A longstanding question about the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes that nobody else ever asks publicly

For a publication that in its articles and columns makes a big deal about accountability and transparency, why doesn't the the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes management team ACTUALLY run their work email addresses on their website, so that readers can contact them directly about either complaints, compliments or suggestions, instead of hiding behind one of those preposterous walls of anonymity as they currently do?
It's the year 2011 for God's sake.

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/about/staff/ http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?to=614131

Despite all their myriad longstanding problems, which I've chronicled on my blog at great length, the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel ACTUALLY run their management's email addresses on their websites and in the newspaper, since as you all know from what I've written and posted here over the past few years, I heard more than a few times from former Herald Senior VP and Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, so why won't the NewTimes?

You already know the maxim about the goose and the gander, there's no need for me to repeat it here. But it IS very noticeable that the NewTimes doesn't practice what they preach.

And just out of curiosity, how much money do you think the NewTimes make a year from their escort/sex ads?

And why do the Herald and Sun-Sentinel never take anyone there to task when they make self-evident factual mistakes, or seem to conspicuously leave out pertinent facts from a so-called article, even though it so often reads like a personal or political screed, which had pretty much been the situation at The Juice blog since Thomas Francis left? http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/

Though I have been listed on their blog roll for a few years, I haven't read it since Thomas left, since it seems to be nothing but shallow screeds preaching to the choir, of which their current offering is par for the course.
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2011/01/tucson_shooting_gabrielle_giffords_olbermann.php

And if you guessed that they used Allen West's name in the headline -again!- go to the head of the class.

In that sense, they're like the oddball guy who keeps showing up at the beach or park with a snake on his shoulder, so desperate to get attention that he'll do anything.
It's sorta funny, but mostly, it's just sad, and a waste of space.

Personally, I'd much rather pay a dollar or two every week and have more well-written stories and less schlocky articles and ads.
But that's just me.

I guess there's gold in them thar escort ads.

Informed speculation on the future of "South Florida blogs" on the Miami Herald's website. Hmm-m-m...

Towards the bottom of the Miami Herald's webpage in the space between BLOGS and COLUMNISTS, you'll find the link for South Florida blogs.

Not that most of you who come to this site regularly have been wondering about it but... yes, people have noticed the minimized role of the South Florida blogs on the Miami Herald's website since they tried to persuade certain bloggers to become part of their News Network.

See my earlier post on this topic from April 13, 2010, and at the bottom of this post, see the article the Herald's own Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos felt compelled to write about certain other Herald news partners.

A week ago today... the road not taken with the Miami Herald and some 411 about Beth Reinhard to consider http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/week-ago-today-road-not-taken-with.html

In fact, to be honest, though I noticed it myself many weeks ago, most of the people who have noticed this change for the worse and mentioned it to me are bloggers who get many more daily hits than I do, and since many of them run ads, unlike me, this change in focus is actually co$ting them, even while it has no real effect on me.

And, lest you forget, I remind you that the Herald went ahead and listed me on their webpage without ever contacting me about it, as I noticed it only after I'd been on the "Communities" list for a bit and someone emailed me about it.

If their emails are any judge of what they're really thinking, it sounds to many South Florida bloggers currently on the Herald's site that the newspaper is just trying to string them along until some time in the near-future, possibly the Holiday season, after they've achieved what they deem to be the optimum geographic coverage they've always wanted.

Then they'll "reluctantly" announce a change of plans and simply eliminate the listed blogs they don't have agreements with.

That's a long way to go to cut your own throat, but it wouldn't be the first time this year the Herald's management has made what I and many other readers paying serious attention believe are critical or fatal errors, since for many months, after a lot of initial promotion on the website, as you can see for yourself from the photo I snapped above around 1 a.m., there's currently no photo, graphic or interesting eye-catching icon to call your attention to the "South Florida blogs" on the Herald website.
Just a link in black - South Florida blogs

Personally, I don't think that's by accident.

Miami Herald
OMBUDSMAN
When partner goes too far, who is responsible?

May 23, 2010

By Edward Schumacher-Matos

It used to be said that the best way to get your opinion heard in a newspaper was to own one, a privilege -- and abuse -- that still reigns at some small community papers.

The Herald has recently entered into online alliances with several of them as an innovative way to aggregate community information across South Florida into one site for readers and advertisers. Some, such as The Key Biscayne Times, maintain high professional standards, but Herald editors are finding themselves entangled with the owners of others whose ethics are challenged by readers.

