The hedging your bet, having your cake and eating it, too headline on Miami Herald's website

Sunday 2:54 a.m.

Showing the kind of foresight that has their popularity dropping like a rock, (see Bob Norman's excellent new Broward Palm Beach NewTimes article, Newspaper layoffs, partnerships, and the Net conspire to kill South Florida dailies, http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2008-10-30/news/newspaper-layoffs-partnerships-and-the-net-conspire-to-kill-south-florida-dailies/ )
before I went to sleep this morning after watching the fantastic Texas-Texas Tech football game, I hit the Miami Herald's website http://www.miamiherald.com/ and caught this classic headline there that speaks for itself, which is at: http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/752469.html

CAMPAIGN '08
Florida could have history making role in 2008 election
Florida could put Obama over the top Tuesday night -- or complete a stunning comeback by McCain. - 0:30 AM ET

Then again, Florida could also be a national punch line -again!
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For more on the latest in the world of journalism, sagging newspaper circulations, “secular headwinds” and the future of newspapers in the digital age, see Alan D. Mutter's Reflections of a Newsosaur at http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/

re Miami Herald's future; newspaper quest for youth appeal & bad choices & bad management = new Chi Trib?

I've been thinking about some points I was going to mention in an upcoming blog post on the latest changes at the Miami Herald, both where I thought it showed positive potential and where the towel needed to be thrown in toute-de-suite.

I was planning on following-up some of my previous letters to Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal and mention some of these points, since it seems clear that many of the changes already undertaken, in my opinion, are fundamentally flawed and are not long for this world.

Still, the current economic/advertising problems present Anders Gyllenhaal with a a real opportunity down here to skip a few steps and make the Herald much better long-term quicker.

That is, if he is willing to seize the opportunity, but the problem is that neither I nor anyone else knows how much time and leeway his bosses at McClatchy are willing to give him now to do the necessary re-structuring to make the paper both profitable and increasingly relevant, following the recent changes he oversaw in the print edition and the newly re-designed Herald website, the latter of which I've been criticizing for years for many reasons I've enumerated here.

(Meanwhile, three years ago in the CJR: Anders Gyllenhaal On A Big Redesign, ‘Lost’ Readers, and Finding New Ones http://www.cjr.org/the_water_cooler/anders_gyllenhaal_on_a_big_red.php )

As I've expressed here previously, I really do believe that Gyllenhaal is sincere and really wants the paper to be MUCH better than it currently is, and in some ways, may actually be the best person to help make that a reality.

But I also know that regardless of what's said, he has but a finite amount of time to make some changes, before big changes from corporate at Sacramento that nobody wants will happen, and by then, the time for tweaking and customer input and listening to constructive criticism will be long gone. http://www.mcclatchy.com/

And yes, at that point, the horse will have left the barn 'cause the demolition team is already at the door with their invoice order, ready to say buh-bye to Broward County and its readers.
It's been nice knowing ya, but we're going to "re-focus" big time and become a Miami-Dade centric media organization.
See ya at the Dolphins game!

No more time for surgery with a scalpel, here come the drill-hammers and the wrecking ball.

And unlike the melodramatic, over-reported management refusals by Times publisher Jeffrey Johnson and editor Dean Baquet to make Tribune-ordered layoffs at the LA Times,
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/henry_weinstein_on_what_great.php there will be no symbolic but ultimately Pyrrhic victories along Biscayne Bay, with dozens of protestors marching in the hot sun. Instead it will be but a whimper.

There'll be plenty of video of people with their office belongings and tsockes in boxes walking to their cars, just like after the Enron implosion and hundreds of other scenes we've seen before, and the folks interviewed will likely be more articulate than most, but at the end of the day, no South Florida union or corporate entity is going to join the fight to keep some reporters at the Miami Herald.

And there certainly won't be an explosion of South Florida bloggers leaping to the defense of the Herald, either.

More likely will be a variation of what Tom Blumer at Bizzyblog said back in 2006:

“If it’s not, the people who run the Tribune Co. have lost control of it, and THEY need to go. Dean P. Baquet and Jeffrey M. Johnson have drawn the line in the sand, and have clearly been in open defiance for several months … He should have resigned by now if he really thought the company was going too far, as should have Mr. Johnson. But they are acting as if their newspaper is some kind of indispensable public utility. The public, which is abandoning them by canceling subscriptions at a net rate of 5 percent or more every six months, clearly doesn’t agree.”

See more of this argument at LA Times Editor’s and Publisher’s Defiance Are Firing Offenses http://www.bizzyblog.com/2006/09/15/la-times-editors-and-publishers-defiance-are-firing-offenses/

And the Herald of Gene Miller will be seem even further in the rear view mirror than ever before.

I must say, based on some of my own recent experiences attending some civic events and government functions in both Broward and Miami-Dade where the Herald had reporters in attendance, I'm dumbfounded that what was actually reported in the paper so completely failed to capture the moment and portent of what was happening.

Sadly, this has been far from a rare occurrence since I returned here from the D.C. area a few years ago, and only makes more obvious the fact that one of my biggest personal regrets has to be my not listening to my DC friends' suggestion that I start a blog when I first had the chance to.
Then, I could've hit the ground running here and could've chronicled the myriad daily mis-steps that I found so damn confounding in the pages of the Herald, so that others would know about them as soon as I did.

This was before I was first made aware of Henry Gomez's Herald Watch http://heraldwatch.blogspot.com/

(Not that this failure to rise to the occasion is limited to just the Herald, as the Sun-Sentinel and local TV stations have an awful lot to apologize for as well, given their scanty coverage of some newsworthy events I've been present at the past year.
They will all get their due in a forthcoming post taking them to account with pinpoint accuracy.)

