Clueless, error-filled column on all-electric Tesla Model 3 is better than negative news

"Electric FUN," a front-page column about all-electric cars or EVs in The Record of Woodland Park on Monday, was illustrated with the Mitsubishi i-MIEV, an EV that was withdrawn from the U.S. market in 2017. Sales of the small Japanese car, which had a range of only 62 miles, totaled 2,108 over 7 years, according to GreenCarReports.com.

REPORTER CLAIMS MIDSIZE EV

DOESN'T HAVE A TRANSMISSION

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- John Cichowski, a columnist at The Record of Woodland Park, wants you to meet his wife's cousin, Bob.

Bob Silverberg, who owned a 20-year-old Honda, now drives a  new Tesla Model 3, the all-electric car that's been buried in negative news since deliveries to customers began last year.

But the Page 1 column on Monday in the once-great local daily newspaper was upbeat and positive, with no mention of past production problems, delayed deliveries or the eccentricities of Elon Musk, CEO of upstart Tesla.

Still, typical of Cichowski's work in the past 15 years, the column is filled with errors, and nowhere does the clueless reporter mention that Model 3, like all Teslas, is a zero-emissions vehicle that does no harm to the environment or to humans.

When he unveiled the midsize Model 3 in 2016, Musk noted more than 53,000 Americans die prematurely every year from auto emissions. 

Read: Media ignores Tesla's environmental message

Self-driving features

Chichowski, who calls himself The Road Warrior, begins the column with Tesla's "Summon" feature, which allows the owner using a smartphone app to stand outside the Model 3, start it and have it back out of the garage or, as Cousin Bob did, a carport.

But the reporter doesn't mention the owner of a  Model 3 can also have the car parallel park, drive and steer on the highway, and change lanes automatically.

'No gas tank'

Although he never tells readers the Model 3 is a zero-emissions car without an exhaust pipe, Cichowski does say the EV has "no gas tank."

All you have to do is plug it into "a wall socket," he says, but Cichowski doesn't mention Tesla's network of dedicated Superchargers (fast electric-charging stations) in New Jersey and across the nation, a key to the company's success.

He also exaggerates how much time a Tesla owner spends charging the car, and omits mention of a 240-volt wall socket any electrician can install that allows an owner to charge his EV in a few hours overnight just like he or she charges a cell phone. 

No transmission?

"Electric vehicles don't need transmissions. EVs run on torque," Cichowski claims, providing the two biggest laugh lines in the column.

"Torque" is the twisting motion produced by an internal combustion engine or an electric motor, but the car won't go anywhere unless you connect that torque to the driving wheels via a transmission.

Cousin Bob's Model 3 does have a transmission, but it has only 1 speed, so driving the EV is smooth, silent and -- with all of the torque available immediately -- effortless.

"I'm not polluting the air as much as I did with my Honda, and [my Model 3 is] a lot of fun to drive," Cousin Bob says.

Someone should tell Bob he isn't "polluting the air" at all.

For some strange reason, no photo of Cousin Bob's Model 3 appears with the column, but a photo of an "electric car" used in the Glen Rock July Fourth parade in 2017 appears on the continuation page, 6A.

More laugh lines

"The Model 3 doesn't even need a dashboard," The Road Warrior columnist reports. 

"Instead, it's got something we're already used to on our smartphones: a touchscreen -- except this one is almost as big as a chauffeur," he says, referring to the 15-inch touch screen on the Model 3.

"Like a phone, just touch it the right way and it'll do everything your dash did and more -- phone, radio, heat, air conditioning, etc., etc."

Gee-whiz. Will Tesla's wonders ever cease?

Postscript: John Cichowski, who committed more errors than any other single reporter in the history of The Record, retired in January 2019. He began writing the Road Warrior column in September 2003.

Using a free Tesla Supercharger in the Colonie Center Mall outside of Albany, N.Y., in 2017, I was able to add 100 miles of range to my Tesla Model S in about 40 minutes while my wife and I grabbed a bite to eat and used the restroom at a nearby Whole Foods Market.

As errors mount, payroll-slashing Gannett editor takes The Record from bad to worse

The big excitement in Hackensack on Saturday afternoon was a two-car collision on Central Avenue and First Street, not far from the high school.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Richard Green tries to engage readers today with a sensational Page 1 headline over a story the paper has been telling and retelling for many years:

"THE DETECTIVE
THE INVESTIGATOR
AND THE MOBSTER"

The so-called Special Report is from Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, one of the handful of veterans who wasn't laid off by Green, the Gannett editor who has slashed the payroll since The Record changed hands last July.

The problem with this latest chapter of the story is that the victim is "a reputed member of the Lucchese crime family" whose murder generates little sympathy among readers.

Yet, the story not only takes up a third of the front page, but it fills two full pages inside the thin Sunday edition (1A, 8a and 9A).

And nearly all of the allegations come from a federal suit filed by the mobster's family. 

