Media blast Trump as the fake president, con man, sucker, but they may be too late

Cartoons by Daryl Cagle, above, and Adam Zyglis, below, delight in the humiliating defeat suffered by President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who withdrew the bill meant to replace the Affordable Care Act before it went down to defeat.

Zyglis is the cartoonist for The Buffalo News.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Despite President Trump's sinking popularity and a rising chorus of boos from the news media, the actual process of impeaching him is complicated and may be impossible while his fellow Republicans control Congress.

The bottom line is Trump would have to be convicted and removed from office by two-thirds of what is currently a Republican-controlled Senate.

"Removal actually requires five separate votes," Mike Rothschild of attn.com wrote in February, "two by the House Judiciary Committee, two by the entire House, the another vote in the Senate to convict."

So, it looks like the best chance the news media had to derail the serial liar was during the 2016 presidential campaign, and we all know how that turned out.

On Saturday, the lead story in The Record of Woodland Park didn't mention Trump until the fifth paragraph.

The first paragraph called cancellation of the vote on the GOP bill to replace the health-care law on Friday "a stunning defeat for Republicans."

The rest of Page 1 was devoted to a sensational court story, and a puff piece about Toys "R" Us, a major advertiser. 

Editor Richard A. Green, a veteran Gannett hatchet man, is already bored by the most difficult week Trump has had since he was inaugurated a little over two months ago.

Today's front page contains absolutely no mention of Trump.

Ex-employees

And today's Opinion section is missing the usual Sunday cartoon from Jimmy Margulies, meaning he may have been one of the 350 employees of North Jersey Media Group laid off by Gannett since the paper changed hands last July.

Readers can see his cartoons about Trump at the Cagle.com website.

In Friday's Better Living section, Radio Waves Columnist Raymond A. Edel wrote a gracious farewell, and didn't even mention he was one of the 141 NJMG staffers laid off by Gannett last week.

Edel, who worked at The Record for 35 years, also wrote a gardening column.

The Record: Readers slam daily as 'rabid, left-wing publication,' 'liberal news,' 'junk'

President Trump isn't the only one slamming the media, as shown by recent reader reviews on NorthJersey.com's Facebook page. This cartoon is from Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In comments on NorthJersey.com's Facebook page, readers react to how The Record covered Donald J. Trump's messy transition and the early weeks of his presidency.

Iris Borman of Cliffside Park said she has seen The Record go from "being fairly in the center of the political world to being a rabid, leftwing publication."

Barbara Cerenzio of Cliffside Park blames The Record's coverage of the Bridgegate trial for why Governor Christie didn't get "a job with Trump."

Jodi Orlando DelliSanti cancelled her subscription, because she wants "unbiased news."

Reader Kevin Milligan says he throws his paper "in the garbage daily."

Jimmy Drake of West New York says The Record of Woodland Park has gone so far "left" it belongs on "the Left Coast."

Drake added:

"I've received the record paper for over 20 years and honestly - I don't want to read the Haight Ashbury. LGBTQ, anarchist, kapernian daily spit on the Americans who GAVE him the right, beg Isis to please enter our country OR the media will blast everyone as racists and so on."

Debbie Campbell Antonacci of Wyckoff says The Record is turning into "just another liberal one sided news filled with half truths .... I hope you go out of business."

'More and more' bias

Here is Borman's Jan. 1o "review" of The Record and NorthJersey.com in full:

"I have been a subscriber of The Bergen Record, now known as The Record for about 30 years. I have seen this paper go from being fairly in the center of the political world to being a rabid leftwing publication.

"Particularly with this election cycle, it seems not a day goes by without a column that trashes Trump. At the same time, the reporters totally ignored the preponderance of illegal evidence against Hillary Clinton. Of course, the paper endorsed Clinton. No surprise there.

"The totally biased reporting on a daily basis is not what I expect from a newspaper. I expect their reporters to report on the news, not to give me their opinion on every page.

"Now, with the sale of the paper to the Gannett organization, every day the number of news stories gets less and less, the bias more and more.

"To add insult to injury, the management of the paper has made it very hard to communicate with them. Having left 2 messages for the editor I decided to resort to Facebook.

"Maybe this will get their attention, although I'm picking up an arrogance from them so this will probably be ignored. I guess whether or not I continue my subscription isn't important to them."

