Decreasing value of Miami Herald endorsements: Herald ignores a city, yet blithely gives its' endorsement

Below is the email that I wrote and sent earlier out this afternoon to Edward Schumacher-Matos, the Miami Herald's once-in-a-while Ombudsman.
I had lots of cc's and bcc's on that, including lots of names of TV and print reporters and elected officials I interact with, both locally and national, who have an interest in accurate, timely and responsible reporting of news in government.

I've had a letter like this in mind for quite some time and when there was nothing printed over the weekend to dissuade me, out it went.
_____________________________________
October 27th, 2008
re Decreasing value of Miami Herald endorsements: Herald ignores a city, yet blithely gives its' endorsement

Dear Mr. Schumacher-Matos:

Having grown-up in South Florida with the Miami Herald from the late 60's thru the late '70's, and being intimately involved with many national, state and local elections in Dade County, including
many hectic 24/7 months spent as the day-to-day State Campaign coordinator under Mike Abrams for Gary Hart's winning 1984 Florida Presidential Primary upset victory, I can still recall a time and place when the endorsement of the Herald was something of tangible and intrinsic value.

Value not only to the endorsed political candidate and their supporters, but also to open-minded voters and other media as well, and not just those in South Florida, but nationally, because that endorsement was NOT one that could be easily dismissed with a wave of a hand as a case of
institutional party bias or cozy business/professional cronyism, as was/is true with many too many newspapers across the country, including, perhaps most famously, The Chicago Tribune, a fact I fully realized but still didn't like when I lived in the Chicago area for a few years.

After I left North Miami Beach in the Fall of 1979 for life at Indiana University in Bloomington, and consistently voted absentee from there 'til 1983, despite my personally knowing many of the Miami-area politicians who were running in Dade County -as well as their families- my Mom in NMB would STILL cut out the Herald's list of endorsements in the Sunday paper and mail it first thing Monday morning so I'd get it.
Just to be sure, she'd call the next night with her own analysis of the various Herald picks, and we'd compare notes just in case I was going to send the absentee ballot back before getting her letter with the Herald's picks.

(I had a mail subscription to the afternoon Miami News while at IU, but the 3-4 day delay was clearly problematic as far as following local news from afar in those pre-Internet days, as you might well recall.)

So, all that said, for me personally, nothing quite illustrates the depths to which the Herald has sunken in more recent times then their strange endorsement last Saturday for the two seats on the Hallandale Beach City Commission, because that's where I happen to live now.

Not because of which candidates the paper's chosen to endorse, per se, based on the seven candidates making a group house-call on the Herald's Pembroke Pines office on Oct. 14th, but rather because the newspaper itself has seemingly made the conscious editorial decision to NOT send a reporter to cover Hallandale Beach's twice-monthly, often contentious City Commission meetings since June.

And that June meeting was covered by the Herald largely because it was a Joint Meeting with the City of Hollywood, which almost always gets a Herald reporter assigned to cover their City Commission and CRA meetings, as well as those involving Bernard Zyscovich and his positive constructive ideas for reshaping Downtown Hollywood.
Since I actually attend them, I'm in a position to say so.

(Well, almost always covers, since the Herald NEVER reported on the City of Hollywood's unanimous 5-0 approval on October 15th -at the second hearing- on the application of FORTUNE International's four-year effort to construct an iconic 41-story Beach One Resort hotel on State Road A1A and Hallandale Beach Blvd., right on the city's border with Hallandale Beach.
In fact, the Herald has yet to run a single photo of the area itself, or even an artist's rendering of the building, designed by world-renowned architect Carlos A. Ott, which could very likely become a Hollywood landmark for decades to come at the entrance to Hollywood on the beach.
Not to worry, though, I have a photo of it on my blog, with a link to all the hotel specs at Hollywood's website.)

And the Herald has maintained this position towards HB even though big news was being made there which has broad and long-term policy and process implications for all the citizens and residents of the city, of which the following are but the more obvious ones that the Herald has been completely AWOL on:

1.) In early August, a new interim commissioner, Anthony A. Sanders, one of the two Herald-endorsed candidates, was initially selected NOT elected by three of the five commissioners less than fifteen minutes after Comm, Fran Schiller's letter of resignation was read by City Manager Mike Good.

This was done despite the fact that the resignation would not become official until WEEKS LATER, with a regularly scheduled Commission meeting still coming up BEFORE that effective date of resignation on Aug. 29th, which would have afforded the city plenty of time for its citizens to be fully engaged in the process, NOT the orchestrated behind-the-scenes effort by the mayor and city manager to hand-pick a member.

I personally like and admire Pastor Sanders and was the very last person to actually speak with him before he and his wife Jessica left the previous City Commission's meeting, and could've supported the idea of his selection IF it had simply taken place according to the city's own established procedures -and in the Sunshine with appropriate public notice.

I would've even been open to the idea of supporting him and voting for him, because it disgusts me that this city which calls itself "Progressive" has had such an antiquated system of representation, which allows power to be concentrated in the hands of one geographic part of the city, east of the FEC railroad tracks, instead of one where there is equal opportunity to participate and be heard on the issues.
Myself, I'd prefer a system involving district seats plus at-large seats.

But sadly the process in Hallandale Beach that night WASN'T in the Sunshine, and in the interim, Comm. Sanders has adopted a tone that clearly suggests he believes he's entitled to the Commissioner position because of his many very commendable efforts in the city in the past, which rubs me and many other civic-minded HB residents who follow such things the wrong way.
And understandably so.

We want independent voices on the City Commission committed to reform, transparency and accountability, NOT puppets that rubber stamp.

Since you and the newspaper clearly don't know this fact, Mr. Schumacher-Matos, it's common knowledge that HB City Manager Mike Good actually wrote Comm. Schiller's resignation letter.
In fact, Schiller said as much that night, not that your readers would know that, since nobody from the paper was there.
(And so much for notions of separation-of-powers in a City Manager form of government, eh!)

That vetting process to fill the vacancy was wholly and substantially different from the process the city had previously insisted upon using to fill a vacancy less than 18 months before, with the resignation of Comm. Joe Gibbons upon his election to the State House in November of 2006.
Why throw out the city's existing procedures with WEEKS to go before Schiller's resignation was effective???
There's a question!

It's a question the Herald has never asked.

The only part about "the fix" that didn't quite work, this being HB and all, was Sanders being unaware that Mayor Joy Cooper would announce her selection of him -oh, I mean the Commission's!- on that particular night, as he was informed of the news via telephone by yet another HB Commission candidate, Alexander Lewy, an aide to Rep. Kendrick Meek, who was himself endorsed this week by the Sun-Sentinel.

I know this because a visibly-shaken Lewy was standing right next to me outside the City Hall chambers that night after the announcement, speaking to Pastor Sanders, while I was describing the whole un-democratic process on my cell phone to Herald editor Rory Clarke.
Lewy told me what he was doing, whom he was speaking to and what was being said to him.
Yes, there's no substitute for first-hand facts!

2.) Another curious issue unexamined by the Herald is the appraisal value of Sanders-owned property that the City of HB has long sought to purchase, with wildly fluctuating estimates.
And this week, you have the sorry spectacle of the city even paying for an ad -below- in a free local community rag that doesn't actively practice journalism -the South Florida Sun-Times, Oct. 23rd issue, page 13A- labeled Setting the Record Straight.

It has appraisal figures that are completely different -and much higher!- than ones cited publicly at the Oct. 15th City Commission meeting by Comm. Keith London.
He alone has sought to put some light on this matter by disclosing the names of the appraisers involved and the specific ID number attached to each estimate, so that city residents would know what's what with those very curious estimates.
The new figures cited in the city-paid ad seem completely unbelievable, given the location of the property and the current real estate market.

Is the city of HB actually bidding against itself for the property of Comm. Sanders and providing him a windfall profit?
Some people think so and the city's handling of the matter ought to raise some antennae among the media about why the process is unfolding the way it is if it's so innocent.

And look at the city's ad, a great deal of which is written like a political endorsement of him.
With taxpayer dollars!


If they'd had more time, the city might've even said that Anthony Sanders was born in a log cabin!

As bad as things are today in the newspaper world, in many if not most American cities, even mediocre newspapers recognize that story as one that at least warrants some independent investigation and reporting, to say nothing of a photo or two of the property, and a specific description of the city's future use for it, other than the vague abstract ideas of simply assembling contiguous properties for some project that never gets fully discussed publicly.
The Miami Herald has not written word one about this, with 8 days to go before Election Day.

3.) Another un-examined issue in the pages of the Herald is Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's intemperate and embarrassing reaction to the Hollywood City Commission's unanimous approval of the Beach One Resort project, and the Hollywood Commission's unwillingness to ignore their own Commission procedures and create a bad precedent by allowing the City of HB to make a lengthy Power Point presentation that other interested citizens and parties could not legally make, even people who live nearby.

