Hackensack, NJ Community Message Boards

SLOPPY, SLOPPY, SLOPPY

When I was looking at The Record's story on the expansion of Hackensack University Medical Center, I used the version reprinted in the Hackensack Chronicle on Feb. 8. The lede paragraph by Melanie Anzidei referred to a "nine-story ... tower on Second Avenue," apparently a reference to Second Street in Hackensack.

A photo caption shows the hospital president "looking out onto Second St. in Hackensack." A second caption says, "Construction is underway on Second St. in Hackensack ... on the Second Street Tower."

And thank you to those who are trying to provide technical help.

Sorry, ITSAMIKE, do you mean I should add hashtags at the end of blog? https://thesassonreport.blogspot.com/

I still need help with a technical issue. Oldest items appear first under every topic and I have to scroll down each time through a long list of posts. How do I get newest items on top???

The latest fish tale from The Record stinks to high heaven

'6 best places' for fish misses Costco, H Mart and The Hill

Rebecca King, a food and dining reporter for The Record and NorthJersey.com, describes herself on Twitter as a "theater nerd, bookworm and ice cream addict." I'd like add, Knows nothing about where to buy or eat fish in northern New Jersey.

Her piece on the 6 best places to go for fish appeared on the Better Living front this past Wednesday under a clunky headline:

'FIND FRESH FARE AT FISHMONGERS'

She's even wrong about the biggest reason many people complain about living in New Jersey. She lists "traffic, rude drivers, and astronomical rents," but omits high property taxes (and local daily newspapers that Gannett, owner of The Record of Woodland Park, has turned into rags filled with sloppy or inaccurate reporting, headlines and captions).

And she's wrong when she says that because the state isn't landlocked, we "have access to beautiful, yummy fresh fish." As I discovered when I wrote a cover story for The Record's Food section in 2003, most of the fish and shellfish that reach our tables comes from out of state or out of the country.

Wild-caught fish sold in New Jersey comes from Iceland, Alaska, Canada and even Suriname, a small country in South America.

She lists only one restaurant, Seafood Gourmet, a Maywood fish market with a small dining room in the back. It's one of my favorites. But she fails to mention The Hill in Closter, a fine-dining restaurant that opened last June with a focus on seafood. The restaurant serves a "First on The Scene" menu -- a fixed-price three-course dinner with a glass of wine for only $29 during limited hours four days a week. I enjoyed a beautiful piece of pan-seared Mahi-Mahi with mushrooms and bok choy, plus a salad, dessert and glass of wine.

King's list of markets is topped by The Fish Dock in Closter, a shop run by an Icelandic couple who specialize in the incredible variety of wild fish from the pristine North Atlantic, as well as some Gulf seafood.

But she doesn't mention the seafood counter at Whole Foods Market in Paramus is simply the biggest and best in northern New Jersey. And her claim that Whole Foods has "high prices" is nonsense now that the merger with Amazon has reduced prices throughout the store. Fresh Monkfish is only $8.99 a pound, and Amazon Prime members get special seafood deals.

Her list of fish markets also omits Costco Wholesale in Teterboro, which has unbeatable prices for such fresh, wild-caught fish as Icelandic cod and haddock, flounder from Canada, Silver Corvina from Suriname and Mahi-Mahi (all $8.99 a pound or less).

Also missing is H Mart, the Korean supermarket chain with an incredible variety of whole fish at its Ridgefield branch, and smaller fish counters in the Little Ferry, Fort Lee and Paramus stores. The fishmongers there will clean and prepare your fish any of 5 ways, including fillets.

Two of the photos with King's article carry awkwardly written captions:

"Neon signs in the storefront windows advertise fresh food at Seafood Gourmet in downtown Maywood." The only visible sign says, "Seafood Market."

Another photo shows the front of a Whole Foods Market, but the caption describes the place as a "grocery store."

And the cover photo showing the seafood case inside The Fish Dock in Closter appears against a dark background that makes it impossible to see any of the fish or the descriptive signs and prices.

All in all, this was another report from The Record's Better Living section and Food Editor Esther Davidowitz that was filled with misinformation or missing information.

You've been cataloging these errors for how long, and you claim one of your readers works at The Record and cares how the paper looks? No he or she doesn't or you wouldn't have anything to write about. It's getting worse, not better. As for the union truck parked in front of a no parking sign, were you suggesting it should be ticketed?

You are aware the paper isn't even edited in New Jersey anymore? After Gannett took over, more than 350 layoffs included nearly all of the remaining copy editors, the last line of defense against grammatical and factual errors, and the enforcers of style. The design studio for The Record was in Neptune, N.J., where Gannett's crappy Asbury Park Press was published. That place closed, and design of The Record was moved somewhere out of state where minions work on a number of Gannett papers.