Given the insufficient local news coverage, I can't help but feel that the most important changes are yet to come, and just like longstanding problems in a dysfunctional family, they are the very ones that will be put off 'till the very brutal end.

So with that on my mind, I checked my other email and just read Alan's D. Mutter's latest spot-on post at his excellent blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur, subtitled, "Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media executive, who fears our news-gathering companies are stumbling to extinction."

His post from yesterday, titled Youth-inized ChiTrib jolts core readers had a lot of resonance for me for reasons that will soon be apparent.
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/10/youth-inized-chitrib-jolts-core-readers.html

Not that it's a defense, per se, to the exact situation he describes and deplores, and the associated issue of the relative quality of newspapers on Saturday, but when I lived in Chicago/Evanston and in Washington, other than maybe a nice surprising profile in the Washington Post's renown Style section about someone in the news you always sorta wondered about, and the Op-Ed area, the Chicago Tribune and the WaPo absolutely sucked on Saturdays.

It's a chicken and egg argument: do Saturday newspapers suck because the powers that be there know that regular readers don't read the paper on Saturdays, or do readers forgo it because it sucks?

Of course, the WaPo runs 3 pages of Op-Ed and Letters to the Editor on Saturdays and I hardly need remind you that the quality of "Letters" there compared to the ones in the Herald is literally "Night and Day" as Hoosier native Cole Porter would've put it.

I'd spend ten minutes reading the dozens of Letters they'd run on that third page, an entire page, with many clearly written by very smart people who knew what they were talking about, even if I disagreed with the policy prescriptions they were prescribing.

And yet the Herald runs the most banal blatherings imaginable on their Letters page, people commenting on something they heard someone say to their friend's hair stylist or whatnot about John McCain and whether he was 'really tortured.'
What????????

My God, it's jaw-droppingly bad editing on an epic scale, and such a squandering of resources.

But then the rest of the Saturday WaPo, especially in the summer when the big names were out flacking their books and other ventures, was usually like the JV newspaper.

Sorta the newspaper equivalent of the local Miami 6 PM newscast on Saturdays, where, somewhat improbably, 30% of the time the top story is weather -even if it really isn't.
When in doubt, lead with weather!

You'd see names you'd never heard of before and there'd either be an equal amount of really well-done pieces with grace and insight and simply awful ones, except in the sports section.

Most of my friends -again, my friends, the target demo of their advertisers- didn't read it on Saturday unless their boss on Capitol Hill or K Street or their trade association or PAC were being accused of something nefarious. They'd simply ask me if there was anything good in it.

Maybe part of that is due to the fact that unlike here, at the end of the world, stuck between the Atlantic and the Everglades, so many people in DC takeoff early on Saturday mornings for day trips, out to Charlottesville or to Culpepper or any of a million small Virginia towns that offer both history AND quaintness, plus, great breakfasts with flaky biscuits at reasonably-priced restaurants where the service is both prompt and friendly -unlike here.

(Biscuits as once made by a certain place in Davie named Beets Country restaurant in the early-mid 70's, complete with working hitching post for horses out front. Biscuits so good that your head would explode!
And my family & friends would drive from North Miami Beach to devour with breakfast.
I'm sure there's a nondescript office building there now.)

Then again, maybe they're headed to the nearby mountains of West Virginia to go kayaking, or up to Annapolis to be around the water to escape the sweltering summer heat if they didn't have a place in Rehobeth or Dewey Beach.

Or leave for Baltimore early to see some sights like Fells Point or Fort McHenry again before the Orioles game at 7 PM.

Those are all things that I did hundreds of times on Saturdays over the years, but I always made sure I had the WaPo with me before getting into the car with my friends.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that part of the problem with Saturday newspapers, at least as I observed it, is the dominant role of the Redskins to the Washington, D.C. area on Fall Sundays, as is equally true with the Bears in Chicagoland.

(I watched the Dolphins' 1985 MNF win over the undefeated Bears and the Bears mauling of the Patriots in the Super Bowl wearing my aqua Dolphins cap at the Norris Student Union at Northwestern with my friends at Medill and Kellogg, the very same place I watched the Shuttle Challenger disaster live from the very beginning on ABC-TV.)

Even a longtime Dolphin fan like me who had season tickets as a kid for the first time during the '72 Perfect Season, had to follow the Redskins and watch their games in order to fit in, otherwise you're a complete non-entity. Really.

It was simply inconceivable to people I knew in D.C. and Chicago and the so-called collar counties that you wouldn't either be at the game or watching it on TV, which mirrors my own attitude when I was at IU.

I had a huge circle of friends and acquaintances, yet didn't know anyone in Bloomington who didn't at least pretend to follow the fortunes of the team, and looked at those who didn't with more than some suspicion.

If you're going to do anything on the weekend, especially if you don't have kids or family responsibilities, you're going to do it on Saturday mornings and afternoons so you don't get caught late trying to cram it in before the Redskins or Bears game.
That never ever works out well for anyone.

I strongly suspect that most people didn't read the Saturday newspaper even a third as often as I did, but then I've always been a news junkie.
As if you didn't already know!