Cooper did this just a short time later at the HB City Commission meeting by threatening to begin (illegally) charging Florida citizens a fee to access the public beach at HB's North Beach, and publicly stated her desire to tie the hotel's developer up in knots thru extended litigation.
Did I mention that it was illegal to charge an access fee to a public beach?

4.) And did I mention that in his final remarks at the Hollywood meeting on the 15th, Beach One Resort attorney Joesph L. Herndon publicly stated that the City of HB was completely rejected in their request for $1.5 million dollars from the developer in exchange for, well, basically, just walking away and forgetting their problems?
Yeah, that's neighborly!
Nothing quite says 'Hello neighbor" like "Stick 'em up!"

Most reasonable people might think the above might be considered news, Mr. Schumacher-Matos

More recently, the Herald even ran a preposterous PR note masquerading as news on the City of HB being nominated for an award for excellence from the Florida League of Cities, being one of five nominees.
The story NEVER mentioned the fact that the city, or rather, four of the five HB Commissioners, nominated themself, which is, if nothing else, very convenient, don't you think? http://www.flcities.com/muni_awards.asp

They also used that same same sage wisdom to self-nominate in two other categories.
One was for Comm. Dotty Ross, while she's running for re-election, a fact she happily mentions in her campaign mailers, just as they clearly planned in advance.
What better way to try to rehabilitate someone with as ineffective and mediocre a record as Ross's than to nominate her for an award for "Excellence?"
It's fiendishly ingenious!

In case you forgot, last year Dotty Ross's record included violating Florida's Sunshine Laws by joining with two other Hallandale Beach Commissioners in secret over lunch to vote themselves a 300% salary increase, with no advance notice to the public about the item.
This year, that record has included voting for an ordinance which precludes the general HB public from serving on the Police-Fire Pension Board, and voting against something that's so common sense it's taken for granted in other South Florida cities in the year 2008 -placing the names of people serving on city advisory boards on the city's website with more information about the committee itself.

In an era of exciting new technology that allows for more direct connectivity between citizens and their government representatives than was ever possible, Dotty Ross is firmly anchored to the distant past, as she was against even allowing the City Manager's staff to study the idea of having the city-controlled cable-access channel offering programming other than the HB City Commission meetings and the once a month HB Planning & Zoning meeting, even though this would clearly allow greater direct citizen involvement and participation in public policy.

So instead, 99% of the time, the channel only shows bumpers of city information, over and over and over. Not exactly Must-See TV.

The City Commission also nominated City Manager Mike Good for an award, someone who has largely escaped serious scrutiny in the Herald and other South Florida media that would give reasonable people and media in other cities cause for concern: lack of positive results.
But guess who'll pay the expenses for that bogus field trip to and from Orlando for 4 of the 5 commissioners?
Yes, HB's already-beleaguered taxpayers, that's who.

The idea of HB nominating itself for "Excellence" is personally galling to me precisely because I have been going to all those meetings the Herald has consciously chosen to skip out on.
I have paid attention, taken copious notes and asked questions of others in the chambers and around the city, plus done some independent investigation about some matters that has caused the mayor, among others, to get quite angry.

Galling, because of the self-evidently poor way the city has been run for years, that, among many other things I could cite for you here today on Oct. 27th, is, that last night was at least the 15th straight night in a row that the PUBLIC parking lot adjacent to HB City Hall and the HB Police Dept. HQ has been pitch black at night.
And the west side of the HB Cultural Center, where Early Voting has been taking place and will continue 'till Sunday.

FIFTEEN NIGHTS IN A ROW!
That's a rather novel take on public safety don't you think?

All those hundreds and hundreds of police officers in police cars who've cruised in and out of that public area over the past weeks have been channeling Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes -they "see nothing!"
And that total includes the public parking lot lights that are next to the numerous HB Police Dept.-controlled security cameras. The ones without Warning/informed consent signs.
They still "see nothing!"

So what exactly was the point of taxpayers paying for so many security cameras if Cooper and Good's City Hall can't properly maintain the lighting right next to them?

Sure Mayor Cooper and the City Commission should've noticed it when they walked out of their meeting on Oct. 15th, since their reserved parking spaces in the public parking lot are right near the Police Dept. HQ, and that parking lot was also pitch black that night, too.
(That was likely the fourth night in a row they were out then.)

