At Gannett's Record, too much sports on Page 1; plus, an obscure headline word

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News has been trying to go under covers, according to sexual harassment complaints filed against him. This cartoon is from Dave Granlund, who calls the network "Fox & Fiends."

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

With a silly Mets opening game covering half of the front page in The Record today, readers can only imagine all of the really important news they're missing.

Page 1 today and Monday also carried stories previewing the partisan politics involved in the primaries and election for a new governor (1A)

That leaves us to wonder when or if The Record will ever get around to covering the issues involved in those races (1A). 

Many readers welcomed Garden State of Mind from Staff Writer Christopher Maag -- the first fresh voice to be given a column in more than a decade.

But his most recent effort on an East Rutherford ice-sculpture artist got weak support from photography and the editors in Gannett's design studio in Neptune.

The three large photos that ran on Monday's 1A and 6A were basically the same, and despite all the talk in the column about Jimmy Chiappa having to move 300-pound blocks of ice by himself, no photo of that appeared.  

Asylees?

Next to that column, a headline about a Jersey City parish helping Ethiopian refugees used the word "asylees" in the main headline (Monday's 1A).

I doubt I have ever seen that word in a headline before in a career that spanned nearly 40 years.

"Parish
opens
door to
asylees"

"Home for those
with no options"

The editor who used that obscure word in the main headline could just as well have used "refugees," and then in the sub-headline say the refugees were "seeking asylum" -- the definition of "asylees."

"Parish
opens
door to
refugees"

"Home for those
seeking asylum"

The Sasson Report

will return next week