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: