I was already living up in Arlington County when I got
a phone call 18 years ago today from my mother saying
that Ralph Renick had died, and that everyone she knew
seemed out-of-sorts after getting the news.
He was the FDR of Miami, always there in the background.
And then he was gone.
To me, one of the most unpleasant changes I've observed
in South Florida over the years, while living here and on
visits, has been the dramatic loosening of journalism
standards from the era when I was growing up down here
in the '70's & early '80's, with anchors like Ralph Renick
and Ann Bishop -or sharp folks like Gene Miller at
The Miami Herald- who while perhaps considered cool
and imperious to some viewers, to me, always seemed
to convey a real sense they DID have the viewer's best
interests at heart.
For me, that meant reporting the news straight-up and
letting the facts guide the story, rather than cover stories
with hidden agendas, in order to appease the myriad
business/ethnic/cultural interest groups, in the area
who are STILL sensitive to even the slightest sign of
public criticism, constructive or otherwise.
(I know one thing, if Ralph Renick was around today
making his editorials, he would definitely have zeroed-in
on Frank Nero's salary at The Beacon Council with
a specificity and delight that would have caused that
particular story to be much better known than it currently
is, and used it as a jumping-off point to discuss other
examples of so-called South Florida leaders, who
talk-the-talk but who seem hard-pressed to point to
any tangible results of there being in charge, instead
of someone else.)
Renick and Bishop's success in achieving that goal was
reflected by both their enduring popularity, and, I suppose,
by the simple fact that people like me who grew-up here,
STILL bring their names up at the drop of a hat to suggest
a sense of contrast and proportionality with the present
sad state of affairs.
Back then, savvy reporters with a nose for news and an
eye for uncovering corruption and hypocrisy, especially
at City Halls and County Halls, like Ike Seamans,
Brian Ross, Fred Francis, Bernard Goldberg,
Susan Candiotti, Richard Schlesinger, Steve Kroft,
Wyatt Andrews among other consistently enterprising
types -so many of whom went national- would see
the amazing menu of stories they were presented with
on a daily basis because of South Florida's special
circumstances and geography, cultural diversity and
inherent tension among its population, unique weather
problems and omnipresent criminal element, and take
full advantage of it, instead of merely being a drone
doing a LIVE stand-up for the 11 p.m. newscast for
something that was over and done with at 4 p.m.
One of the few advantages offered by the current bad
economy is that Miami-area TV stations seem to be
cutting down on those awful extraneous LIVE shots,
long the bane of my existence and many of my friends,
who wonder why the reporters involved hadn't already
gone on to the next story.
As a person who regularly attends events and functions
around South Florida that are often the subject of print
and electronic news coverage, certainly more than the
average newspaper reader or TV viewer, it's really quite
shocking to me how many local reporters -excepting
the exceptional few- who now can't seem to even be
bothered to pretend to do even the most basic of
research that the pre-Internet era required.
They show up woefully prepared!
It's almost as if the reporters I'm complaining about here
fail to understand or appreciate that those noted reporters
mentioned earlier, got to that respected status locally by
developing a solid reputation for returning phone calls
promptly, which is part of why they always received so
many tips in the first place.
I can't begin to tell you how many times over the past few
years I've personally tipped-off individual reporters to a
developing story that they ignored at their peril, with the
logical result being that their tardiness and indifference
led to someone else beating them to it.
For whatever reason, there seems to be a much steeper
learning-curve for many current TV reporters here than
there used to be, reporters who, in my opinion, really
ought to be in much-smaller TV markets than ours if
they are going to continue to be so smug and
self-important.
These are the very reporters whose email addresses
I've deleted the past two years, even as other reporters
I deal with somewhat regularly are smart enough to
know to either email or call back promptly to see what
I've got to share with them.
I'm also regularly shocked by the number of TV stations
who routinely only send a cameraman to an event or
hearing of some importance, rather than send along
a reporter as well.
That was the case last year when I attended the final
public meeting of the Broward County Charter Review
Commission at the County HQ on Andrews Avenue.
