern chickpea spread.

Tavlin, the Tenafly restaurant that has succeeded Hamsa, uses many of the latter's recipes, Staff Writer Elisa Ung reports on Friday's BL-20.

That's the kiss of death as far as I'm concerned, and I'll stick to far more authentic and far less expensive places in Paterson.

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Letting readers eat journalism cake

Curbs along Euclid Avenue, near Prospect Avenue, in Hackensack are being repaired in anticipation of what longtime residents say is the first complete repaving of the  Fairmount section street since 1979.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

In a single story on the front page of The Record today, Staff Writer Karen Rouse has managed to say more about the English sport of cricket than she has in the past few years about the rush-hour ordeal of using mass transit -- her beat.

Maybe, Editor Marty Gottlieb and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes are trying to make amends for portraying Jamaicans and other minority Paterson residents as little more than drug dealers, prostitutes and greedy public officials.

The feature story -- complete with photos and a large graphic that tries to explain cricket rules (A-1 and A-6) -- undercuts my argument that if you're a minority, the only way to get on Page 1 of The Record is to break the law.

A story about cricket appears in The Record once every 5 years or so. Most readers would be content if that was once every 50 years.

GOP failures

Also on Page 1 today is a political column about two Republicans seeking their party's nomination to run against Newark Mayor Cory Booker for the U.S. Senate.

Both Alieta Eck, a physician from Somerset, and Steve Lonegan, the conservative crackpot from tiny Bogota, oppose the federal health-care overhaul, dooming their candidacies to failure (A-1).

Meanwhile, Booker is unveiling a plan to curb childhood poverty nationally (A-3) -- countering Republicans like Lonegan and Governor Christie who cater to the elite.

The Record's editors continue to promote their love and support for Christie, leaving it to readers to cut through all of the political B.S. and expose what a miserable failure he is as governor.

Telling it like it is

In "YOUR VIEWS" on A-11, Dianne Douthat of Wayne notes "business subsidies have skyrocketed" under Christie, but "New Jersey's unemployment rate is still the sixth-highest in the nation, and we rank 47th in economic growth."

In other words, New Jersey may be "Stronger Than The Storm," but good luck finding a job here.

In another letter to the editor on A-11, Paul White of Ridgewood comments on a column by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin:

"The column continues Doblin's willingness to overlook the governor's poor behavior and his politics favoring the elite," White says.

Crumbling reporter

Readers get a break today from Roads Scholar John Cichowski, whose Sunday column was the 84th containing reporting problems since Sept. 12, 2012, according to a concerned reader:

"In his July 7 column, the Road Warrior endangers vehicle drivers and N.J. residents with his mistaken analysis about efforts to fix road infrastructure based on the Reason Foundation report on performance of U.S. state highway systems.

"Road Warrior has become a dangerous menace to everyone with his legendary incompetence and ability to misinform readers about results and conclusions of valid studies based on his own made-up information and invalid assessments.

"Unfortunately, the overwhelming consensus of road infrastructure and safety experts is that restraint in spending is not innovative and is irresponsible governance, threatens the state economy and our safety, and will greatly exacerbate more congestion, deterioration of our roads and bridges, and damages to our vehicles."

See the full e-mail to unresponsive management and editors on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Look out for that bumbling reporter

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Editors should end Road Warrior column now

A shortage of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains and buses, speeding drivers and lax enforcement of traffic laws are just three of the many pressing commuting issues ignored by Road Warrior John Cichowski, who continues to churn out inaccurate and exaggerated columns three times a week.

Today's Road Warrior column amounts to little more than Staff Writer John Cichowski's well-disguised correction of his first, wildly exaggerated  column on the pedestrian bridge over Port Imperial Boulevard in Weehawken that was published only 4 days ago.

It's time for Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record to end the Road Warrior column, which continually violates the high standards of accuracy newspapers demand of their reporters.

Errors galore

I'm not talking about typos, the many math errors Cichowski commits or how he often contradicts himself from one column to the next.

Wednesday's Page 1 column intentionally created a transportation crisis that didn't exist, and strongly suggested that pedestrians were being injured or killed crossing Port Imperial Boulevard to reach the NY Waterway ferry. 

Nothing could be farther from the truth, as today's L-1 column sheepishly admits on L-6.

