Hot topics: We make room for a new EV; lazy Democrats and a nail-biting election; The Record again stiffs its wretched staff

A NEW EV IN OUR GARAGE: Our new 2021 Tesla Model Y, above, has all-wheel drive and a maximum range of 330 miles. We charge it overnight in our garage when the battery is down to about 30 percent of capacity.

OUR OTHER TESLA: I bought this 2016 Tesla Model S 75D, left, in November 2019, when the luxury, all-wheel drive, 4-door hatchback had only about 7,600 miles on the odometer. It's the best car I've ever owned, and faster than my first EV, a 2015 Tesla Model S 60, which had a smaller battery and rear-wheel drive.

Trump's coup failed, but country

seems more divided than ever

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- When I turned 77 last week, I thought life is good:

I'm healthy, I get plenty of exercise food shopping and volunteering at a hospital a total of 4 days to 5 days a week, and we have a new zero-emissions Tesla in the garage.

But then I muttered, "What the fuck?" last Wednesday as I read the news that the election for governor in New Jersey was too close to call.

This with Democrats having a registration edge in the state over Republicans of more than 967,000, according to New Jersey Globe, so I should have been cursing Dems too lazy to get off their asses to vote or fill out a mail-in ballot.

Voter apathy

Did the apathy that paralyzes voters in Hackensack spread statewide, as Governor Murphy sought election to a second term, which a Democrat hadn't accomplished since 1977?

Could Murphy's opponent -- a former, not even a current Republican state assemblyman who lied like Trump during the campaign -- actually take the State House and wreak havoc in a nightmarish scenario recalling the 8 miserable years we experienced under that GOP thug, Chris Christie?

Yes. I buy cars painted red, but always vote blue.

MAIL-IN BALLOTS: On the day before the Nov. 2 election, I took the last of our 4 mail-in ballots to a drop box at the Bergen County Administration Building in Hackensack. Although the mail-in ballot is still a challenge to fill out, we have been using them to vote in every election, big and small, for many years, long before the pandemic.

New Jersey and Virginia

Well, eventually, Murphy was declared the winner in New Jersey, but in Virginia, a Democrat was defeated by a Republican for governor, as Richmond seemed to be reclaiming the title of "capital of the Confederacy."

"Save your Dixie cups, the South will rise again," my high school art teacher used to say. Indeed. 

News coverage of the New Jersey and Virginia elections was short on issues and long on polls and opinion writers trying to predict the future.

So, I was shocked to read a New York Times story about Murphy's narrow victory that reported the Democrat's "aggressive approach to controlling the [Covid-19] pandemic became a focal point of the bid to unseat him."

The TV and radio news had said little, if anything, about Murphy's Covid-19 policies during the campaign leading up to the election on Nov. 2. 

The pandemic

So, now we can add pandemic policies -- as well as anti-vaccine and anti-mask zealots in Trump counties asserting their right to die in droves -- to gun rights, abortion and racism as among the forces dividing us under President Joe Biden.

As hard as it is to believe nearly a year after Covid-19 vaccines first became available, the virus still kills more than 1,200 people a day in the United States, nearly all of them unvaccinated, according to The Times. 

I LIKE HATCHBACKS: The Model Y is a 4-door hatchback, one in a long line of hatchbacks I've owed -- from the forgettable Mustang II to a 1986 Toyota Celica to a 1988 Toyota Celica All-Trac turbo to 4 Toyota Priuses, one of which we still have, and the Tesla Model S.

SEXY CURVE: No design feature in our new Tesla Model Y or any other car I know can match the elegance of the curved door pull on each of the 4 doors in my Tesla Model S. I keep an eyeglass cleaning cloth in the space in the driver's door, but there is room for a pair of glasses or loose change for tolls.

PESCATARIAN'S DELIGHT: Jumbo Shrimp, above, and a beautifully composed Mahi-Mahi Ceviche with avocado, tomato and cilantro, below, were just 2 of the courses in a lavish lunch my wife and I enjoyed at The Hill in Closter to celebrate my birthday last week.