That afternoon, the most publicized issue -though by
no means only important issue- was whether or not
Broward County voters should be able to vote in the
upcoming November election for a County mayor,
rather than continue with the absurd and meaningless
charade now where the County Commission votes
amongst themselves and appoints a member mayor.
That's 'mayor' lower-case as far as I'm concerned,
since if a citizen didn't vote for that title, it's a
completely meaningless appelation.
As I recall it, Channel 10 sent Michael Putney and
a cameraman, Channel 4 sent a reporter and cameraman,
Channel 6 sent a lone cameraman.
Channel 7 sent nobody, as did the various Spanish
language TV stations, which seems to be par for the
course for the latter in Broward County, since they are
rarely if ever on the scene of an important govt. hearing
in my personal experience, which explains a lot,
if you care to think about the logical results of such
civic short-sightedness.
The stories that appeared in the newspaper the next day
and on local TV that night about that critical CRC meeting,
the most important one in their two years of meeting,
and the votes that took place there, which could've gone
a long way in giving Broward voters a means of making
Broward County government more accountable, in the form
of a single person directly voted into power by the entire
county, not just one slice of it, all had one thing in common.
As it happens, bad things as far as I was concerned.
The news stories
a.) didn't identify how the individual members of the Broward
CRC voted on the proposal -which failed- and
b.) neglected to mention that ALL the elected city mayors
appointed to the CRC voted to NOT ALLOW voters to vote
on the issue and decide it themselves.
As it happens, all those mayors saying "nyet" to Broward
voters were women.
I mention that here just in case you think that women are
inherently more democratically-inclined by nature.
Maybe in other parts of the country, but certainly not here
in Broward County.
In fact, it's the exact opposite, as Hallandale Beach mayor
Joy Cooper proves rather convincingly, year-after-year, by
continually having the City Commission vote on items that
AREN'T on the public printed agenda, and held in a small
room at City Hall different than the Commission Chambers,
which just happens to have no TV cameras to record their
votes.
Because that's that's the way she wants things to be.
(I've written about that CRC meeting here many times
over the past 15 months and explored the rationales
for why things may've happened the way they did.)
Maybe after five years of being back here, I ought to stop
being so easily shocked, huh?
I was scared-straight back in 2007 when I penned an email
to then-Daily Business Review reporter Julie Kay,
of which this is but an excerpt:
Subject: re your 6-29 DBR story; illegal disclosure/sale of arrest data by FDLE;
Thursday January 18th, 2007
Dear Ms. Kay:
My letter to you today is actually long overdue, as I had planned on congratulating you earlier, before the end of the year, on the consistently great job you did last year of covering what passes for the South Florida legal system in the Daily Business Review, and imbuing your stories with the proper amount of anger, enthusiasm and curiosity -and incredulity- for the peculiar way things have of sorting themselves out here, regardless of any actual law, statute or precedent.
Or, of course, common sense.
While much attention was paid to your recent stories on the 'missing' court records of judges/elected officials -and what passes around here for celebrities and VIPs- who surely must've preferred those records of theirs existing in some parallel universe, where the curious public couldn't discern their content, the story you wrote that most impressed me was actually your June 29th DBR story titled, "Legal Boomerang," on Broward County and the state of Florida continuing to sell expunged legal case data to private firms for their own databases, though they're not supposed to do so.
Perhaps you've already heard about it by this late date, but on the chance that you haven't, the day your story ran,
CBS-4 led it's 6 p.m. Local News with that same exact story, down to the point of interviewing the very same person you interviewed for the majority of your insightful anecdotes, without reporter Mike Kirsch ever giving you or the Daily Business Review proper credit/attribution for the story.
I wrote a draft of a note to you about that slight that night on my computer, but I regret to say that I never finished it, much less mailed it, and for that I'm sorry, since I really hate seeing a reporter, esp. a TV reporter, get credit for hard journalistic leg-work they didn't actually perform.