Congratulations are in order to Herald reporter Larry Lebowitz for being mentioned at the Nieman website for his excellent week-long series on the broken transit promises in Miami-Dade County, especially those involving the Metrorail system, and the more recent broken promises to expand the service northward towards the Broward County line and Dolphin Stadium, as was originally promised to the community that voted for it.
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Showcase.view&showcaseid=0084

I came across that completely by accident recently while looking for something else. As it happens, something I was going to share with Gyllenhaal about problems with superficial news coverage.

In the end, for Gyllenhaal to succeed, he needs to give must-read reporters like Lebowitz and Diana Moskovitz and some others I admire the time and resources they need to their thing -and find more reporters with attitudes similar to theirs.

And start making editors much more accountable for the bad stuff that consistently gets in there without answering basic questions of any story: the 5W's of journalism.

Plus, of course, the consistent biases infavor of certain talking heads or institutions

In the next week or two, I hope to revisit some of the most egregious Herald horror stories, which, for whatever reason, have heretofore escaped their proper level of scrutiny and wrath among either Herald readers or the local South Florida blogging community.

I say that because some of the folks involved are, to my eye at least, serial offenders, and they continue to make the same sorts of mistakes over and over again to this day.

Why the Herald editors let it slide, I don't know, but I sure do notice it.

In an instant!

South Florida news kerfuffle -what about local news?

The new agreement announced yesterday between the three largest South Florida newspapers, the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post, to share certain stories, while perhaps sounding perfectly reasonable in theory at Sigma Delta Chi forums among a certain subset of the green eye shade crowd, never quite addresses the legitimate concerns of readers/citizens, who might reasonably wonder what will happen when nobody from any of the three newspapers chooses to send a reporter to a City Commission meeting, or other important civic meeting or forum in their town.

I think I already know, because this has been happening MUCH more frequently in Hallandale Beach, the ocean-side 4.4 square mile duchy I live in, sandwiched between Hollwood and Aventura.

And don't even ask about South Florida TV stations' coverage of local news if it doesn't involve a crime, a bullet-riddled body or a scandal of some sort!
"Fuggedaboutit!"

Brazilian-born South Florida artist and personality Romero Britto is clearly a popular and talented guy who's very emotionally invested in the welfare of South Florida's community, especially kids.
(See http://www.britto.com/ and http://www.hollywoodfl.org/artspark/playarea.htm )

The self-evident facts clearly show that he does much more than his fair share of heavy lifting when it comes to philanthropy and community involvement, which should be applauded, of course.
But surely a reasonable person might wonder whether everything he does in the community MUST be covered by South Florida's local TV stations -yet it is!

His PR people, whomever they are, must have some sort of crazy, crazy magic up their sleeves, because Britto is on South Florida TV newscasts more than anyone else I can think of, save local pols or Police Dept. PIOs whom we all recognize on sight because of sheer frequency, like Detective Delrish Moss of the City of Miami P.D., or Lieutenant Pat Santangelo of the Florida Highway Patrol.
See http://www.blinkx.com/video/fhp-pat-santangelo-on-move-over-law-crackdown/19np4U58jIer7Ji-yMwWww

Rare is the 72 hours in South Florida TV news when we don't see one of them on the air at least once!
This generalized problem of local news coverage leads some residents of the area to wonder if something 'really happened' or was said publicly, if the only people who actually know about it with anything resembling 100% certainty are the very ones who attended.
Folks who, themselves, might have some particular political or personal bias or generally unknown conflict of interest about the subject under discussion, and yet with no reporter present, the accurate accounts of what transpired there become more opaque and self-serving in the re-telling by the few witnesses. Where's the objective observer, comprende?

As it happens, the Miami Herald has not sent a reporter to several important Hallandale Beach City Commission meetings involving large developments that will dramatically change the face of the city, small as it is.

That includes both the DOMUS project on U.S.-1 at S. Federal Highway and S.E. 8th Street, and the Hallandale Square project on the S.E. corner of U.S.-1 and Hallandale Beach Blvd., the largest intersection in the city, and therefore a "face" on the city, such as it is.

If a Miami Herald reporter had shown up for the Hallandale Square project by Taubco, perhaps they'd have noted for the record -and everyone else's benefit- the central fact that unlike most development approvals the HB City Commission must weigh in on, where there is a first and then a second reading on the project, the Hallandale Square project by Taubco only needed that one meeting to get final approval.

Given that central fact and that it would clearly change the "face" of the city, as was said so often by different parties, though the public meeting started at 7 p.m., the portion of the agenda dealing specifically with the Hallandale Square project didn't begin untill just after 10:55 p.m.


And when you add the amount of time consumed with back-and-forth questions and comments by the City Commission, the City Manager and his staff, and Debbie Orshefsky -of Greenberg Traurig, a campaign supporter of Mayor Cooper- who acted as the lead public presenter of the project and managed the visual presentation, actual residents of Hallandale Beach didn't get the chance to speak intelligently in response to the myriad assurances and promises they'd heard that night by Taubco until after 1 a.m.


You know, as to give but one example, actually meeting the standards that the city requires for number of trees on the property, a parameter that Taubco did not meet prior to the meeting.


In fact, since a finalized Development Agreement was not ready before 5 p.m. the previous Friday, the usual deadline for an item to get included on the Wednesday City Commission agenda, that unusual exception became, itself, the subject of much discussion by almost everyone, since that meant that the City Commission was given lots of information (and last-minute changes) to digest, on the fly, in a very small period of time.


In fact, even Mayor Cooper felt the need to tell City Manager Good and his staff that this should not happen again in the future, and that henceforth, a Friday deadline will really mean something.
Just not this time!

