UPDATE: We'll finally be able to say good riddance to Christie, N.J.'s worst governor

The defining moment in Governor Chris Christie's eight years in office was the Bridgegate scandal in September 2013, when many believe he orchestrated a five-day traffic jam at the Fort Lee end of the George Washington Bridge. That was his way of retaliating against the borough's Democratic mayor, who had refused to endorse the GOP thug's reelection bid in November 2013.

This January 2014 Daily News front page accurately predicted the impact of Bridgegate on Christie's presidential bid, which crashed and burned in February 2016. Then, he endorsed New York billionaire Donald J. Trump for the GOP nomination.

600 mean-spirited vetoes marred

conservative ogre's two terms

Editor's note: A day after The Record heaped praise on Governor Christie, NorthJersey.com fact-checked his last State of the State speech, and reported many of his claims were misleading. The report doesn't appear in today's print edition.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

After dropping out of the presidential race in February 2016, Chris Christie failed miserably to salvage his reputation as the worst governor in New Jersey history.

Despite the upbeat news media coverage of his last State of the State address on Tuesday, the GOP bully will forever be defined by the 2013 Bridgegate scandal, and his 600 vetoes of progressive legislation aimed at improving the lives of most state residents. 

In every year of his two four-year terms, Christie made major decisions that brought New Jersey to its knees.

They ranged from killing a major expansion of mass transit to bungling the recovery from Superstorm Sandy to trying the sabotage the Affordable Care Act to wrecking the state's finances.

Crappy coverage

Wednesday's coverage of his speech in The Record, my local daily newspaper, is yet another example of the crappy journalism readers have had to endure since Gannett bought its publisher, North Jersey Media Group, in July 2016.

Political Columnist Charles Stile and Trenton reporter Dustin Racioppi, who is assigned to cover Christie, filed reports that treat the conservative ogre much too kindly.

The sub-headline over Stile's Page 1 column called the speech a "praise-filled swan song."

"Swan song"? For Christie, it's more like a "gorilla song." 

A front-page box labeled "Highlights" refers to Christie boasting "about his proudest moments over eight years in power."

The box also refered to the speech as a "90-minute victory lap," and his many failures were called "challenges."

Christie and Trump 

No surprise, given that The Record was the only major New Jersey daily that failed to call for Christie's resignation after he threw his weight behind Donald J. Trump's White House bid.

Nor did The Record even report the Star-Ledger and six Gannett papers had demanded Christie step down after endorsing Trump, a racist, con man and serial liar.

Stile was Christie's chief booster in his first term, portraying the governor as a "bipartisan reformer" despite liberal use of the veto pen to control the majority Democrats in the State Legislature.

And after writing an expose when Christie's vetoes numbered in the 300s, Racioppi never bothered to tally them again, even when they sailed past 500.

Wednesday's editorial in The Record contained a far more honest assessment of Christie's reign, noting "he ran to win," but that "his failure is that he did not run to govern for eight years" (10A).

Vetoes go missing 

Nowhere in The Record's nearly two full newspaper pages of text and photos on Wednesday is there any mention of Christie's veto of a $15 minimum wage or a tax surcharge on millionaires (1A and 6A).

Nor are there references to his voodoo finances, which robbed funds from women's health initiatives, environmental cleanup, mass transit and other programs to balance the revenue-starved state budget year after year. 

And his massive 90%-plus cut in state subsidies to NJ Transit effectively put the state's commuter rail and bus operator on the road to ruin.

That has given Record transportation reporter Curtis Tate the chance to write a long series of critical stories that usually fail to mention Christie's role in trying to destroy the agency.

New rail tunnels

In 2010, his first year in office, Christie signaled his war on mass transit by cancelling new Hudson River rail tunnels, then grabbing nearly a billion dollars in leftover funds from NJ Transit and the Port Authority to fix roads and bridges.

That allowed the conservative ogre to delay hiking the state's second-lowest-in-the-nation gas tax until November 2016, rescuing a Transportation Trust Fund for road and rail improvements he nearly drove into bankruptcy.

Good riddance

Next Tuesday, Christie will finally leave office, and he'll be succeeded by Democrat Phil Murphy, who has the unenviable job of repairing all the damage the GOP bully did.

Even Christie's so-called 2% cap on local budgets hasn't failed to stem the rise of property taxes, highest in the nation.

So, all together now, Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Donald J. Trump after NBC fired him for calling Mexicans rapists and drug runners. After Governor Christie dropped out of the presidential race in early 2016, he endorsed Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

In this 2010 photo, real estate mogul Jon Hanson, left, a major fundraiser for Christie, is shown with the governor. Hanson also was a close friend of Malcolm A. Borg, then chairman of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record. Hanson and Borg once jointly owned a private jet based at Teterboro Airport. Before the Borgs sold NJMG to Gannett, did the friendship color The Record's news coverage of Christie and Hanson, who also served as an adviser to the governor? 

When reporters asked Governor Christie whether he had any role in the September 2013 closure of access lanes to the upper level of the George Washington Bridge, he joked he moved the traffic cones to block two of the three lanes, below.

Christie was never charged in the scandal, but he spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds so his legal team could write a whitewash report about his so-called lack of involvement. In the court of public opinion, he was found guilty of directing aide Bridget Anne Kelly to declare that it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

  

Why my bosses on The Record copy desk frowned on headlines with plays on words

A comprehensive plan to replace the Affordable Care Act fell far short of the votes it needed in the Senate on Tuesday night. But the defeat for Majority Leader Mitch Mconnell, shown above in a cartoon from R.J. Matson of Roll Call, and President Trump isn't reflected in The Record's upbeat story on Page 1 today. 

In a second cartoon from Matson, Trump imagines himself back on TV, issuing pardons to everyone implicated in Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including himself.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Writing headlines that are accurate, catchy and informative has become a lost art at The Record of Woodland Park.

A prime example of a bad, inaccurate headline appeared on Page 1 on Monday over a story reporting that Temple Emeth in Teaneck "scrapped annual dues" this month, joining a growing list of synagogues nationwide.

The Gannett Co. headline writer, who labors in a design studio far from New Jersey, couldn't resist writing a headline with a play on the word "dues," and that was his or her undoing, as well as a disservice to readers:

"DUE FOR A CHANGE"

The play on words is obvious, but saying something is "due" means it will happen in the near future, and the headline contradicts the sub-headline and story, both of which report the change has already occurred.

Copy desk woes

The headline is an example of why my bosses on The Record copy desk in Hackensack frowned on plays on words.

In truth, headline quality and accuracy have been declining since 2008, a year before The Record abandoned Hackensack for Woodland Park.

That's when then-Publisher Stephen A. Borg ordered a major newsroom downsizing that saw the departure of several copy editors (and headline writers), including yours truly, and the co-supervisor and conscience of the copy desk, Nancy Cherry.

Cherry enforced good writing and grammar, the style of the newspaper and catchy but accurate headlines, and she didn't like plays on words. 

Several months after Gannett Co. bought the paper in July 2016, headline writing and other aspects of production were moved from Woodland Park to a Gannett design center at the Asbury Park Press in Neptune.

In June, Gannett closed that operation with the loss of 85 jobs, and moved production of The Record to a design studio in Des Moines, Nashville or Phoenix.

See the "How to Write Headlines" blog from Aaron Elson, another former Record copy editor:

Headline Guy@blogspot.com

Christie vetoes

A Page 1 story on Saturday reported Governor Christie signed a bill raising the smoking age in New Jersey to 21.

The headline said Christie signed a "law," which is incorrect, but another problem is that a companion story on Saturday's Page 6A fails to report the GOP bully has set a record for vetoing bills, not signing them.

Saturday's story says Christie signed "dozens of new laws, including one that protects transgender students' privacy rights."

Only one sentence in the story mentions Christie vetoed 14 bills, adding to a total of nearly 600 vetoes since he took office in January 2010.

The Record stopped counting Christie's vetoes after they passed the 300-mark.

Rail safety

On Monday, The Record's Local news section reported NJ Transit will begin installing "long-awaited safety improvements" at the Main Street station in Ramsey in hopes of cutting injuries and deaths at the crossing.

"Since 2010, four people have been killed at the grade-level crossing, which is considered one of the most dangerous in the state," Staff Writer Tom Nobile reported.

It's refreshing to see NJ Transit acknowledging safety problems in Ramsey instead of labeling pedestrians killed by trains as "trespassers," a term The Record adopted and used in news stories for far too many years.

By the numbers

Today's Better Living section continues the feature coverage by the numbers that has become a fixture under Gannett, which has trimmed more than 350 staffers at the North Jersey Media Group division that publishes The Record.