"I cannot believe that The Miami Herald is allying themselves with the Community Newspapers," wrote Doug and Yvonne Beckman, for example, of a 12-paper chain in South Florida. The Herald has partnerships with the chain's South Miami, Cutler Bay and Pinecrest editions, and the chain's owner, Michael Miller, says he is negotiating to add more.

Yet, the Beckmans (no relation to the late Commissioner Jay Beckman) continue: "There [is] no worse example of yellow journalism I have ever seen. In South Miami that rag is commonly known as the 'Mullet Wrapper.' For years and years the owner has openly interfered with politics in South Miami in the most egregious way."

"Michael Miller is no journalist," wrote another reader, Dean Whitman. "He is not governed by any standard of journalistic ethics with regard to accuracy, objectivity or disclosure of conflicts of interest. His goal is simple, to change the zoning governing height and density of commercial property that he owns on 62nd Avenue in South Miami. This property adjoins a residential neighborhood to the west and Miller wishes to increase the currently zoned height from two to four stories."

NOT HIDING
Miller in an interview acknowledges that he writes about the building, for which he has been suing to change the zoning since 1997, but he said he does so openly in his column, without hiding his self-interest.

Reviewing a number of past issues of the South Miami newspaper, I found that most articles were straightforward, offering information on local events and services. Most of the reader complaints, however, concern Miller's weekly "Around Town" column, and I can see why.

It is a compilation of often unsubstantiated political gossip, much of it harmless, some of it playing favorites.

One column was offensive, making reference to an anonymous death threat letter received by Vice Mayor Valerie Newman, an opponent of Miller's zoning change. The letter said she might end up like Commissioner Jay Beckman, who was allegedly shot to death in 2009 by his teenage son.

Miller wrote: "If you know who just might want to waste their time sending such a note to Valerie, please let the police know as they would love to add this to her package of goodies. And speaking of packages, I hear that Valerie will soon get her day in front of the Ethics Commission on the charges that were initiated by the late Jay Beckman.

"Hmmm . . . One big mouth civic activist told me a few months ago that Jay Beckman had 'turned against us.' Golly, I thought, then the guy winds up dead?"

Whitman noted: "Consider what the response of your readers would be if an esteemed Herald columnist such as Carl Hiaasen, Fred Grimm, Leonard Pitts, or even Glenn Garvin wrote such things. Certainly such things have no place in a legitimate newspaper."

Of course, the column did not appear in The Herald itself. The Herald links to its community newspaper partners from the home page of MiamiHerald.com. But the Herald does highlight on its home page some of the articles from the partners. Two or three Herald articles in turn appear on the partner sites. The Herald pays to help develop the partner sites, and splits advertising revenues with the partners.

The arrangement greatly expands the local news in the Herald's Web edition without having to pay for the reporting, Miller noted. The small allies get to tap into The Herald's large Web traffic. Both sides win economically. Readers are better served by the deep information offered by The Herald's site.

'INVENTIVE'
"The partnership with community sites is one of the most important and inventive things we've started this year," Herald Executive Anders Gyllenhaal told me.

And what of the ethical concerns? Is The Herald tarred when one of its partners commits a transgression? Separately, is The Herald validating those transgressions by featuring or linking to them on its home page?

UNDEFINED LIMITS
"Any new project like this will have its struggles, and we are going to continue to work on how this all fits together," Gyllenhaal said. "The idea is that each of the sites has independence, but that we share the website, the content and also the ad revenues.

"Readers' complaints and objections about coverage are going to come up no matter what the publishing system is. If readers don't like something originated by The Herald, we're the ones who respond. If they don't like something from one of the partners, the partners are the place to go with the concern."

My position is that there is a limit -- undefined, still -- about how much The Herald can accept in its partners. The community papers are valuable for being close to the ground, and in a practical sense can't be held to the same rigorous standards as The Herald. But Miller, at least in his South Miami paper, goes too far. The Herald should rein him in, or cut him off.

re South Florida's elected officials and law enforcement continually acting ignorant of First Amendment rights -feigned ignorance or real stupidity?

Below is a copy of an email that went out to a few dozen pretty well-informed people around the State of Florida late Monday afternoon as a bcc.