AN EMPTY DINING ROOM: The Hill is the best seafood restaurant in northern New Jersey, when price is no object. But we were the only customers seated in the large dining room for lunch last Thursday.

The Record's wretched staff

The staff of The Record complained in a tweet last week that they have been denied raises by Gannett, the newspaper conglomerate that bought the former Hackensack-based daily along with the other papers and (201) magazine from the Borg family.

Calling themselves The Record Guild, they said they formed a union along with the staffs of two other newspapers, but that apparently has given them little muscle.

They refer to The Record, where I worked for more than 30 years, by the antiquated name of "The Bergen Record."

The daily newspaper also was called "The Wretched" by many critics.

Sold for $40M in cash

In the years before the July 2016 sale, then-Publisher Stephen A. Borg executed the biggest downsizing in The Record's history, moved the staff to Woodland Park, froze raises in the newsroom and then laughed all the way to the bank with the nearly $40 million in cash handed over by Gannett.

By March of 2017, Gannett had laid off more than 350 NJMG employees.

Borg became a partner in the construction of hundreds of luxury apartments being built along River Street after tearing down The Record's landmark Hackensack headquarters and a diner.

"OK, so where are our raises?" The Record Guild tweeted the other day in response to word Gannett is making progress in growing digital subscriptions -- more than 1.5 million across the chain, according to Poynter.org.

My advice to the dwindling number of staffers at The Record: "Suckers, don't hold your breath."

And those who formed a union -- notably Columnist Mike Kelly -- clearly waited much too long before doing so -- like 3 years too long.

READ: Many readers say Gannett 

turned The Record ino a rag

Many readers say editors from Gannett have turned once-great Record into a rag

For news of the extensive downtown rehabilitation in Hackensack, you'll have to do your own reporting. After The Record abandoned Hackensack for Woodland Park in 2009, stories about the city have been few and far between. The project shown above is on Atlantic Street, near Main.

The pavement of Main Street in Hackensack, above and below, has been left in disrepair in anticipation of the conversion of Main to two-way traffic sometime this year. State Street was converted to two-way traffic last year.

For drivers, Main Street is a rough ride.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- I've dropped The Record of Woodland Park, the once-great local daily newspaper I read for nearly 40 years.

I refused to subscribe to the Gannett Co. strategy of offering less local news coverage for a lot more money, and stopped paying for 7-day home delivery in December (now about $180 a year).

When I tried to call about renewing for weekend delivery only, I could never get through.

So, Gannett kept on delivering the paper every day for three more months, finally cutting me off in March.

On Monday, a front page story from Dustin Racioppi of The Record, above and below, tried hard to mislead readers into thinking Governor Murphy planned to raise taxes on the middle class, but has now changed his mind.

A few months ago, Gannett editors changed bylines in The Record to read "North Jersey Record," a publication that doesn't exist.

#gannettruinedmypaper

Many readers now refer to The Record as "a rag."

The biggest losers in the July 2016 takeover of The Record were the 350 employees of the publishing company, North Jersey  Media Group, who were laid off in the next eight months or so.

Close behind were the vast majority of older readers who found most of Gannett's resources were poured into the paper's website, NorthJersey.com, even as editors cut space for local news in the print edition.

That also was troubling, because the tens of thousands of older readers were less likely to use the computers or smartphones they need to take advantage of the digital platform, with its annoying pop-up ads.

And the layoffs in March 2017 included a veteran reporter who wrote expanded obituaries of prominent local residents and had started an aging beat, so many of the concerns of older readers are no longer being addressed. 

See: Readers slam The Record as 'junk'

See: Readers hit corporate greed, price hike

See: Dated columns, chest thumping, errors

See: Abandoning River City

Hackensack news?

There is far more news of Paterson in Local -- the single section that purports to cover the 90 or so towns in The Record's circulation area -- than of Hackensack.

As part of a sweeping downtown rehabilitation project, hundreds of apartments are under construction in Hackensack, the county seat and the most populous town in Bergen County.

But no stories have appeared on the delays plaguing the biggest project, at Main and Mercer streets; to provide a timeline for conversion of Main to two-way traffic, and other redevelopment news.  