I stayed for the entire meeting and spoke around 1:15 p.m., and though a little more groggy than I expected, I asked Ms. Orshefsky a series of questions I had about Hallandale Square's exterior design and the proximity of ingress/egress for trucks to areas that were described as being for outdoor eating.

In general, the plan reminded me -too much!- of shopping areas I was already familiar with, especially in Northern Virginia, which had seemed great while on the drawing board, but instead had fatal flaws that proved self-evident once the project was complete and built.

Ms. Orshefsky was not happy at all with the general tenor of my questions, negative as many of them were about the project, and after I specifically asked her to pull up some slides so that I could ask more detailed questions about what she had depicted to the City Commission, when she seemed to be a tad bit slow in doing this, and with Mayor Cooper urging me to proceed with my questions post haste, I said "No" into the microphone and that I'd wait for Ms. Orshefsky to put up the appropriate slides I wanted to discuss in detail.

Though you wouldn't know it that particular night, in many cities and counties across the country, including ones I've lived in, it's common that after the initial project presentation is made by an applicant or their attorney before the elected officials, city employees take control of the computer managing the Power Point display, slides or video, so that the public gets the same thorough treatment as the developer.

This procedure helps prevent, slowness, sudden and unexpected 'forgetfulness' or 'accidents' by the lead presenter.

That's a common sense procedure the City of Hallandale Beach would be smart to employ in the future so that citizens don't have to worry about developer attorneys like Orshefsky dawdling on purpose in pulling up particular slides in order to squeeze you when you only have three minutes to speak, as is the case in Hallandale Beach.

And did I mention that the many renderings/drawings of the Hallandale Square project, the project that many of the City Commissioners themselves said would change the face of the city forever, were NEVER publicly displayed for Hallandale Beach citizens to examine in the many hours prior to it finally coming up, just before 11 p.m.?
Four hours of waiting to see what what it looked like.


And someone please explain to me again why it is that Taubco didn't hold a single public meeting with HB citizens in the immediate 12 months prior to that one and only hearing in June. Especially after all the changes they made to their initial plan, which was shown to the public at the beginning of 2007?
That's Hallandale Beach government for you!

A Miami Herald reporter at the meeting might've noticed some of these things and written about some or all of them, but since nobody from the Herald deigned to make an appearance...

By not sending a reporter to the August 6th meeting, the Herald completely missed the drama and anger that ensued when Pastor Anthony Sanders was chosen as an interim City Commissioner by the HB City Commission, under Mayor Cooper's prodding, within ten minutes of the supposed 'surprise resignation' of Comm. Francine Schiller.


Again, not to belabor the point about what might've been written, per se, but it's not unreasonable to think that a smart and resourceful Herald reporter at the meeting might've written that this political maneuver by Mayor Cooper seemed to have all the appearances of being a 'done-deal' well before the public meeting ever started that night.

Especially once you know that Mayor Cooper had already been speaking to Pastor Sanders for weeks about something happening down the line, and that City Manager Good was, in fact, the very writer of Comm. Schiller's note of resignation, due to health reasons.


Given those particular facts, how hard is it to suppose that Mayor Cooper and City Manager Good consciously choose to wait until after 5 p.m. Friday to put their plan in place and write Schiller's letter of resignation, so they could skirt public disclosure rules about it and it wouldn't appear as an advertised Commission agenda item, prior to the August 6th meeting?
Why?

Because formally putting it on the agenda would've necessitated giving sufficient public notice and would've allowed residents of Hallandale Beach opposed to the move -but not to Pastor Sanders personally- the time to call neighbors and friends about appearing at the City Commission meeting that night to make their feelings known.


Along with the print and electronic news media to record it and report it beyond the tiny confines of the Hallandale Beach City Commission chambers.


That a conscious skirting of state ethical rules occurred is exactly what many citizens of Hallandale Beach believe happened that night. (At night, but in broad daylight!)

And that's true of the HB residents I've spoken to from every part of the city, not just the 'usual suspects' who come to most civic meetings in the area.


They -and I- feel the sheer amount of odd coincidences are a bit too much to swallow.
What coincidences?

Well, a Miami Herald reporter at the meeting might've written about this particular political move coming exactly while Comm. Keith London -the very last interim appointee and someone intimately familiar with the process- was not physically present at the meeting.


Comm. London was present at the meeting via telephone -which Comm. Schiller has done increasingly over the past 18 months- but by being conveniently 'out of sight,' many HB residents believe that the powers-that-be at HB City Hall all but insured that Comm. London was out-of-the-loop, since he is dependent on the City Clerk's office at the dais to let Mayor Cooper know he would like to speak on a matter.


Coincidentally, last year in making their plans for City Commission meetings during the summer, when giving info as to their various summer/vacation plans, if any, so a working schedule could be created that suited everyone on the City Commission, though Comm. London had publicly told everyone when he was going to be away, just as other members had,
a not-so-funny thing happened in Hallandale Beach that summer.

While he was away, a city meeting got scheduled.
Hmmm... imagine that?

That, my friends, is the moral and ethical caliber of the people you're dealing with at 400 S. Federal Highway, opposite Gulfstream Park Race Track.

If a reasonably bright Herald reporter had been present at that meeting, it might've gotten mentioned in the newspaper's account of the meeting that the vote on the interim appointment took place before any residents of the city had been given the opportunity to publicly address the City Commission on the subject, much less, remind them that this was completely contrary to the very procedures the city had used less than two years prior, in November of 2006, when, following a number of meetings that were hours long, Keith London was named an interim HB City Commissioner, following the election of Comm. Joe Gibbons to the Florida State House of Representatives.

Then again, maybe the latter is the very reason nobody was permitted to speak before the vote.
Again, it wouldn't have required a genius Miami Herald reporter, not even a future Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, just one that could report what he saw and heard that night with an ample amount of facts sprinkled in for good measure.

There was a whole process that took place in 2006 that was completely absent on August 6th, and given that the publicly announced date of the resignation was the 29th, yesterday, the City Commission had 22 days in which to do whatever was necessary to ensure a fair and democratic process, with one already scheduled public City Commission meeting for August 20th, where they could've handled this in an above-board fashion.
But that's not what they did, is it?

Yes, sometimes one reporter -or the absence of one- completely changes the dynamic of what happens in a community, especially one riven with cronyism, secrecy and paranoia.
I'm looking especially forward to seeing what longtime South Beach Hoosier journalism expert and blogger favorite Alan Mutter, witty creator of the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, has to say about all this newspaper news consolidation, and read what he thinks this presages.
Especially in light of all of his experiences, positive and otherwise, with other 'great ideas' that emanated from newspaper front offices.
Alan broached the general idea back on June 18th about a closer business collaboration among the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald in this excellent post titled The case for a JOA in Miami, which I meant to link to here at the time and comment on, but, well, forgot to. http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/06/case-for-joa-in-miami.html

I meant to link to it here and comment on his thoughts about a new-and-improved J.O.A., but well, forgot to despite having written it down. It happens.
Please don't forget to check here tomorrow, probably later in the evening, as I'll have my own analysis, complete with photos, deconstructing her leadership and the un-solicited post-midnight email I received from Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, after she discovered that I would be meeting with another Hallandale Beach citizen about events and matters of great concern to the Hallandale Beach community.

Even then, completely out-of-the-blue, Mayor Cooper can't control herself, as she alternately plays the role of know-it-all bully, aggrieved victim and innocent bystander.
But sadly, despite her pleas, she is but the first, not the others.

Frankly, it would be somewhat laughable -from a safe distance- if it weren't so damn tragic for the citizens of this small community, who surely deserve so very much better than what they receive from the people at Hallandale Beach City Hall: wave upon wave of apathy, insolence, cronyism, condecsendsion and navel-gazing, masquerading as genuine concern.
Sorry, no more Mr. Nice Guy here at Hallandale Beach Blog and South Beach Hoosier.
That's a thing of the past.
-------------------
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/664264.html
Aug. 29, 2008
Herald, Sun-Sentinel, PB Post to share stories
By Miami Herald Staff

The Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post announced content sharing plans Friday that the editors said will involve exchanging basic news stories at the same time South Florida's major newspapers compete against one another.

The experiment, which will begin Monday and run for a three-month trial period, will enable the papers to trade coverage of routine events and feature reviews.

Editors of the three papers said they will preserve the competition that has been a hallmark of South Florida's newspaper business for decades by limiting the sharing to routine news. Broader stories, investigative pieces, columns and feature stories will not be part of the exchange, they said. El Nuevo Herald, El Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and La Palma in West Palm Beach also will be a part of the exchange.

"'Our goal is to better serve our South Florida audiences while protecting the individual brands and identities of our respective newspapers,'' a statement from the editors said.
Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said that the move was part of many innovations the paper is launching in the midst of the changing media landscape. He said the papers need to begin working together to enhance and extend the newspaper style of journalism in an era of intense competition.

"This is a time to try things, to see what new ideas make our papers and websites better, to break with traditions in the name of providing new and stronger coverage for newspaper readers and websites.''
The papers said they would assess how the exchange is working after three months and decide whether to continue.

In a sign of the times, as of 8:30 p.m. Saturday night, more than 36 hours after the story was first printed, this news was of so little interest that only 6 reader comments had been registered on the Herald's website, and one of them had absolutely nothing to do with the story:
Miami Article Comments Article Discussions: Thread #55660 http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=55660&nav=messages&webtag=kr-miamitm
---------------------
www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-agreement-0829,0,6261223.story

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Sun Sentinel, PB Post and Miami Herald will share content
Staff reports
August 29, 2008


The top editors of the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post and the Sun Sentinel announced today a content-sharing initiative that the editors say will serve South Florida readers with unprecedented local coverage while maintaining the competitive nature of each paper.



Anders Gyllenhaall, executive editor of the Herald, John Bartosek, editor of the Palm Beach Post, and Earl Maucker, editor of the Sun Sentinel, announced the sharing arrangement, in which each newspaper can publish stories from one of the other newspapers or web sites.


In each case where an article from one newspaper is published in another, that story would carry attribution to the contributing newspaper or web site.



The three editors, in a statement released Friday, said they believe they can protect the competitive character of each publication by limiting the content sharing to municipal, governmental, courts and political coverage, police reports and entertainment. Enterprise and

Investigative stories would be off limits from the sharing agreement, they said.



"Our goal is to better serve our South Florida audiences while protecting the individual brands and identities of our respective newspapers," a release from the three editors said.


"As each newspaper experienced recent staff reductions of our reporting staffs, we believe sharing some content assures thorough coverage, particularly in overlapping areas, and allows us to direct even more resources to enterprise, watchdog and investigative reporting exclusive to each newspaper."


The initiative will begin in September.
_____________________________
Broward Palm Beach New Times columnist Bob Norman's take:


The Daily Pulp
Bob Norman
South Florida Daily Newspapers To Unite?
August 29, 2008


In a move that would have seemed utterly shocking a year ago, the South Florida's three major daily newspapers are set to announce a content-sharing agreement later today, according to sources.