The email also went out as a CC to the following individuals: Katie Fisher of the First Amendement Foundation in Tallahassee, http://www.floridafaf.org/; Dominic Calabro of Florida Taxwatch, http://www.floridataxwatch.org/, someone who has proven himself to be a person who won't put up with alibis or nonsense from govt. bureaucrats abusing their authority or failing to give proper accountability; Doug Lyons of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Anders Gyllenhaal and Edward Schumacher-Matos of the Miami Herald.

In the near future, there will be much more context and details to the story below about legal, ethical and bureaucratic excess in -surprise- Tamarac, the city that along with Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach continually fights Hallandale Beach for the title of most venal and corrupt.

Those helpful details and context will include some particulars on the continuing pathetic performance of Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti, someone who needs one of his many apologists or minions throughout the county to tell him to wake the hell up and stop sleepwalking his way thru his job, and in particular, STOP disrespecting the very citizen taxpayers who pay his salary.
We are not amused!

This isn't Sparta, Mississippi, comprende, and he doesn't get to pick and choose which laws he want to follow.
What doesn't he understand about that?

Message to the South Florida news media: Al Lamberti's 'hall pass' has expired, so please stop treating him like he's some frigging old-line royal, okay?
It's very uncomfortable to read and watch and only makes you reporters who walk on eggshells in your stories about him seem even more like sycophants than you are.

And now to the email:

In case you missed it the first time, last month, please consider the following material below as predicates for today's email from Broward community activist Bett Willett to myself, and ask yourself, where-oh-where is Michael Satz and the Broward State Attorney's Office or Judge Victor Tobin's free-floating anti-corruption crew to make examples of all the miscreant pols and LEOs in South Florida?
MISSING IN ACTION!

And are things really so bad in South Florida's media community in the year 2010 that the news media willingly ignores example after example of South Florida city attorneys pretending they DON'T know what's permitted at public meetings under the State and Federal Constitution?
Really?

Once upon a time in South Florida media, Hallandale Beach's reflexively anti-democratic city attorney David Jove's continual winking at self-evident violations of the state's Sunshine Laws by the City Manager, Mayor and City Commission would've gotten a reporter's attention and resulted in an utterly devastating front page story, along with a handy chronology graph
of all the curious things that had transpired while he was present but looking away, all while drawing a taxpayer-funded paycheck.

Alternately, I would've come home tired from practice after school and would've seen a devastating Ike Seamans or Susan Candiotti story -with very long legs!- that would've literally caused his family to cry after it aired, and it would've been thoroughly sourced and 100% accurate.

Which would make it powerful as hell and a warning to others like him to shape-up and fly right -or else!

A story that would've been updated often as more and more people told what they knew and had seen, with video showing Jove's nonchalant attitude towards the law being bent, broken and ignored with him just sitting there.
And we'd have literally gulped at his sheer stupidity.
But now?

Outside of a handful of reporters, these stories just sit there, limp, waiting for a better-late-than-
never arrest to suddenly give some news editor or TV news director's the idea to give the story some well-needed oxygen.

If public corruption is a 24/7 effort by public officials in South Florida, and it is, is it too much to ask that in the year 2010, a local Miami TV station or newspaper actually have a few reporters whose only job is reporting on and investigating municipal, county and state chicanery, who promptly return emails and phone calls.

While I lived in the Washington, D.C. area for 15 years, I was fortunate enough to come to know more than a fair amount of people who'd won Pulitzer Prizes, and even more people who should've but didn't, if you believed what they told me at Oriole ballgames at Camden Yards.

The one characteristic they all shared is a genuine willingness to reach out to people who actually know something of value and to try their best to be approachable, since they never knew when or how a compelling story would make itself known to them.
You know, our old friend serendipity?

In South Florida, it's not exactly Breaking News that there are far too many reporters and editors who are NEITHER.

They practically have to receive invitations to be convinced to show-up for some government meeting or public policy matter.
(Question: When did that become the job of the citizen, to convince the reporter to actually show-up and do THEIR job?)

And everyone knows who they are, regardless of what city or county you live in, because they are the same names that always come up in private conversations.

That's fine, after all, I'm not a publisher or a TV station general manager, but then they shouldn't expect me to care when they are the next one thrown overboard because of either the economy or a station management shake-up or "creative differences."

And trust me, that's the opinion of the majority of people I know down here who follow local government and politics VERY CLOSELY.

They're the same discerning folks who agree with me that South Florida NOT currently having a dynamic Cable TV station with a local hard-news focus is a deep embarrassment that belies the area's claims to sophistication.