Food news?

Gannett's decision in 2016 to drop the weekly restaurant review removed the last piece of critical food reporting.

Now, coverage of the best dishes the food writers ate in the last month or a roundup of places where chefs eat is so totally promotional they sound like advertising.

In the latter article on April 11, The Record not only misspelled Restaurant Serenade in Chatham as "Seranade," but got James Laird, owner and chef of the fine-dining restaurant, to admit one reason he likes the cheap, low-quality burger at Five Guys is "I can eat it as I drive."

By the way, a cheeseburger is listed on Laird's lunch menu at $20, though the beef isn't described; at Five Guys, mystery beef cheeseburgers are $8.69 and $5.69.

Last Wednesday, an article in The Record's Better Living section listed 10 restaurants where you can eat outside, none of them in Bergen County, where the majority of readers live.

Antibiotics in food

The Record has never covered controversial food news, such as the use of harmful antibiotics and growth hormones to raise animals or the large amounts of pesticides needed to grow vegetables and feed crops.

On the March 25 Better Living front, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz did announce a major project:

"Over the next few months, The Record and NorthJersey.com will be presenting a slew of features on ... pizza," Davidowitz said.

"Consider this the ultimate guide to everything you need to know about pizza in North Jersey."

I didn't know I needed a guide to pizza, let alone an "ultimate" one.

Also on March 25, a story from USA Today on the Business front discussed extra-cost grocery delivery services.

A quote from a consultant was enlarged and used next to the headline:

"As more people get used to it, it's become more popular."

Gee. How enlightening.

Headlines

The art of headline writing -- which I practiced as a copy editor at The Record of Hackensack -- no longer exists at the Gannett-owned paper.

On April 27, the front-page headline on the tabloid Hackensack Chronicle declared:

"New school board

may help mend bridges"

I'm pretty sure the headline writer meant to say "mend fences" or maybe "build bridges."

Veteran reporters

Some of the veteran reporters kept on by Gannett also are among the least productive.

On March 25, in the lead position on the front page of the Sunday edition, I was shocked to see the rare byline of Jean Rimbach, who continues her nearly decade-long coverage of a lawsuit filed against the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

The big news? 

"The family of a reputed mobster slain execution-style in 2007 moved a giant step closer on Tuesday to obtaining sealed records from a more than decade-old organized crime gambling investigation at the heart of its claims of corruption" in the prosecutor's office.

Columnists

Four veteran columnists -- Mike Kelly, Charles Stile, John Cichowski and Bill Ervolino -- apparently have been told there is no limit on how much they can write -- as Gannett editors desperately try to fill the space once taken up by state and local news.

Cichowski, the so-called commuting reporter, largely avoids covering the biggest story on his beat: 

The decline of mass transit, and growing traffic congestion and pollution at the Hudson River crossings.

Instead, he writes column after column about pedestrian bridges being in disrepair and other obscure transportation subjects.

As for Kelly, an opinion columnist, loyal readers often slog their way through his overwrought verbiage, only to exclaim they don't know where he stands on an issue.

Nepotism

Another veteran, Staff Writer Deena Yellin, tackled a subject rarely discussed in The Record:

Home-rule communities trying to limit nepotism -- the hiring or appointing of family members to town or school district positions.

But she didn't mention Hackensack, once derided as "Zisaville" for the large number of Zisa family members, cousins and other relatives in city positions.

Nor was Englewood Cliffs discussed.

Another sign that her story was less than exhaustive is Yellin admitting she called the New Jersey League of Municipalities, but could not come up with a "precise count of towns with anti-nepotism ordinances."

For another perspective on the decline of The Record, see the discussion on Hackensack's Community Message Boards:

My favorite paper is not having a good day

If anti-gun teens really turn out and vote, we'll witness a new American Revolution

The size of the March For Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C., on Saturday was estimated as high as 800,000, and if crowds in other cities are included, more than 1 million people turned out to demand action on banning assault-style rifles and taking measures to end mass shootings (Associated Press photo).

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Florida high school massacre survivors warned NRA-endorsed politicians to prepare for defeat at the polls in November by a new wave of teenage voters.

