Friday, February 15, 2013

re Marco Rubio: Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals. I'll bet I can guess what Reinhard will say about him before reading it. Yes, and so can you! That's the whole problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote; Where's the plan for positive changes at McClatchy's Miami Herald -still missing!

U.S. Senate longshot candidate Marco Rubio in Hallandale Beach, FL at Southeast Broward Republican Club. June 23, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The National Journal
POLITICS
Can Marco Rubio Live Up to the Hype?
He's the GOP's Barack Obama, a fresh-faced politician with an immigrant name, a playlist full of rap, and a collection of fawning press clips. The challenge: He's selling the same old party message.
By Beth Reinhard
Updated: February 14, 2013 | 8:50 p.m. 
February 14, 2013 | 8:20 p.m.
The freshman senator from Florida had joined four veteran colleagues to unveil a proposal for the first major overhaul of immigration law in a quarter-century. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced “my friend, Senator [Marco] Rubio, who obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue of immigration reform.”
Two weeks earlier, Rubio had laid out a similar set of principles in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue.” The article came as a surprise to McCain and other members of the bipartisan group of senators who had been sketching out an immigration plan with and without Rubio for weeks. The blueprint was inspired by legislation that McCain first spearheaded in 2005.
The dig was subtle, but Rubio didn’t let it go.

Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Marco Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals.
Bet I can guess what Beth Reinhard will say about Marco Rubio
Yes, and so can you! 

That's the problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote.
Just like her last piece on him.

Even the new anecdotes she drops throughout the column sound just like the old ones she used, since they are almost always cobbled together to create the same old product: Marco the Magnificent.

It would be far better if she spoke to veteran analysts like Charlie Cook, also of the National Journal and someone whose every word I read religiously for meaning and portent, as mentioned many times here in the past, which is why I've linked to so many of his columns here over the years.

Specifically, speak to Cook about the dangers of over-exposure, which he is getting closer to everyday, and the graveyard of presidential candidates that peaked early and never made it to Election Day because they prematurely annoyed or bored America silly, or flat out didn't have the sort of practical experience needed or the ability to articulate a cogent, distinct message that resonated with the public and which could grow even larger with hard work.
Bill Bradley for instance.

Even though I was an early and very confident Senate supporter of Rubio's in 2009, when the entire Florida GOP and business establishment, along with Florida's sycophantic Mainstream Media, plus the East Coast drive-by MSM, practically handed the 2010 Republican Senate nomination to then-Governor Charlie Crist, in my opinion, Rubio needs to actually accomplish a lot more of substance sooner -and be seen LESS in a pop-culture prism- otherwise, everyone in America may be bored silly by the sight of him within two years as the new car smell wears off, just as he's campaigning for House and Senate candidates throughout the country, and actually getting most of the questions, not the candidates he's with.

Yes, just like a once interesting new TV commercial that you have now grown to cringe at within a milli-second of seeing on TV and reach for the remote.

And if and when that happens, the only thing that will be written about him will be the hit pieces by the usual suspects, especially among liberal reporters and columnists in the West, who have no secret of the fact that they resent the collective power of Cubans in the political process compared to Mexicans, who vastly outnumber them.

And Univision, of course, in their creepy stalker-like relationship with Rubio, where they are always looking to see if he's spending too much time with someone else.
Y
es, Univision, the Spanish-language channel that the Miami Herald is always kissing the butt of and overplaying the significance of, but who will, not so curiously, not mention in print that they didn't air President Obama's State of the the Union address, which is why they won Tuesday night in the TV ratings.

Nope, no mention, as you can see for yourself. 

I thought they were the new "It"?
Qué pasa, Herald?

Yes, Univision, the politically-biased TV network that makes it very clear in their so-called news coverage that the only reasonable side of the immigration debate is pro-amnesty, otherwise, you are a racist. 

Oh yeah -and the supposed news network whose employees loves to take public whacks at 
Rubio.

That is, if they, too, aren't already bored silly by Rubio and tired of pointing-out the same deficiencies they saw/see in him, over-and-over.

On the other hand, it's good to remember that Rubio eventually got so bored/irritated with Reinhard asking him the same ol' leading questions over-and-over during his long Senate campaign, that as I wrote here at the time, towards the end, he eventually started freezing her out because he simply couldn't take the routine anymore

You might recall that was back when the Herald's then-Ombudsman took Beth Reinhard (and the Herald) to task in his once-in-a-while Sunday column for having one person perform both reporter and columnist duties, saying that it was a conflict of interest.

The Ombudsman was right, of course, and Reinhard proved why that was true by being whiny publicly in her columns about being frozen out by Rubio, which not only made her less attractive to Rubio as a person to speak with, but for voters and newspaper readers, made her 'articles' about him not at all reliable, since you already knew that she was mad at him enough to say so publicly.
But I guess I'm the only one who remembers that, huh?

Alas, the Herald's then-Ombudsman left in April of 2011 and has never been replaced, with rather predictable results from my perspective: more bias than ever in articles as well as more missing facts and context.

As many of you regular readers know, I've directly asked the Herald's top management why there's been no replacement and no mention made in the paper of what their plan is, if any, for an eventual replacement.
And, what their plan for improvement in print and online was to keep the faith of readers.
That's been met with stony silence. 
Followed by more silence.

A smart and fair-minded person representing the interests of Herald readers and ethics is not in the cards there.

Folks, it's time to face the fact that publisher David Landsberg has no actual plan for the Herald's future that positive for news consumers, because if he did, he'd have already made them public months before they went to a pay wall, and only added the pay wall AFTER getting rid of the problem step-children, adding new and curious columnists and reporters who don't take things for granted -one of the worst daily offenses there!-  and completely re-do the website from top-to-bottom, so the same stories don't appear in three separate places there, as happens now, which is acutely embarrassing for everyone, most of all, them.

That's why in my opinion, with the same people in charge, the Herald's problems are only going to get worse over time.

But if someone with some smarts and money bought the Sun-Sentinel, fired all the dead wood and made it more like some of the Swedish newspapers that I've become increasingly  used to, and read daily while I was in Stockholm last month, newspapers which are very popular, well then, you could well see will see a very interesting dynamic take place here

in South Florida.
But not right now.

Now, each newspaper and its management seem locked in a battle of lethargy to do the least amount of original enterprise reporting possible.
  
------
TheWrap
Ratings: Univision Wins Night By Skipping State of the Union
By Tim Kenneally
Published: February 13, 2013 @ 10:03 am

November 1, 2010
Hallandale Beach Blog endorses Beth Reinhard & Charlie Crist's departure - asks they get escort to airport so they don't miss their flights out of FL

September 3, 2010

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!


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Univision staffer attacks Sen. Marco Rubio on Facebook

No doubt after the Castro Brothers finally go adios for good, many of the Univision employees will try to move to Cuba and try to suddenly reinvent themselves as real journalists, after years of being celebrity hand-holdres, political suck-ups and amateur political science professors based in LA, NYC and Miami, forever intent on lecturing us on how important Latin America is, despite the fact that we mostly don't care about it for perfectly valid reasons, no matter how much they insist it's important.



But it's not, even with changing demographics and population changes, Americans aren't going to suddenly care about Honduras or Uruguay or Brazil if they never did before, and they can't let on that the whole thing has been a journalistic con for years to fleece advertising dollars.

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