Article written

  • on 25.01.2010
  • at 11:30 AM
  • by Shannon McDonald, Editor

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category: Departments

Right NEast/Wrong NEast: The Wiss/Frankford border is fine, but definite 0

Jan25

This one is a throwback, with the original article dating all the way back to Dec. 15, 2009. But the breaking news comes first, so we held this off for a rainy day. . .

The Wissinoming/Frankford border is argued a lot among residents of both neighborhoods. Some say Cheltenham Avenue is the boundary, while others push it down to Bridge Street.

Regardless, the school bus accident that happened at Pratt and Valley streets last month was in Frankford. Not in Wissinoming, as Action News reported. Might seem like a small matter, but one block can make a difference.

Aside from the basic difference like demographics, Frankford and Wissinoming are in different zip codes and feed to different schools. And Frankford has its own news site, the Frankford Gazette.

Maybe Action News just hadn’t had a Wissinoming headline in a while and needed a change?

Outside media don’t care about the Northeast. We have all seen them misuse, misspell and mistake our neighborhoods and our streets, so we at NEast Philly wanted to do something about it. When they get it wrong, we set it right in a segment we like to call Right NEast/Wrong NEast.

  • http://www.twitter.com/apocalypsepony TLP

    Given some of the more egregious mistakes the local news makes, you guys are probably stretching a little bit here. If someone calls Burholme as Lawncrest or Fox Chase, it’s really not a huge deal.

  • http://neastphilly.com/author/Shannon-McDonald/ Shannon McDonald

    TLP — you’re definitely right in saying this a small mistake. But we like to point them all out in the hopes that calling out even the tiniest errors will motivate other media outlets to pay extra attention to geography – although, that hasn’t proven to be the case yet. Thanks for the insightful comment!

  • Brian H Harris

    Cheltenham Avenue is the border. And you would think that residents of a city would like to have media outlets that are familiar with the very city they cover.

  • Gina

    If the news stations can’t get the neighborhoods correct, how many other mistakes are they making? We’re not talking about a casual conversation here. The reports are supposed to supply correct information.

  • Bill Senatore

    I lived on the south side of Cheltenham Avenue, three houses on the south side. I was on Walker Street and can emphatically state that Mt. Sinai Cemetery, located between Cheltenham Ave. was the official buffer between Frankford and Wissinoming. Our Jewish Cemetery was the home to countless baseball and football games. Those of you who grew up in the sixties and seventies in Wissinoming will relate to this statement. “Vogel tomb over.”

  • http://NEPhilly.com Maryann Kramer

    Speaking of tiny errors, there’s one your editors missed:” Frankford has its own site” should never contain an apostrophe in the word its unless you’re trying to abbreviate “it is.” Don’t mean to sound petty, but we want those big news organizations to respect our reporting, right? Maybe it was just a typo. Just can’t shake the wannabe high school English teacher in me. And Wissinoming, back in the sixties, got its own zip code, 19135, to separate it from Frankford, 19124. I know, because I grew up on Van Kirk St.

  • http://neastphilly.com/author/Shannon-McDonald/ Shannon McDonald

    Maryann – you caught us! It is, in fact, a typo, as our editor (me!) has the same wannbe high school English teacher tendencies as you do. Thanks for pointing that out — and for your thoughts on the neighborhoods.

  • tara

    i know this is a little late to post on this story, but i’m new to your site. anyway, i lived in frankford for 7 years – not far at all from pratt & valley streets and little things like calling that area wissinoming would irk me because it just felt like reporters didn’t care enough to find out exactly what neighborhood they were in. most people know that the dividing lines are not clear if you are not from that area so it’s really not a bad idea to ask before you publish your story – and it takes all of 30 seconds.

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