------------------------

1.) From: Bett's G-Mail
Date: Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 2:22 PM
Subject: Tamarac

I went to the Tamarac Commission meeting after being asked by the Colony West folks to speak to the commission about Amendment 4 and golf course conversions, read below from my blog about what happened:

Friday, April 16, 2010 -
Civil Rights Trampled in Tamarac
http://blogbybett.blogspot.com

A week ago today... the road not taken with the Miami Herald and some 411 about Beth Reinhard to consider

Below is an excerpted version of an email that I sent
last Tuesday.

to		"Abad, Eva - Miami"
cc		"Landsberg, David" "Gyllenhaal, Anders"

I believe this explains why I won't be attending tonight.

By the way, about the below: the un-named condescending
Herald reporter referenced is Beth Reinhard, and since
I originally wrote this, yet another story has run in the
Herald on Lauren Book without ever mentioning that
she's going to be a Broward School Board candidate.
Par for the course.

--------------
(This was originally sent to Rick of the South Florida
Daily Blog with bcc's to... well, people from coast-to-coast.
Never heard back from him, though.
C'est la vie.)

Friday March 26th, 2010
4:00 p.m.

Dear Rick:
Have been meaning to contact you about something since
this past Monday, and when I saw you broach the subject
Thursday in your discussion on your blog regarding the
Miami Herald soliciting material from local area bloggers,
I knew that I needed to write and share what I knew with
you and others in the area before I put it off any longer.

Herald Uses Local Blogger For Content
http://southfloridadailyblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/herald-uses-local-blogger-for-content.html
...Now the real reason I'm writing.

Did you receive one of these invites from the Herald?
Just so you know, I never actually contacted them about
this, either.

More from me about this after the story on the Gothamist
purchase.

from Vanaver, Elissa - Miami to "Abad, Eva - Miami" date Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 1:39 PM subject Community News Network

Thank you for contacting us about The Miami Herald's new Community News Network. Now that we're launched, we invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 6, to learn more about how you can post your news, photos and videos on our new community channels.

Date: Tuesday, April 6

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: The Miami Herald

1 Herald Plaza

Conference Room A

Please RSVP to Eva Abad

Elissa Vanaver

VP of Human Resources

Assistant to the Publisher

-------
Paid Content
By Rafat Ali March 22, 2010

Exclusive
Local Blog Network Gothamist Being Bought by Cablevision’s Rainbow Media

Gothamist, the local city blog network that is best known for its New York City edition, is being acquired by Cablevision-owned Rainbow Media, paidContent has learned. The price is between $5 million to $6 million, though we understand a good portion of that is a performance-based earnout.

Read the rest of the post at: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-local-blog-network-gothamist-being-bought-by-cablevisions-rainbow-media/

See also: http://outside.in/studies

Early last Friday night, I got an out-of-the-blue phone call
from someone at the Herald asking me if I'd received an
invitation to some event they were throwing having to do
with the launch of their "News Network."

After finally realizing that the phone call was legit, I laughed
and said that on the face of it, I thought that I was unlikely
to contribute material, photos or videos, given how often I
criticize the newspaper, whether due to its intellectually-shallow
editorials, poor editing and overall story selection, their Sunday
Op-Ed section being the worst of any paper in the country of its
size, plus, the all-too-obvious biases and limitations of certain of
its political reporters, whose complete and utter predictability
and conventional wisdom would've been embarrassing in 1989,
much less, the year 2010.

Where oh where are all the positive necessary changes
they should've made last year?

They have far too many genuinely unappealing blogs yet STILL
don't have an Education blog in the year 2010?
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/blogs/

They still have no Broward-oriented columnist that local
Broward County residents could read 2-3 times a week about
issues they're interested in, instead of having so many Cuba/
Sweetwater/ Calle Ocho-centric columns falling down upon us
everyday, as if Broward was terra incognita.

I'm a Blue Dog Democrat who'd like to see a smart and savvy
in-house Conservative columnist at the Herald opining on things
hereabouts, since this area is a target-rich environment of clearly
tired ideas and political and social personalities on life support
that need to be skewered and held-up to long overdue scrutiny,
but which never are.

So where-oh-where is that Conservative voice at the Herald
who'd strongly challenge the prevailing orthodoxy there at the
paper and in the community?
Sadly, it is yet another one of the things to come there that
never actually quite arrives.