While details of the plan are sketchy, the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post have reached an agreement to share certain "non-competitive" information -- perhaps things like prep scores, entertainment listings, reviews, etc.


The idea, apparently, is that the deal will free up more time and money for substantive (and exclusive) news and enterprise reporting by all three newspapers.


Hope to flesh this out as the day goes on, but one thing is certain: This is yet another sign of the desperation hitting the newspaper industry.


To see the rest of the post, go to: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2008/08/south_florida_daily_newspapers.php

Outsider's views on Gulfstream Park's myriad problems; a new JOA?

Just had some odds and ends I wanted to share with you today that you might find of interest regarding the slumping South Florida gaming scene, as seen through the prism of another blogger I'd heretofore never heard of, and a thought or two about what's transpiring with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and whether it'll take the Herald repeating history for it to be a factor in the future.


First, what follows is an excerpt from a blog by Richard Marcus called Poker Cheating and Casino Cheating Blog: American Roulette, subtitled, Professional poker cheat and casino cheater's thoughts on poker, casinos, gambling and updates from casinos around the world and online gambling websites:

Scam #3 Florida . Sun Sentinel

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating an alleged slot-machine theft ring by employees at Gulfstream Park Racing & Casino. This is the first potential scandal for the fledgling industry, which is both heavily regulated and heavily taxed by the state. And I'm the one bringing you the news for one reason: The largest newspaper in Broward County, the Sun-Sentinel, had the story first but got cold feet and decided not to publish it.
Before we examine the Sun-Sentinel's apparent cowardice, let's look at the emerging scandal at Gulfstream, one of the county's four pari-mutuels and the first to unveil voter approved, Las Vegas-style slot machines last year. FDLE spokeswoman Paige Patterson-Hughes confirmed that her agency, which has a regulatory office on Gulfstream grounds in Hallandale Beach, is criminally investigating the casino, although she declined to provide any details. The investigation is centered on promotional cards used to generate interest in the slot machines, according to sources in the gambling industry and in Tallahassee.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.richardmarcusbooks.com/2008/06/rash-of-employeeinsider-slot-cheat.htm

The informed post above on Gulfstream Park's problems speaks for itself, and sounds like a lot of what I heard Dan Atkins of the Mardi Gras say at the joint Hollywood and HB City Commission meeting almost two weeks ago. Mr. Atkins made a very strong case that night for trying to rectify the various inequities -as he and many other see it- so that the industry can actually get out of the red, turn a profit and hire more employees.
I'll be writing about that joint meeting as well as Mr. Atkins' comments soon in a separate post

Personally, I have about zero interest in gambling, per se, but since it's here, I wish that all of the places down here were wide-open -and well-policed- with big entertainment shows, offering whatever types of gambling the market -as opposed to the legislature in Tallahassee- wants to see.

Frankly, as a big football fan, I'd love to go somewhere nice on a Sunday afternoon where I could watch ALL the NFL games in one place, like I would in Arlington every Sunday when the Dolphins wasn't being televised in Washington, rather than the places down here that advertise that they carry all the NFL games, but in reality, due largely to the particular demographics of the area, always show the same teams: Jets, Giants, Patriots, Eagles and Steelers.


Oh, and lest I forget, I also wish that there were some classy casinos on South Beach, of course!


The year I graduated from North Miami Beach Senior High School, 1979, we had our graduation ceremonies over at the Miami Beach Convention Center, where I'd often watched the ABA Floridians in the early 1970's.
After the ceremony, my family and some friends and I celebrated at a great Greek restaurant on Lincoln Road that was a particular favorite of my mother, who worked for a Miami Beach law firm back then.

Her office was in the HQ of Washington Federal Savings & Loan of Miami Beach, whose co-founder was the late FL State Senator Jack Gordon.
Gordon was a great and principled man that many of my friends and their family knew quite well and worked with in many capacities while I was growing-up down here.
He was also the one person cited by so many people I trusted and respected as THE most honest person they knew. http://www.fiu.edu/~ippcs/jdg.html
It was always either him or Lawton Chiles, whom I'll also be writing about in the near future.

Gordon was the personal barometer I use in gauging someone's effectiveness in local and state politics and how they wield their power.
Does he use it for people who are relatively powerless, who'd otherwise not get a seat at the table or be listened to when TV cameras aren't around?
Like high school kids under state care, who've been given the shaft by too many people to count?

To me, Jack Gordon was the anti-Geller.

I still recall that all the taxis trolling along Collins, Washington and Meridian for fares back then still bore their bumper stickers urging people to vote YES on casino gambling on Miami Beach, which was a county-wide referendum held eight months prior that lost, in no small part, due to the direct actions of Florida's news media.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916392,00.html Funny how just about everyone down here but me seems to have gotten hysterical amnesia about that last point.


But the casino proponents, who included some very smart and savvy people I knew through local and national politics, had, in my humble opinion, a perfectly dreadful strategy and PR campaign.
It failed to take into account the number one fundamental law of the political universe: you have to know your universe of voters.

Some people are always going to be against you, and you just have to accept that, so dedicate your resources on your known supporters and the open-minded, but don't waste time, energy and funds trying to argue your case with every last person who'd already made up their mind they were against you.
If you eventually peel them off, great, but otherwise you're just going to be chasing your tail forever.