But to see the problem, Mr. Schumacher-Matos, they'd have to want to see it and then do something about it, right?
They don't.

It could hardly be more obvious to anyone who's paying attention that from the perspective of Messers Cooper and Good, nothing must be allowed to rock the status quo at HB City Hall, because so much of it is built on lies, self-deception, self-promotion and mis-statements of facts to the public, and one small move could bring down the whole mountain.

AVALANCHE!

If you had curious and enterprising reporters here, you'd already know that.

As it happens, the same unsafe pitch black conditions hold true at the intersection across the street from HB City Hall on S.E. 3rd Street at U.S.-1/South Federal Highway, the U.S.-1 entrance to Gulfstream Park Racing & Casino, the city's largest single private employer.
(Actually, that also includes the immediate block north and south, as well as the internally lit green street signs, the latter of which have been out for well over 3 1/2 years.)

That whole stretch of U.S.-1 is like one giant -yes- BLACK HOLE, thru which government
accountability and common sense have no effect whatsoever.
How myopic do they have to be to not see what's right in front of them?

Honestly, do you really think that kind of sheer incompetency would be tolerated, much less allowed to continue for weeks and months on end, IF it happened in front of the cash cow that is the Seminole Hard Rock? No.
Or even the less successful Bank Atlantic Center? I don't.

Nope, someone whose fingerprints are as connected to so many bad ideas, poor results, missed dealines and obfuscation as City Manager Mike Good would've long ago been held accountable, and told that if there were not immediate positive changes, especially in matters involving public safety, he'd be fired -for cause.
But not here.

Above, daytime photo from May 2008
The lights on the city's own City Hall sign haven't worked consistently in over FOUR-and-a-half years.
To give you some perspective on that, that's longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II.
Think about that!

Don't worry, Mr. Schumacher-Matos, despite the Herald having been too busy to cover even some of these matters, I've personally taken photographs and videos of the whole sorry and dangerous episode around HB City Hall to document for other area residents and visitors to take note of,

which you can access by simply going to my blog and looking at posts from the past several weeks.

The simple fact that the Herald would think to print an endorsement BEFORE the newspaper has EVER run a single story on the candidates in the race and the issues of interest to voters, while NOT having set foot in the city's Commission meetings since June, speaks volumes, and calls to mind all sorts of hoary cliches like 'cart before the horse' and so on.
But sadly, to me, it's all static, nonsense and feedback.

Call me old-fashioned, but I was under the general impression that the recent pact that the Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post signed was done to facilitate MORE local news coverage, NOT LESS, but apparently I misunderstood the meaning of it all, since, indeed, the Herald's own actions for the past few months in my corner of South Florida belie any recognizable interest in furthering either public good or even basic aspects of journalism, like who, what, why, when, and where.
Or, the less well-known 6th W of basic reporting -"Why not?"

Maybe you should just consider raiding the news rooms of the ids at Indiana University in Bloomington and The Daily Northwestern at NU in Evanston, two perennially excellent incubators of curious news reporters that I've been familiar with over the years.
Then hire their smartest soon-to-graduate students and let 'em loose on Miami-Dade and Broward

Counties and see what happens when some eager and enthusiastic new blood is on the job, because despite a few very good apples in your bunch now, whose morale is quite low, the current status quo at the Herald is positively pathetic from a reader and news consumer's point of view.

Since no one else will tell you this, over the past year, the Herald has failed to have a reporter present at Hallandale Beach City Commission meetings for at least three of the four largest

proposed (and subsequently approved) development projects in the city, all on either U.S.-1 or Hallandale Beach Blvd., two of the largest thoroughfares in all of southern Broward County.

If a tree falls on a grid-locked road but the Herald never reports it, does it really make a sound?

Or, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, some South Florida bloggers report on news that happens around them and ask "Why?" (Or, more likely here, "Still?")
The Miami Herald ignores things large and small taking place in their own backyard and says "Why Bother?"

Of course, that could finally change tonight if the Herald simply awoke from its long slumber and

decided to get re-engaged, and actually sent someone to cover tonight's HB Candidate's Debate

at the HB Cultural Center at 7 PM.
And afterwards, simply walked around and recorded what's self-evident and in "plain sight."
I'd like to think that were still possible, but given the Herald's recent track record, I won't hold my breath.

Mr. Schumacher-Matos, that's how it looks from my corner of South Florida today.