1 or 4 items not related to sports is immaterial. My eyes glaze over just trying to take in all the stuff you post, and it's extremely repetitive. Seems like you have nothing better to do. I can relate to that. And, again, the paper is doing a lot more disservice to readers by reducing local coverage and filling local news pages with police news. One Local section was an economy instituted by Stephen Borg, but it means Bergen readers have had an overwhelming amount of Paterson news shoved down their throats for years.

When I got The Record home delivered, I used to put the Sports section into the recycling without ever reading it. So, all of this exhaustive review of typos and so forth seems like another waste of space.

The real horror about The Record and Hackensack Chronicle, both gutted by Gannett, is that they are a parody of a local daily and weekly newspaper. The Chronicle no longer has its own staff and merely reprints stories from The Record or The Wretched, as many say.

The Friday, Jan. 25, Hackensack Chronicle carries not a single word about the special school election 3 days earlier, when voters overwhelmingly rejected a $170 million school construction and renovation proposal that would have triggered a 30-year tax hike of $308 to $650 and more a year. Instead, the weekly carried a front page tribute to Harold Bloom, a former Hackensack High School principal who died at 89.

Even though the election was held and decided 3 days earlier, the second page carries a story reporting a judge ordered a change in the wording of the ballot proposal, which didn't state the tax hike would be yearly for 30 years. And on Page 8, a long letter reacts to Mayor John Labrosse opposing the proposal, which was reported on Page 1 of the Jan. 11 Chronicle. The long, long letter was signed by Ellen O'Reilly of Hackensack (whoever she is), and it's the only letter in the paper.

The Record and Hackensack Chronicle have never as far as I know explored an issue that incenses property tax payers in Hackensack, namely the impact of so-called non-profits such as Hackensack University Medical Center on the taxes you and I pay. They include Bergen County, Fairleigh Dickinson University, the Bergen County Academy, Eastwick College and so forth.

The front page of the Dec. 28 Chronicle reported HUMC will be building a 43,500-square-foot utility plant, and I also saw a story -- I'm not sure where -- reporting the hospital is building a 300,000 square foot medical tower. If both of those are tax-exempt, as is most of the rest of the complex that ate Hackensack and spit it out long ago, that will only shift the tax burden further onto homeowners and small business owners. The hospital pays its CEO about $3 million a year and takes in money hand over fist, so how can it legitimately claim to be non-profit?

Sadly, the City Council will not sue HUMC and take the case all the way up to the state Supreme Court, thus establishing a precedent that will bind all non-profit hospitals to start paying their fair share of property taxes. In Hackensack, that would be about $19 million a year, not including the new utility and patient projects on the way.

Instead, the council announced last year how proud officials are of a new 6-year agreement that will see the hospital pay $4 million a year in "host community fees." Months after that agreement was announced, council members could not say whether some of the money will be used to pave some of the crummy potholed streets drivers find all over the city.

City officials also are getting the shaft from Bergen County, which has dragged its feet on paving parts of Prospect and Summit avenues that are in terrible shape or installing turn lanes on Passaic Street, in both directions at Summit Avenue, a choke point for traffic. One city council member said the city couldn't "force" the county to take part of the properties on each side of Passaic to create the turn lanes on the narrow, two-lane street, which dates to the Revolutionary War.

The Chronicle is such a piece of Gannett crap that the front page story on Dec. 7, 2018, was about a dog that was allegedly missing for 9 months before it was found. And it wasn't even a Hackensack dog; "Zina" escaped from her River Vale home; she was found in Hackensack. Page 2 reported that renovations at the Lido Restaurant in Hackensack were being delayed.

On Nov. 16, a story about a new commuter shuttle in Hackensack was buried inside while Page 1 of the Chronicle (or maybe "Hackensack Chronic Pain") reported the body of a man, 39, who tried to swim across the Hackensack River on Nov. 4, was recovered on Nov. 6. By the way, a free shuttle runs from the city's bus terminal to its two train stations, the county complex and the "local hospital," presumably a reference to the mammoth HUMC complex. The "Hackensack Transit Connector" is being paid for by the Federal Transit Administration, North Jersey Transportation Authority and Bergen County; I'd like to see more such giving back to the city by non-profits.

Meanwhile, an editorial in the same Nov. 16 Chronicle notes the Trump administration is denying funding for a 10-mile extension of the misnamed Hudson-Bergen Light Rail into Bergen County, terminating at Englewood Hospital.