"7 DELICIOUS ROYAL-COVERED

 DISHES IN NORTH JERSEY"

On Tuesday, Better Living readers were told to "Work It."

"The 5 summer fitness activities

 in Bergen County everyone should try"

And on Monday, Better Living endorsed:

"28 places to shop at the shore" 

APP is 'a rag'

When NJ.com reported the closing of Gannett's Neptune design studio, the website received several comments from readers of the Asbury Park Press or APP, another Gannett newspaper:

Chriss03 said:

"One cannot call the APP a newspaper. It is a collection of obits, sports news, and fill. Long long ago, Gannett gave up on issuing a newspaper. There is no Monmouth County news. No local news. No news period.

"I subscribed to the APP for 50+ years, but cancelled when they added Ann Coulter as a columnist. That was the last straw. 

"When they do fold, no doubt Gannett will blame the internet and not face up to their own incompetence."

Smok44 said:

"APP is a rag, their website is garbage, they took a once great newspaper and ran it into the ground.  The writing is on the wall. Gannett is getting what they deserve."

Christie may look like a beached whale, but he won't hesitate to screw New Jersey

Governor Christie on July 2 enjoying Island Beach State Park -- closed to the public during a government shutdown -- looks like a beached whale, but he still is capable of hurting New Jerseyans before he leaves office in January (Photo credit: Andrew Mills of NJ Advance Media for NJ.com).

At an unapologetic press conference, Christie noted he was staying in the official Jersey shore mansion for New Jersey governors on July 2.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Despite an overwhelming Democratic majority in the state Legislature, New Jersey's GOP bully has ruled the state with an iron fist for nearly 8 years.

And yet, The Record of Woodland Park and other big and small news outlets just don't get it.

Today's banner headline in The Record screams "stealth veto," a reference to Governor Christie secretly taking language out of the state budget so he can divert hundreds of millions of dollars from polluters into the general fund (1A).

ABC's "Good Morning America" referred to Christie vacationing with his family on a beach closed to the public as "Beachgate," and other media claimed the governor's in-your-face explanation generated an "international firestorm" of protest.

But even as Christie is rated the most unpopular governor in the nation, he simply doesn't give a shit.

With little media scrutiny, the GOP thug has successfully used more than 500 vetoes to assert his radical conservatism, and thwart the will of the Democrats who rule the state Legislature and the public.

At the same time, Christie exploited Trenton reporters like The Record's Charles Stile to write story after story heralding his "reform agenda." 

Stile even touted him as a "bipartisan compromiser" poised for a White House run.

Years ago, another reporter, Dustin Racioppi, wrote a story exposing Christie's vetoes when they passed the 300 mark, but never touched the subject again.

The Record has ignored what many suspect -- Christie set a veto record in the course of becoming the worst New Jersey governor ever.

Liar-In-Chief

@GovChristie even had the balls to tweet that the final budget he signed early Tuesday "delivered 2 full terms of unprecedented pension stability, fiscal responsibility & tax relief" -- when nothing could be farther from the truth.

And in a front-page column on Wednesday, the gullible Stile, still in the dark about Christie's latest diversion of funds, quoted Democrats as praising the budget as the best they have ever gotten.

Today, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports Christie's stealthy budget editing could mean only $50 million of a proposed $225 million state settlement with Exxon Mobil Corp. would go "to a state fund used to restore land and water affected by hazardous waste" (1A). 

"The veto follows a pattern by Christie, who had diverted almost $300 million from the polluters of the Passaic River ... to the general fund," Fallon says.

Not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in mass-transit money Christie grabbed to repair roads and bridges after canceling Hudson River rail tunnels in 2010. 

Thunder Thighs

Photos of Christie roasting in the sun on July 2 showed he has two enormous thighs and lots of belly fat, yet reporters never asked him what happened to the weight he lost initially after lap-band surgery in February 2013.

In April 2015, he told a friendly Matt Lauer on "Today" the surgery is "the best thing I've ever done for my health" and "I wish I had done it years ago."

After Christie first took office in 2010, only "60 Minutes" asked the obese governor how much he weighed (he refused to answer, of course), and whether he was healthy enough for a White House campaign.

Comedian David Letterman guessed Christie weighed 400 pounds:

Guess how much Governor Christie weighs

Christie labors in Trump's shadow