Even Friday's Road Warrior column on the first traffic signal installed in Ringwood carried an L-1  photograph that directly contradicted Cichowski's claim that "no more than 7" cars backed up at the new light.

See the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers, which discusses historical, mathematical and other errors in the Ringwood column:

Road Warrior keeps on lying to readers  

Dead stories

Today's front page keeps on beating dead horses.

Three of the four main element are follow-ups to stale controversies involving the allegedly dishonest Assemblyman Robert Schroeder, LG Electronics' high-rise plan for the Palisades and Big Data.

Cliff notes

Coverage of LG amounts to little more than endless reporting of who is in favor and who is against the South Korean electronic giant's headquarters plan in Englewood Cliffs.

Today's A-1 story quotes an angry Mayor Joseph Parisi Jr.

Isn't it time for The Record's editors to research lawsuits and talk to neighbors of other corporate developments to uncover what borough officials might have done in the past in their desperate bid for ratables?

More guesswork

The fourth main story on A-1 today is about a "serious incident" in Leonia that keeps readers guessing from beginning to end.

Sadly, the story amounts to a shameful admission by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes that she and her staff have so few sources in that town they have to wait for press releases to tell readers the full story.

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Editors play politics with Christie's reelection bid

To Staff Writer John Cichowski, a big problem for commuters is keeping their tires inflated properly, as the airhead explains in his Road Warrior column on the Local front today. Traffic inching toward the Lincoln Tunnel, above, isn't his concern.

By focusing on the politics of Governor Christie's bid for a second term, The Record's editors continue to hide the GOP bully's many policy failures.

In a negative story about Democratic challenger Barbara Buono, Christie is called "her popular opponent" (A-3).

Popular with whom? The millionaires and special interests he serves exclusively?

That story from The Star-Ledger commits the same sin as others by The Record's own staff: 

It quotes Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, without mentioning she is one of the Woodland Park daily's Opinion columnists.

Harrison's column today is all about the politics of President Obama's joint appearance with Christie on the Jersey shore (O-2).

Boring politics

Politics are dividing the nation. They put readers to sleep, whether in news stories or columns by Harrison and Staff Writer Charles Stile.

Yet, Editor Marty Gottlieb and other media leaders are news junkies who are hooked on politics for all of the supposed controversy they offer.

Is anyone going to vote for Christie in November, because he appeared with Obama or Britain's Prince Harry at the shore, as the story on A-3 suggests?

Another thin paper

Readers have to scour today's Page 1 story on state police diversity for any numbers, such as the size of the force or the current training class (A-1).

The size of the force and how that compares with past decades isn't given, but readers are left to do the  arithmetic on A-6 to get the size of the training class (6% of 20,000).

Crippled thinking

A concerned reader didn't think much of Road Warrior John Cichowski's idea for colored-coded handicap parking stickers:

"The Road Warrior continues on his merry mistaken ways in his May 29 column. He promulgates an ineffective, impractical idea about disability parking tags and irresponsible, derisive, misleading, and negligently incomplete responses to readers' comments.

"He should offer a retraction to his endorsement of a faulty, poorly thought-out idea for 3 color codes for disability parking tags. It would NOT cover many circumstances and would create too much confusion, contradictions, & complexities for law enforcement, bureaucratic oversight, and those eligible for disability parking.

"He should focus on taking responsibility to correct the hundreds of mistakes and faulty advice or conclusions in his columns over the past 9 months and prevent future problems.

"Instead, he tried to fault me and mislead readers by taking one of my comments completely out of context on a previous column regarding potholes.  

"It shows how small minded and negligent the Road Warrior is for his readers and The Record. 

"I presented facts/comments about a business owner's ineffective response and culpability for his own problems and accidents based on potholes near his Carlstadt business."  
  

To read the full e-mail, click on the following link:

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Where's the aspirin?

My Medicare coverage was set years ago, so I pity readers who have to plow through Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais' confusing columns on the health-insurance program for seniors (B-1). 

Don't look for any food coverage in today's Better Living section, which had to make room for a T&A cover story on that TV show, "The Real Bimbos of New Jersey" (BL-1).

The Real Estate cover story -- "Will house hunters pay for green?" -- appears to be based on a commission-hungry real estate agent's claim that a Ramsey "home's energy efficiency should add $100,000 to its value" (R-1).

That's preposterous. 

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