In Saturday demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and other cities in America and around the world, protesters called for a ban on assault-style rifles and passage of other gun-control laws in a bid to end mass shootings.

If they register and go to the polls, the anti-gun teens who organized the March For Our Lives could ease one of the most corrosive influences in our democracy:

Voter apathy in national, state and local elections.

Millions of new voters would be nothing less than a new American Revolution -- despite the best efforts of Republicans to suppress the vote, and the news media to divide us by reporting almost exclusively on politics.

Clinton defeat

Registered Democrats who sat out the 2016 presidential election were a major factor in the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the Electoral College victory of serial liar Donald J. Trump.

In 2013, voter indifference to the Democratic candidate in New Jersey led to the reelection of Chris Christie, even though his first term showed him to be the worst governor in state history.

And in Hackensack's April 2017 school election, only 642 out of 21,397 registered voters -- that's 3% -- weighed in on the $109 million budget, and elected three members to the nine-member school board.

Thus, the discredited Zisa family political dynasty retained control of the city's Board of Education after their candidates had been trounced by City Council reformers in 2013.

Trump in Florida

President Trump, who fled the White House and spent the weekend at his Florida golf resort, was silent on the extraordinary turnout to remember the 17 students or staffers killed on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

At The Record of Woodland Park, my local daily newspaper, Columnist Mike Kelly didn't bother working on Saturday to cover similar demonstrations in Montclair, Newark and other New Jersey communities.

His Sunday column demanded an apology -- but not from Trump, who caved into the National Rifle Association after the Parkland shooting, and didn't call for new gun-control measures.

Instead, Kelly had readers eyes rolling with his column on Facebook's vulnerability to a data-mining firm working for Trump -- a story broken last week by The New York Times.

The major piece on The Record's Opinion front today -- pushing Kelly's column below the fold -- is about professional baseball (1O).

Give me a break.

Trump's crazy train or daily D.C. shit show has the world mocking the United States

Graffiti on a building in Mary Ellen Kramer Park at the Great Falls in Paterson.

In N.J., The Record reduces

Bergen County news even further

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

Editor's note: The Celebrity Birthdays feature on Page 6BL in today's Better Living section notes "film producer Harvey Weinstein is 66." I guess even sexual predators deserve a listing. See a reader's comment at the end of this post.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A cornered President Trump is lashing out again on Twitter at Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a fellow Republican.

Mueller is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, as well as the finances of the Trump Organization, the 500 real estate and business entities of which the president is the sole or principal owner.

Late Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, less than two days shy of McCabe's retirement.

Like fired FBI Director James Comey, McCabe has handed over to Mueller memos documenting his conversations with the president.

Meanwhile, "60 Minutes" plans to air an interview with adult film star Stormy Daniels next Sunday.

She has offered to return $130,000 in hush money she was paid to keep quiet about her affair with Trump in 2006 after Melania Trump gave birth to their son, Barron.

Daily shit show

What a daily shit show Trump is putting on in Washington, D.C., turning our democracy into a laughing stock around the world.

No president has been tarred with so much scandal or has proven to be such a loose cannon -- insulting others and praising himself in an endless stream of lies the news media seem obsessed with spreading around the world.

'A scam ... a fraud'

Also on Friday, The New York Times and The Observer of London reported a voter-profiling company called Cambridge Analytica "harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission...."

"The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump's campaign in 2016."

"This was a scam -- and a fraud," the social network said in a statement.

Editorial cartoonist Kevin Siers of The Charlotte Observer commenting on the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobil.

Rick McKee, editorial cartoonist at The Augusta Chronicle, capturing the chaos of the Trump administration.

Many observers are betting the meeting between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will never come off or that the two leaders are so illegitimate, nothing will come of the summit, says editorial cartoonist Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch.

Local news?

I could not find a single local-news story from Bergen County in The Record's Local section on Saturday, with the exception of a police brief on a missing Paramus woman.

This from a local daily newspaper that began life as The Bergen Record, and is still called that by many older readers, decades after it became just The Record.

On Sunday, even Mike Kelly's column on the Opinion front (1O) was about Paterson.