Readers are the losers. 

The only winners here are the lawyers who are gouging the plaintiffs and defendants as this suit wends its way through the courts, only to be thrown out or settled.

Under Green, Gannett's hatchet man in Woodland Park, this is what amounts to local news.

The Local front today is dominated by an apartment building fire in the city of Passaic (1L).

Two more inconsequential Passaic County stories appear on 2L and 7L in a section delivered to Bergen County readers.

Opinion

On the Opinion front, Mike Kelly must be the last columnist in America to address United Airline's brutal removal of a seated passenger a week ago to make room for airline employees (1O).

Inexplicably, Kelly compares the removal of Dr. David Dao to the beating of African-American Rodney King by racist Los Angeles cops in 1991.

Last Wednesday, another Record columnist, Bill Ervolino, also recounted in great detail what happened to Dao, but the strongest opinion Ervolino could muster was:

"This isn't any way to run an airline."

Ervolino began his column by recalling his very first "plane trip," in 1976.

Syria and Paterson

Today, an editorial praises a project that allows Syrian refugees to relate their experiences with "poverty and violence" to their fellow students in Paterson's John F. Kennedy High School (2O).

But the editorial forgets to mention whether the refugees are fully acquainted with the "poverty and violence" those minority students have experienced growing up in Paterson.

Restaurant coverage

Since The Record dropped the weekly review of local restaurants last November, the editors have encouraged readers to jump into their cars and explore -- even if they have to drive 60 miles or more for dinner.

Today, the Travel section cover reports on "the return of Jersey Shore Restaurant Week," including a trattoria in Freehold and a Spanish-Cuban place in Brick (1T and 4T).

On Friday, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz claimed she was passing along readers' recommendations to eat in cheap, unhealthy restaurants.

There were a number of errors, including a Better Living cover photo of hamburgers on a grill with a caption that didn't identify which fast-food joint serves them (1BL and 2BL on Friday).

Inside, a centerfold photo showed food from three places, but there was no information in the text about two of them, Twisted Yogurt and La Rosa Chicken (10BL on Friday).

The Record: Incompetent reporter peddles a flawed column on NJ Transit bus service

On HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," the political satirist referred to the controversy over President Trump rescinding the nationwide policy on transgender bathrooms. He said Trump believes men shouldn't be in the same room with women peeing unless they are paying for it.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Long-suffering NJ Transit bus commuters are the lowest of the low, judging by how Staff Writer John Cichowski has largely ignored them in the 13-plus years he's been banging out his Road Warrior column.

And his front-page column today has nothing to do with the crowding and delays NJ Transit bus riders have faced for a decade or whether relief will be provided anytime soon.

No. Today, he sides with a family owned bus company that lost a contract to a much bigger transportation company, Coach USA, even though the outcome won't affect the sad lot of bus commuters.

That doesn't seem to deserve Page 1 coverage, especially when readers learn Saddle River Tours will be able to bid again in one year for the 7-year, $49-million pact.

But in the process, the veteran reporter takes pot shots at NJ Transit's bus and rail operations, which "have provoked chronic service complaints" -- none of which he has covered (10A).

And he also slams the state's mass transit agency for "posting losses of more than $300 million annually despite two fare increases in 10 years" (10A).

Cichowski is so incompetent he doesn't tell readers that since 2009, Governor Christie cut state subsides to NJ Transit by more than 90 percent, forcing the most recent fare hike, or that no mass transit agency in the United States turns a profit or is expected to.

New column

Today's front page also debuts Garden State of Mind, a new column by Staff Writer Christopher Maag, who covered Hackensack, NJ Transit and other beats. 

The column is supposed to profile people in North Jersey or as Maag says in a NorthJersey.com video, this "funny and strange and surprisingly beautiful place."

He also says he already has columns "on deck" about a professional ice carver and what he calls the world's last beatnik.

Most notable about this new Record column is that it is the first one by a "fresh voice" in more than a decade.

But the Woodland Park daily still is without a news or feature column by a woman.

Production screw-ups

Production screw-ups were common when The Record was owned by the Borg family.

But they are occurring with greater frequency now that page layout, headline and photo-caption writing, and other tasks have been moved to Neptune, where a total of seven Gannett dailies are put out.

In the debut of Maag's Garden State of Mind column today, 19 words are missing between the last word on the front page and the first word on the continuation page (8A).

Those missing words can be found on NorthJersey.com.

Also today on the Business section cover, a large-type headline includes an awkward word, "amongst," used improperly.

"Made in the U.S.A.
gaining popularity
amongst toy industry"

Last Monday, a Better Living story included a photo of a community garden in Paterson during warmer weather, and no attempt was made in the caption to tie the garden to the story about "food and dining trends."

In addition, the caption's spelling of collard greens as "collared" would suggest the garden grows greens with collars or that they tried to flee and were captured or collared.

This is high-school or college-level journalism, making The Record even a bigger laughing stock than before.