Marty lets Francis and Sandy hog Page 1

This large, nearly empty lot at Park and Gamewell streets in Hackensack, above and below, already has trees and would make a great park for neighborhood residents, City Hall workers and worshipers at a mosque on Trinity Place. Why don't city officials ask the West New York-based developer of an apartment building on State Street to buy the land, turn it into a park and donate it to the city in return for a proposed 30-year tax break?

Editor Marty Gottlieb devotes almost all of the front page today to Pope Francis and Superstorm Sandy -- in a one-two punch that misses the vast majority of readers in North Jersey. 

Gottlieb does get some points for crowding out a sports column or story, which have become Page 1 staples since he took over The Record's Woodland Park newsroom.

For the third day in a row, A-2 carries a correction.

We miss Jimmy

As The Record's cartoonist, Jimmy Margulies had many big hits and a good number of big misses, but anything from him was better than the tripe that has been running on the Editorial Page since Gottlieb laid him off to cut expenses (A-20).

Today's Local section contains three pages of county, municipal, crime and court news, and three pages of death notices.

Christie to Paterson: Make more cotton

This drainage grate on Club Way, across from the Nellie K. Parker Elementary School in Hackensack, shows why drivers who throw filtered cigarettes out of their car windows should be heavily fined. It's a problem that gets little attention.




What was Governor Christie thinking when two African-American clergymen laid their hands on him and blessed him at a Baptist church in Paterson on Tuesday?

Was he dying for another extra-large pepperoni pizza and a few bottles of beer? Was he thinking, Get me out of here?

You won't find a clue in The Record's Page 1 story today on Christie's latest community meeting.

But the GOP bully came off as a benevolent master promising residents of the plantation a better future, if not freedom from their greedy mayor and his fellow overseers. 

Mixed messages

Wait a second. Isn't Christie just pedaling his usual brand of "reform" B.S.?

Didn't Christie cut aid to Paterson and other crime-ridden cities, forcing them to lay off police officers?

And didn't he cut the school breakfast program for poor children? So, why aren't those cuts mentioned in the story? 

Silk City schools 

The story also leaves another big question unanswered: Who has failed to lift Silk City schools after 21 years of state control and oversight?

And why isn't Christie talking about the crucial role of parents in their children's education instead of constantly beating up on teachers and administrators?  

Commuters be damned

With commuters caught in nightmarish traffic jams or crammed aboard rush-hour trains and buses, readers can always count on Road Warrior John Cichowski to take the easy way out and invent another irrelevant column, like today's musings on highway littering (L-1).

Of course, Cichowski tries to deflect attention away from all of the drivers who e-mail him with their inane questions in hopes of seeing their names in print.

These slobs are the real problem, treating roads and highways as if they are in their own unkempt homes.

Sellout, not buyout

The Borgs offered a buyout to Cichowski and other newsroom workers who are at least 60 years old, but he didn't take the hint.

Production Editor Liz Houlton even offered part of her six-figure salary to sweeten the pot and end her embarrassment over her copy editors missing all the errors Cichowski makes in nearly every column.

Houlton published two corrections on A-2 today, following a correction and clarificiation on Tuesday, but none of them acknowledged Cichowski's mistakes. 

Today's Local section seems to be reserved for the dead, with three local obituaries, the most I've seen in one edition, plus more than two pages of death notices (L-1 and L-6).

How many of them were subscribers who died of boredom?