The Record's local-news operation was on life support when the Gannett Co. took over from the Borg family in July 2016, and slashed the payroll of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of daily and weekly papers, and (201) magazine.

Now, residents of the 70 Bergen County communities can go days or weeks without seeing any news of their town.

Legal marijuana?

Gannett's reporting is weakest when trying to predict the future, as James Nash did on Sunday's Page 1.

Nash questioned whether the state Legislature will approve a bill to legalize marijuana by the June 30 deadline, and if it does, whether the state can develop rules by July 1, 2019, when weed would be sold to anyone.

Instead of speculating about the future, why doesn't Nash and other reporters write balanced stories seeking opinions on each side of issues such as legal marijuana, taxing millionaires and so forth.

Bylines

In redesigning The Record's print edition, Gannett eliminated the "by" in reporters' bylines.

Now, a reporter's name appears in boldface type and the publication appears next to it.

But "The Record" has been eliminated in favor of a fictitious publication, "North Jersey Record."

So it's no surprise #gannettruinedmypaper is appearing more and more on social media.

North Korea summit may be a distraction from mountainous breasts Trump adores

Adult film star Stormy Daniels is suing President Trump so she can make, uh, a clean breast of her affair with the New York billionaire after Melania Trump gave birth to their son, Barron. Melania is the stormy weather forecaster in this sendup from cartoonist Dave Granlund.

Cartoonist Granlund satirizing the war of words between North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and President Trump over which leader has a bigger nuclear "button."

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

We've survived another insane week of the Trump presidency -- with visions of an adult film star's enormous, surgically enlarged breasts and a possible summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Donald J. Trump would be the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader in hopes of obtaining a nuclear-disarmament pledge.

But former President Jimmy Carter obtained a nuclear disarmament agreement with Un's grandfather in 1994, according to ABC News.

And in 2009, former President Bill Clinton also went to North Korea at a time when tensions were high over its nuclear program, and helped free two journalists.

Just a distraction?

Trump's visit isn't a sure thing, but he's got such a mess on his hands at home it may not matter.

And all the coverage of a possible summit is distracting from last week's real news:

The probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election is intensifying, and could result in an obstruction of justice indictment against Trump as one former aide after another is charged or cooperates with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

And details of Trump's affair with a big-breasted porn star starting in 2006, after son Barron was born, are spilling out even as she sues to be allowed to tell all, including "still images" of what satirist Bill Maher speculates is Trump's "junk." 

Meanwhile, many are asking why Trump isn't applying sanctions Congress already OK'd against Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his war crimes in Syria, and his recent, Kim Jong Un-like boast of having "invincible" nuclear weapons that could destroy U.S. defenses.

See: Trump isn't the only cause of stress in our lives

See:'Do You Remember When Love Was King?'

These doctored photos of President Trump and Kim Jong Un, above and below, appeared on Twitter (@bornmiserable).

N.J. environment

As today's front-page story in The Record shows, the environment in North Jersey went to hell while Chris Christie was governor from January 2010 to January 2018.

Now, the Woodland Park daily's environmental reporters are spending all their time on toxic disasters in Pompton Lake and Edgewater, the latter just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

"Elevated levels of  a chemical that can be harmful to humans ... has been wafting in the air from the Quanta Superfund site in Edgewater for nine months [italics added] as workers continue to entomb a century's worth of pollution on the property closely surrounded by homes and businesses, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports.

If the foul-smelling, potentially harmful air has been present for nine months, why is The Record just writing about it now?

Dysfunctional Englewood

The small city of Englewood has been mismanaged for decades.

Just look at the segregated elementary and middle schools; and high property taxes, despite revenue from the owners of million-dollar mansions on the East Hill, a small industrial area and hundreds of new apartments downtown and along Route 4.

Now, The Record leads today's Local front with a story under this headline:

"Englewood's 'dire' finances

 to be studied"

In the same sentence that quotes the "city manager," Englewood is referred to as a "borough" (1L).