That feeling became particularly ingrained in me during the 15 years I lived in D.C. from 1988-2003, because so many media friends of mine, esp. at the Washington bureau of the New York Times, who'd regale me at ballgames, movies or over hot dogs across the street from their office at a favorite hot dog stand of ours during breaks, with instances of having discovered, after-the-fact, clear-cut examples of out-of-town reporters using their stories as a paint-by-numbers primer for stories that small town reporters couldn't previously get a handle on.
Clearly, that's not the smartest move to make in the era of the Internet and searchable databases.
For what it's worth, Kirsch added absolutely zero to your original story, not even bothering to supplement his version of your story with additional interviews with other parties, just to cover his bases.
Nope, it was strictly paint-by-numbers; your numbers.
Since that initial report back in June, I haven't taken anything Kirsch says seriously, since I now have a clear sense of what he's capable of.
Maybe he should stick to doing stories on 'hot' new celeb-filled boutiques or trendy restaurants on South Beach, that way, there's no real public harm or misrepresentation.
In the three years since I returned to South Florida from DC, I've had to reconcile myself to lots of changes to this area, many of them for the good, of course, but just as many for the bad I'm afraid.
Not that things before in local/state govt. or local legal circles were so rosy and on the level, of course, since I know that clearly wasn't the case.
Starting roughly around 1979, when I'd return to South
Florida from school or work in Bloomington, Evanston,
and DC, for visits during Christmas and spring break,
or even Baltimore Oriole spring training trips or weekend
weddings, I could still see that Miami had the kind of
scrappy and innately curious reporters who make a real
difference in a community.
Frankly, the sorts of reporters that so many of my friends
at Ernie Pyle at IU and Medill at Northwestern aspired
to emulate by making a positive contribution.
Reporters who had the talent & ability to convey to the
waves and waves of newcomers to the area, who were
without a sense of South Florida's very mixed past,
the proper amount of perspective and sense of disbelief,
before dropping the hammer on whichever corrupt/
incompetent/miscreant elected pol or agency hack was
the target zone, for attempting to perpetrate something
of a dubious nature.
Even while watching the local TV news out of Indianapolis
or Washington, D.C., while clearly recognizing that there
were a handful of TV reporters of the sort who'd be good
no matter what city they were based in, I always had the
sense that, in general, the reporter culture in those cities
lacked the kind of focused energy and zeal I'd seen down
here, which was their town's loss.
(I even mentioned this particular line of thought, such as it is, to CNN's Larry King once at an American Cancer Society Ball in DC, around '89, that I was involved with in a small fashion, with Larry being honored as the guest of honor. While I know that many people often laugh at Larry's own unique brand of infotainment and news, and I'm quick to admit that I've heard the reels of crank calls at his expense, that night at the Hilton Towers, while his then-wife was being photographed with friends and various DC celebs like Al Haig and former FBI Director William Webster, Larry and I stood in a corner for about ten minutes, just the two of us, reminiscing about life in Miami, mostly about local radio and TV personalities we'd known and liked and wondered about every so often.
I'd grown-up as a kid watching Larry's interviews on Channel 4, and was a daily listener to his late night nationally-syndicated radio show out of D.C. on Mutual, starting while I was in school at Indiana, making tapes of individual shows with interesting guests.
After moving to Chicago my collection of tapes accumulated as I got to know his routine and came to recognize his little idiosyncracies, as well as the names of the people who did the news breaks, as well as got to know his substitute, Jim Bohannon.
I was driving from Chicago to Florida and first got word of the passing of the great Jackie Gleason while Larry read the news bulletin, and I stayed at a FL Turnpike rest stop early in the morning for a bit to compose myself, while he poured out one great Jackie Gleason story after another.
I knew most of them by heart, but that didn't make them less precious or make me laugh any less.
It only made me much sadder.
Which I told Larry in person when I had the chance.
Larry and I also talked back and forth about the great sense of competition that once existed among the Miami TV stations, and between the Herald and the late, great Miami News, where as some of you may know, I spent a lot of time while in high school, and got to know and make a number of friends over the years in their sports and entertainment departments.
We lamented that the kind of rough but honest competition we both knew of down here, which really pushed reporters, often seemed lacking now, despite how counter-intuitive that seemed with all the new technology that was making reporting easier. And that was 20 years ago.)