After all, though everyone pretends they know the true significance of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln lost the Senate election. http://www.nps.gov/archive/liho/debates.htm


Don't know if many of you have ever met Earl Maucker, the Sun-Sentinel's executive editor, but since I've moved down here from D.C. four years ago, one of the things that's really jumped out at me, news-wise, are the apparent discrepancies between what he says publicly in a newspaper column, and what he says to media trade mags or at journalism conclaves, where he tries to position himself as a beloved Sigma Delta Chi poster boy.


But if the things I've read in various places are even half-true, and I'm not even talking about what Bob Norman of the Broward Palm Beach New Times has said about Sun-Sentinel says in his blog,The Daily Pulp, http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/ Maucker's own Sun-Sentinel employees are the best proof that he doesn't practice what he preaches.

Maucker being a hypocrite isn't so surprising, of course, given his relatively influential job in a place like South Florida, where, without the requisite population of highly-educated corporate manufacturing execs with self/community interests, who can afford to push back in a major way,
collectively or individually, someone like him is given a LOT of deference in a service-oriented economy.


In that sense, it fits the paradigm/mentality that I've observed down here since I was a kid, which
always reminded me a lot of my favorite novel, Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.

(Best film adaption is 1978 version with Steve McQueen as Dr. Stockmann and Charles Durning as his brother the mayor who wants him to keep quiet, lest the tourists not come back! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075993/ )

In that novel, when confronted with a moral question that directly affects the future commerce and reputation of their town, though the town's leading lights know what the right thing to do is, all but one brave man resist doing so, because they place a higher priority on good PR for their town and its important service economy -in Ibsen's novel, the town's baths- than the truth.

Only one person, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, stands up and tells the truth, facing the consequences of both his words and actions, saying exactly what needs to be said.

(Sounds a lot like Richard Dreyfuss's character in Jaws, right?)

It's been my favorite novel since I was at JFK Jr. High and first started reading Strindberg and Ibsen, barely edging out The Great Gatsby.

Trust me, if I can notice the discrepancies between what Maucker says and does, anyone in the industry could, and it certainly explains a lot about the state of the Sun-Sentinel these days.


Speaking of the Sun-Sentinel, I also wanted to call your attention to an interesting post from last Wednesday on a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur by Alan D. Mutter, cleverly subtitled, Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media executive, who fears our news-gathering companies are stumbling to extinction

His post, titled, The case for a JOA in Miami
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/06/case-for-joa-in-miami.html makes the case for the Herald repeating history with regard to the use of a joint-operating-agreement, in order to stop their red ink and the Sun-Sentinel's.

In that respect, it's like taking a trip back in time on the South Beach Hoosier Time Machine, when the JOA was a fact of life for my favorite paper, the Miami News when I was growing up here in the 1970's.
I not only read the Miami News every day it came out, but wrote lots of Letters to the Editor that got published when I was at JFK Junior High and later at NMBHS.
And spent lots of time there, as I'll describe in a future post.


Based on what I've read of Mutter's blog since first discovering it in March, he and I seem to see eye-to-eye on many issues, but I think he makes the mistake of many former industry types in always thinking that smart people will eventually figure out a way to solve things.
Not always.

In my opinion, it's those supposed smart people, the management at the Herald, who are ruining the paper.
(Though many of the editors aren't doing readers any favors, either!)
The ones whose Knight-Ridder predecessors ran to San Jose for the '90's Digital Gold Rush, when they thought that was the answer to everything.


Since I know that 99% of you have probably never taken a peek yet at my other blog, South Beach Hoosier, where I have a ton of posts to add in the next week, given my largely negative opinions about local media in general and the Miami Herald in particular, I'm going to exercise a point of personal privilege and repeat something I've had posted on that blog since starting it early last year.
Perhaps after reading it, something you've read here in the past will now suddenly make more sense, given this new added context.

Dave's Intentions for South Beach Hoosier
South Beach Hoosier will offer commentary on popular culture, public policy and national politics -largely from a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) p.o.v., with some policy differences-advertising & marketing news and innovations; the business side of Show Biz, especially the film industry; as well as insight on international trade, financial services and U.S. foreign policy, where from 1988-2003, I had a front-row seat for these and many other contentious and implacable issues on Capitol Hill, and their resultant fallout at DC-area think tanks and policy groups.

Fortunately for me, besides being blessed with a great memory for details, I also took copious contemporaneous notes of what I observed first-hand at Capitol Hill hearings -inc. important Congressional mark-ups- as well as at myriad events with policy makers, journalists and news makers at Brookings, SAIS, AEI, the Wilson Center, the Goethe Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the IMF and The World Bank -BEST wine!-the Economic Strategy Institute, et al.

Stories that, for whatever reason, NEVER saw the light of day in the pages of the New York Times, the WSJ or the Washington Post. Which naturally had the entirely predictable ripple effect of insuring that these stories and issues NEVER made the airwaves of the TV networks, cablenets or, even NPR.

South Beach Hoosier will also examine the latest amusing or not-so-amusing scandals, cover-ups, controversies, contretemps and mis-adventures bedeviling South Florida, something I became used to while growing up in North Miami Beach in the late 1960's and the 70's.
Fortunately, because of my news-junkie DNA and myriad magazine subscriptions, and long-standing relationships with media types in Miami, I was able to keep up pretty well with the South Florida area while living in Bloomington, Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette and Washington, D.C./Arlington, VA. Communities where sensible civic activism and high standards of journalism were the norm and not the exception.

Due to my own personal/business/political interests and experiences in those cities, as well as my good fortune to have a large number of well-informed and well-connected friends and former housemates while living there, many but not all of whom are or were reporters, columnists, editors, TV/film producers, along with a few who are now well-placed in Statehouses and legal circles across the country, I'll have a deep bench of facts, opinions, point-of-views and fact-checkers to work with. That's the goal for South Beach Hoosier.

