Showing posts with label Borg family enriches themselves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Borg family enriches themselves. Show all posts

Sunday, December 8, 2019

In 2019, The Record's slide toward mediocrity didn't slow

CIVIC PUZZLE: On Oct. 26, a business district group and the borough of Fort Lee unveiled this nonsensical sign, which they called an "arts installation," near the massive Hudson Lights development, leaving hundreds of residents to scratch their heads on its meaning and wonder just how they can "be" Fort Lee. 


By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- After lunch at Hiura, our favorite Japanese restaurant in Fort Lee, my friend Arthur drove us to a small park in the massive Hudson Lights development.

He pulled over and I opened the window to make a couple of photos of a sign he told me about a few weeks earlier:

"Be FORT LEE."

"What does that mean?" Arthur had said over and over again.

I couldn't shed any light on its meaning or how one could "be" Fort Lee, but when I got home, I Googled "Be Fort Lee" and found a statement from a business district group and the borough labeling the sign an "arts installation."

Then, I read this:

"The iconic installation signals the Borough's recent renaissance and serves as an aspirational invitation, to residents and visitors alike, to fully experience its enlightened cosmopolitan lifestyle so uniquely situated in a friendly community environment."

What idiocy.

The Record

Did The Record, the once-great local newspaper in Hackensack, report installation of the sign at the controversial high-rise/retail development or ask business and borough officials what the hell it means?

I no longer subscribe to the print edition or NorthJersey.com, which you cannot search unless you do.

But I do see the paper at least once a week, and the local news from Paterson and other towns in Passaic County continues to dominate the Local section, to the chagrin of readers in Bergen County, the heart of the circulation area.

The Sports section usually is twice the size of the Local news section, and both are filled with typos, errors and tortured writing.

The Borg family sold The Record to Gannett on July 6, 2016 -- a date that will live in infamy -- for nearly $40 million in cash, and laughed all the way to the bank.

The Sasson Report 

Here are posts from my omnibus blog, The Sasson Report, on The Record, (201) magazine and the Borg family: 






The following post on redevelopment of downtown Hackensack includes details about the Borg family's plans for nearly 20 acres at 150 River St., where The Record's headquarters once stood:




Saturday, January 9, 2010

Desperate scramble for news

02_no news today 2













The lazy, incompetent editors of The Record of Woodland Park really must have been scrambling for news by the looks of today's front page. Three sanitation workers in Fair Lawn were sickened by a chemical, but is that any reason to put a huge photo of a garbage truck on Page 1? Are we all in danger? And is the football game promoted under the masthead so earthshaking?

The lead A-1 story is about continuing job losses -- 85,000 in December. Isn't it time the editors assigned reporters to interview victims of the recession to put flesh, blood and emotions into the statistics? I guess they are secure in the knowledge the Borg family is interested only in enriching themselves and will continue to ignore the shameful job the editors are doing in covering local news.

Take a look at the Local section today. Far more attention is being paid to schools in mostly white communities than to those in highly diverse Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood, which has segregated elementary and middle schools.

With no Hackensack news on most days, readers are getting accustomed to waiting for the weekly Hackensack Chronicle, delivered with the former Hackensack daily on Fridays. This week, we learned the city manager asked union workers to forgo their scheduled raises in 2010. The weekly also has carried a story on how Mayor Marlin G. Townes, a computer wizard,  saved the city thousands of dollars by making its computers more efficient, asking nothing in return.


See earlier post: "Did you see this in The Record?"