But now?
Well, it seems that the low TV standards that I saw
elsewhere and have read about and followed for years
in myriad media journals, blogs and newspapers,
have found a home-sweet-home right here.
And as for my my own clearly antiquated and sentimental
notions of what journalism is, based on years of Renick
and his successors, and being part of Walter Mondale's
advance team in '76, and accompanying him to the old
Channel 4 studio downtown, for an interview with Joe
Abrell, host of Montage, a place where I recognized
nearly every single reporter's face I saw in the hallway
-and actually knew their assigned beats?
Well, I guess I thought the news management at local
stations would have done a better job of insisting on
keeping higher standards for what's considered news,
and what passes for journalistic ethics than what appears
to be the case.
More than ever, this area seems to be on the losing
side of a journalism slippery slope.
C'est la vie.
Personally, among many other things, I think this area
would be much better served if there were tons more
criticism in the local newspapers at what local TV news
churns out, and a corresponding series of frequent jabs
at the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel for what they are
-or are not- doing with their resources, which in too
many cases, is appeasing elements of the local population,
at the risk of only further corroding their connection to
the local populace.
I mean as you all know by now by my repetition,
the Herald hasn't covered a meeting in Hallandale
Beach in over 13 months.
There are still so many local people and organizations
down here who've heretofore escaped both accountability
and brickbats for their years of unsatisfactory results,
despite receiving city, county or state taxpayer funds,
that in other parts of the country, with the current
technology available, would've put them front-and-center,
and certainly under the microscope.
But here, because of cronyism and back-scratching,
or something, they aren't.
I'd call them sacred cows, of course, but we don't live
in India quite yet.
In the past, an enterprising local TV reporter might've
addressed these matters of concern to me, which
while affecting public policy or the lives of thousands
of people on a daily basis, currently go unexamined.
Nowadays, that same reporter is assigned to go to
a Mall and report on either holiday shopping tips or
trends/fads among the seemingly endless armies of
affluent teens of our area.
Maybe it's me, but I keep thinking of Jane Fonda's
character in The China Syndrome, Kimberly Wells,
forever banished to covering cute human interest stories
before stumbling upon a great story by accident.
At least Channel 7's Deco Drive, one of my few guilty
pleasures, is totally upfront about what it's reporting on,
and doesn't put on airs.
That is the only place where I can accept seeing 'soft'
stories on trends, diets, fashion and social causes of
celebs, even ones I like or adore.
I DON'T want to see any of that on a regular local TV
newscast, nor do I want to see network video footage
of national stories on the local eleven o'clock News
that are done from a "Satellite Center," where the VO
storyline is verbatim from what I saw on the national
news show a few hours before, as if you were WIOD
repeating their news stories over and over, verbatim,
all afternoon and early evening, except for traffic
conditions.
(WIOD: Telling me the same exact thing 14 times
in a row on your news breaks, with the very same
actualities, doesn't make me 14 times better informed,
just really, really annoyed.)
I want more in-depth local news coverage on TV and less
time wasted on the weather if it's a carbon copy of the past
week.
Stop dragging the weather segments out un-necessarily!
Just to mention one story that cries out for greater examination,
given the amount of tax money involved, how come the
patently false financial numbers offered up by the likes of
Nikki Grossman of the Greater Ft. Lauderdale CVB as proof
of the financial impact on the area of hosting the Super Bowl
or BCS Title Game, or even more egregiously, my Orioles
staying in Ft. Lauderdale for spring training, or the number
of jobs created by a new Marlins stadium, are never held-up
to anything even remotely resembling basic fact-checking
scrutiny, much less, oh, forensic accounting?
They still do that sort of thing in other parts of the country,
and at Channel Four in Great Britain as I've recently posted,
but other than CBS4's I-Team here, under WFOR news
director Adrienne Roark, that whole public scrutiny thing
seems to be ancient history in local South Florida TV, even
though it's needed now more than ever before, with tough
decisions on the horizon for years to come at Dinner Key
Auditorium and up on Andrews Ave
A year's progress at the Olympic Stadium 