It's my hope that this'll help me offer up pinpoint criticism, whether of national and South Florida pols, media organizations and sports or show biz personalities, that have heretofore evaded public scrutiny, transparency or accountability -as well as well-aimed brickbats.
To examine the proverbial case of the latest dog that doesn't bark, or analyze why the latest case of media conventional wisdom has -again- been proven wrong, and why.

This is especially true of The Miami Herald, the morning newspaper I grew-up with and have suffered with since first leaving North Miami Beach for Bloomington in the fall of '79, as its most talented people jumped ship and the paper become evermore a shell of what it once was: an excellent newspaper with talented and respected reporters and editors telling compelling and intriguing stories of intrinsic value to its readers throughout polyglot and transient South Florida.

Television news-wise, when I'd return to South Florida from school or work in Bloomington, Evanston, and DC, whether for Christmas vacation, Baltimore Oriole spring training games or visits for weddings, I could still see that Miami had the kind of scrappy and innately curious reporters who make a tangible difference in a community.

The sorts of enterprising reporters that so many of my friends at Ernie Pyle at IU, and Medill at Northwestern were already well on their way to becoming. http://www.idsnews.com/ ,
http://journalism.indiana.edu/news/erniepyle/ , http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/

Reporters who might have the talent and ability to convey to the waves of newcomers and visitors to the area, a nuanced sense of South Florida's decidedly mixed historical past, by writing with the proper amount of factual research, balanced perspective and sense of disbelief, to describe the events unfolding around them.
Then, ending the piece by dropping the hammer on whichever local corrupt/incompetent miscreant, pol or agency hack was the target of their ire, for attempting to perpetrate yet another in a long of of dubious acts against the people of South Florida.

Sadly for the people of South Florida, things have gotten so bad now that The Herald's numerous flaws are as much for what they don't publish, as much as for the self-evident mediocre quality of its writing and reporting, lack of thorough fact-checking, and inadequate search for conflicts of interest.

For all the talk of improving the paper by the new McClatchy management, it shows no tangible signs of changing for the better any time soon, a great disappointment to its readers.

It's common knowledge within the industry that The Herald's website is a joke compared to the efforts of many smaller circulation newspapers. www.miamiherald.com

Frankly, the website itself remains a constant source of embarrassment for Herald reporters and columnists, who are constantly besieged by readers and told yet another horror story about not being able to find recent Herald stories that should be on the paper's website but aren't.
The reporters can do little more than shrug their shoulders in response.

Even in the year 2008, The Herald still DOESN'T have a permanent Public Ombudsman to represent the interests of both its readers and basic fairness, like many newspapers with much smaller circulation numbers!

Meanwhile, with much more to fear and lose, The New York Times has an independent Public Editor, currently Clark Hoyt, who weekly takes the Times' policy, owners, editors, reporters and columnists to task publicly, even providing links back to the original story or column in question, unlike the once-in-a-while effort at the Herald. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html?8qa

The Herald's Sunday attempt at high-minded opinion-shaping and public policy, Issues & Ideas, is so embarrassing and muddled on so many different levels that it's all one can do to not laugh from crying, so feeble is its effort, so low is its aim, so puny the actual result.

Yet rather than seeking the creative input of bright and knowledgable new faces who familiar with the real problems of South Florida, The Herald still regularly farms-out the Guest Op-Ed space in the paper to people living outside of the area, more than any other newspaper in America I've ever read.

They continually run long excerpts in their editorial space from parochial interest groups whose political sentiments echo that of the the Herald's own Editorial Board. Even worse, if possible, in many cases these particular guest editorial tangents have already appeared in other forums or publications!
And speaking of the Herald's Editorial Board, who's on that exactly, anyway?

It's a great mystery that nobody seems able to fully explain away, yet The New York Times, under the guidance of Andy Rosenthal, has an entire webpage specifically devoted to detailing the background and credentials of its Editorial Board. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html
Hmmm... call me old-fashioned, but South Beach Hoosier prefers transparency!

With more news coming out of South Florida than once ever seemed possible, and with the area's annual dance with hurricanes always fraught with danger, this area desperately needs an All-News radio station more than ever before, yet there's NO sign of one on the horizon to replicate the crucial role once served by CBS Radio affiliate, WINZ-AM 940.

Even worse, if possible, there's no LOCAL 24 hour cable news channel to replicate the important role played by a NewsChannel 8 in Washington, D.C., http://www.news8.net/which gives a depth of coverage to D.C. and the VA/MD suburbs that people in South Florida can only dream about with envy: LIVE call-in TV programs with tough reporters who weekly or monthly grill the DC Mayor, Virginia and Maryland governors, as well as the VA and MD County Managers or Supervisors, the REAL powers in the area.

But then it's not like COMCAST is stepping up to the plate, either!

If there's one constant gripe in South Florida, regardless of your age, race, nationality or political persuasion, it's about the fundamental lack of PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY here among Florida's state, regional and local govt./agency officials.

South Beach Hoosier aims to be a small step towards regaining some of that needed accountability, whether it's thru simple public scrutiny, or requires a degree of investigation and follow-up public exposure of incompetency, cronyism or negligence -South Florida's usual "Perfect Storm." In other words, a catalyst for positive change.

"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen."
-Preacher Purl encouraging the Hickory basketball team before the title game against South Bend Central in Hoosiers, 1986 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091217/