Downplaying Trump

Borman and other readers who slammed The Record for its coverage of Trump might be pleased with how Saturday's edition was missing a Page 1 news story about the president. 

However, an editorial urged Congress to "put politics aside" and investigate Michael Flynn's contacts with Russians during the transition (11A).

Flynn resigned as Trump's national security adviser, a job he held for only 24 days.

Today's Sunday edition continues to downplay Trump, giving his campaign rally in Florida a small corner of the front page (1A).

Print edition

Vin Frick's Jan. 17 review on NorthJersey.com's Facebook page blasted the November redesign of The Record's print edition:

"Terrible. Less content than before. Large pictures often not related to the story content. Same picture used twice on different pages of the same day's paper.

"Reprinting the same story and also the same letter to "Your View" two days in a row.

"Multiple fonts in obvious attempts to either fill space or crowd things so as not to require printing (and having to fill) another page.

"Conclusion: Lots of journalistic tricks to fill space after reducing content. Many editing errors - word usage, spelling, spacing, and others.

"Obviously cutting corners and living up to what they said in an earlier editorial 'electronic media first' (or something very close to those words).

"They will no longer have a 'follow-up' delivery the same day, if you call before 9 am to let them know that your paper was not delivered? When will we see a real restaurant review?

"Why is it no longer possible [to] contact individual reporters via email ? More than 40 years of weekly delivery is about to end very soon."

Hand-me-downs

On Saturday, Better Living Columnist Bill Ervolino wrote about "beloved hand-me-downs" people won't part with.

In fact, Ervolino and most of The Record's other columnists are themselves "hand-me-downs" from former Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

And it looks like the payroll-slashing Gannett Co. won't be parting with them any time soon (Ervolino, Mike Kelly, Charles Stile, John Cichowski, etc.).

Layoff notices handed to 141 reporters, editors and other North Jersey Media Group employees in January apparently didn't include Ervolino, Kelly and the others.

The 141 have until March 25 before they are shown the door.

Gannett lays off an additional 141 workers; The Record's readers try to count desserts

"Trumpty Dumpty" from cartoonist Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Gannett Co., the nation's biggest newspaper chain, continues to slash the payroll at North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record.

This week, 141 veteran employees were handed notices they will be laid off in 60 days.

In November, Gannett cut in half the remaining 426 positions at NJMG, which also publishes the Herald News, NorthJersey.com, 30 weeklies and a magazine.

Meanwhile, the quality and accuracy of the Woodland Park daily continues to decline.

Sugar shock

Today, readers of Better Living were doing double takes due to another big production error at Gannett's design center-cum-sweat shop in Neptune, a shore town where seven daily papers are put out.

The cover story -- "5 desserts we love" -- actually includes 6 desserts.

The Sharkfin Pie shown on the first page of the section wasn't included in the centerfold, which displays five other desserts.

In response, hospital emergency rooms and cardiac-surgery teams in the region geared up for an influx of diabetics who might have overdosed on sugar just by looking at the photos.

Many people with heart disease also are diabetic, because excessive amounts of sugar can form clots in their arteries.

The dessert spread appears under the byline of Food Editor Esther Davidowitz, who claims "oftentimes we believe that dessert is the best course of a meal" (12BL).

Is she using the "editorial we," and does that mean all of the other food at the featured restaurants isn't worth ordering?

Under Gannett, The Record ended the weekly restaurant reviews as an economy move.

President Trump

Today's Page 1 story on a possible 20% tax on Mexican imports doesn't mention whether the levy would be imposed on the 600,000 barrels of oil we get daily from south of the border (1A).

Can you imagine what that would do to the price of gasoline in North Jersey?

On Thursday, a front-page headline declares:

"A wall, new agents to

 stop illegal immigration"

You can only write such a headline, if the wall has already been built and the agents hired -- and both are far from reality. 

Also on Thursday, Gannett tells readers in no uncertain terms that when Garden State Plaza -- a major advertiser -- plans a makeover, it's front-page news, even if it cheapens the paper and readers question its editorial independence (1A).

Meanwhile, The New York Times ran an editorial on Wednesday, calling on Trump to release his tax returns:

"Mr. Trump's refusal to release his returns was deeply suspicious during the campaign, and it's indefensible now that he's in power.

 "The only logical conclusion is that the candidate who pledged to clean up Washington is hiding damaging information about his past."

Today marks Trump' first week in office, but critics note he often sounds like he is still delivering another campaign stump speech.