When the shouting is all over, readers will fight over scraps

Around 10:30 this morning, a steady stream of voters entered and left the polling place at the Fairmount School in Hackensack, above and below. Long waits were reported elsewhere, including at the middle school in Teaneck and in Jersey City.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The presidential election and the Bridgegate trial have been godsends to The Record's editors, allowing them to fill gaping holes in the paper.

When those distractions are over, Bergen County readers will once again face the reality of a thin local-news section, where many of the stories are about Paterson and other Passaic County communities.

And in a week, the Gannett Co. is expected to let go more than 200 employees at North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, Herald News, 50 weekly papers and NorthJersey.com.

The New Jersey/Nation page today is mostly devoted to more of Governor Christie's lame denials of any role in or knowledge of the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closures (A-3).

The other New Jersey news on that page is hardly news: 

After two of his former aides were found guilty in the Bridgegate scandal on Friday, Christie's approval rating in the state hit a record low, falling to 20 percent in a Rutgers-Eagleton Survey released Monday.

Local news?

Readers in Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other towns won't find any municipal news in Local today.

On L-6, a photo caption says Robert Popp is "laying flowers on the Route 46 bridge between Little Ferry and Ridgefield Park, where his sister was run down in 1969."

But the column with the photo contradicts the caption, and also contradicts itself:

Staff Writer John Cichowski, aka Road Warrior, reports Popp has visited the bridge 47 times and "without fail" ... "lays a spray of flowers ... on the span ... where his 15-year-old sister, Gloria, was run down and killed by a hit-and-run driver on Nov. 7, 1969," when no guardrails protected pedestrians using the sidewalk (L-1).

Popp didn't place the bouquet on the sidewalk, the demented Cichowski says much later. He "tossed this one" into the Hackensack River (L-6).

A story about a West Milford volunteer firefighter said the 79-year-old man died in a fall off of a ladder on Sunday, suggesting the news dispatch was brought to Woodland Park on foot (L-3).

Ung leaving

According to the Boozy Burbs website, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's last celebration of gluttony will run this Friday.

"According to Ung, she did not reapply for her position as part of the shakeup brought on by Gannett's purchase of The Record this year."

Ung has been "covering food and dining for 9 years," according to the website, although to many readers it seems much, much longer.