Copy editors wanted

Readers eyes are rolling at another Mike Kelly piece that keeps them guessing on the meaning of the headline on today's Opinion front:

"It's time for a new plan

for Hudson rail tunnels"

Readers have to plow through thousands of words of background information on the Opinion front (1O) and the continuation page (4O) before Kelly reveals his solution in the last five paragraphs:

Appeal to the Port Authority to take over the project now that Trump has refused to fund the second attempt to replace the 100-year-old tunnels, which Christie initially killed in 2010. 

High schoolers put news media to shame by confronting Trump on Florida murders

Cartoonist Jimmy Margulies listing the five stages of grief among officials after another school shooting: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance -- with a payoff from the gun lobby.

Editorial cartoonist Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune shows how from their fortresses, President Trump, Republicans in Congress and conservatives call for more -- not fewer -- guns.

STUDENTS TAKE OVER ROLE

 OF CALLING FOR REFORM

 -- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Surely, we are witnessing one of the darkest chapters in the history of American journalism.

Once, in the not too distant past, reporters saw their role as challenging authority, exposing wrongdoing and calling for reform.

Now, our news media have ceded that responsibility when it comes to gun control to high school students who survived the Parkland shootings, which were nothing less than 17 premeditated murders.

During "listening sessions" at the White House, not a single reporter confronted President Trump, and asked him how he could allow the murders of 17 innocent students and staff members in a Florida high school.

Instead, they scribbled furiously, and strained to capture photos and videos of his ridiculous proposal to arm teachers and other school staff.

Reporters have been reduced to the role of stenographers and videographers.

One Colorado teacher who showed a TV reporter the loaded pistol he carries in his classroom even was quoted by the CBS Evening News as saying he would be justified missing a gunman and killing an innocent student, if he could stop the death of more kids.

Confronting Rubio

At a forum in Florida, angry students and parents confronted Sen. Marco Rubio and a top representative of the National Rifle Association -- "demanding that politicians and lobbyists support stricter gun-control measures," the New York Post reported.

Promoting AR-15

Today, Columnist Mike Kelly uses the front page of The Record of Woodland Park to promote the semi-automatic AR-15 -- used in the Parkland murders -- as "deadly" because it is so "easy to fire [and] load," and as "the most popular rifle in America" (1A).

The irresponsible columnist at my local daily newspaper also went to a firing range near his office to shoot an "AR-15-style rifle."

He uses the first two paragraphs of his column to describe in detail how easy it was to pick up the deadly weapon, load it and squeeze the trigger time and again -- essentially recounting how Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz killed student after student on Feb. 14. 

His column today is "shameful" and "idiotic" -- the words Kelly himself used on the Opinion section front just a week ago to describe how we don't confiscate the weapons of people like Cruz when "they are behaving strangely."

Kelly definitely is one columnist who is "behaving strangely." 

Cartoonist Dave Granlund exploring what he calls the National Rifle Association's "plan for school security."

'Everybody is exhausted'

Several pages of The Record today explore "the chaos of life and its collision with technology [social media] and tragedy..." (1A, 6A, 7A and Better Living front).

"More of us [are] feeling drained, frazzled and emotionally overrun... We are exhausted," Staff Writer Jim Beckerman reports.

He blames everything from wildfires in California, rising tensions with North Korea, "the non-stop barrage of presidential tweets," mass shootings, red-blue state political divisions and three of the worst hurricanes on record.

The headlines on the Better Living front:

The Trump effect

Politics may actually be stressing you out

Of course, The Record and other news media are guilty of causing a lot of this stress by focusing on nothing but "politics," and the partisan divide in Trenton and Washington.

Issues and what is good for the people of New Jersey and the nation rarely appear in news stories and opinion columns.

Veteran Trenton reporter Charles Stile does little else but write about politics -- his tedious, boring  column is called "Political Stile," and The Record often runs his garbage on the front page.

On Wednesday, The Record reported on Page 1 that Governor Murphy praised students staging gun control protests across the country, and vowed "once again to sign a package of gun-control legislation that was blocked" by his predecessor, Chris Christie.

But the very next day, Stile's ridiculous front-page column carried this headline:

"Murphy cautious

 after Parkland shooting"