The Herald's current notions of diversity, all too often,
consists of people of many creeds and colors all speaking
in unison, which is not really a voice so much as it is a chorus.

I'm really tired of seeing them run Miami news on the Broward
homepage of the website -like that perennial, flooding on
Miami Beach!-the sorts of stories which are already on their
website at the top anyway.

Those are the ones I've recorded with a lot of screen-shots over
the past year or so, but which I've never run and posted about
because it's so damn depressing, especially after the fact.

While it's nice that they are FINALLY running 6-8 more pieces
a day on their Naked Politics blog compared to their former
pitiful output, the fact remains that they have no video component
to that blog in the way of a YouTube page, like the Sun-Sentinel's
Broward Politics blog, http://www.youtube.com/BrowardPolitics
and too many items are run in Naked Politics that ought to be
running elsewhere, but the Herald has no other place to put them.

The perfect recent example of this is their post last week on cute-
but-completely-inexperienced Lauren Book-Lim, super-lobbyist
Ron Book's daughter, that in a normal newspaper, ought to have
been on the Education blog, since it's pretty clear she's running
for an open Broward School Board seat, which could necessarily
preclude her father from lobbying there

http://www.browardbeat.com/waiting-for-the-800-pound-gorilla/

http://www.browardbeat.com/index.php?s=%22Lauren+Book%22

which would make that a big story among those of us who care
about public policy in Broward.

See also http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2010/03/a-survivors-walk.html and http://www.facebook.com/people/Lauren-Book-Lim/10617635

But since they don't have an Education blog...

In any case, the Herald's Patricia Mazzei NEVER even
mentions her possible School Board candidacy in the most
recent post.
It's so damn maddening!

Thank God for the St. Pete Times political reporters that they
now run, otherwise...

As it happens, the Herald went ahead without ever telling me
and listed my blog on their South Florida blogs page when it was
first introduced last year.
http://yourblogs.miamiherald.com/

I only discovered I was on their Communities page when
someone I know in Miami mentioned that they'd seen it linked
there.
And that was a few weeks after they'd been running it.

That struck me as a very odd way of doing business
or creating relationships.

As to that invite above that I received on Monday, I'm going to assume
that if they are calling me and asking me to listen to their marketing pitch,
that given how many more people read your blog, you must've already
received something like this quite some time ago.

I'm not inclined to participate when the sad reality is that I'm much more
likely to get a quicker and more professional response to an email of mine
from Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal than I do from 99.9%
of their reporters, columnists or editors, esp. their largely invisible Broward
editors.

Gyllenhaal has actually written me a few times in the past 18 months
after I had bcc'd him about some troubling things I'd seen in the paper,
and I genuinely believe that he wants the newspaper and its product to
be much better, as do a handful of reporters there that I genuinely trust
and wish would be given more latitude in what they write about, so that
everyone benefits.

I'm just not that convinced that a majority of the people down at the
Herald necessarily want meaningful positive change readers are
clamoring for, including me.

Even after everything that's gone on there with the layoffs, there's an
awful lot of contrived and mediocre notions afloat there about what the
paper ought to be that to my mind, and many of the reporters there,
are gumming-up the works.

I hear somewhat regularly from reporters there about actions that
show more people than you think are still very resistant to some positive,
meaningful change that would benefit everyone.

Let me share a recent Herald anecdote that involves me:
Two weeks ago, a well-known Herald reporter called a local Broward
politician I know about something that I'd written about with 100%
certainty, and asked the pol what they thought of what I'd written.

What the reporter on the phone didn't know was that I was actually
in the room at the time standing next to this person when her phone
call came thru, and heard the entire conversation on speakerphone,
including the condescending reference to a short pithy email of mine
as "crazy mail" and me as "that blogger guy in Hallandale."

Like she couldn't bear to actually say my name or the
name of my blog, even though I had the story and the
Herald didn't.

To me, that attitude of hers explains a lot about why the Herald
is in the very sad shape it's in, despite having some very talented
people who could make it much better.

I guess I hardly need mention, do I, that this particular reporter
was NOT someone I'd even originally sent that particular email to,
since I have such a low regard for her, but someone else at the
newspaper whom I did send it to, clearly forwarded it to her since
it was so obvious that there was a story there on a silver platter
about govt. cronyism and no-bid contracts and HB Mayor Joy
Cooper

It was yet another local Broward govt. news story this particular
reporter knew nothing about, but typically, she never thought
to actually contact me about it, she called others who didn't know
anything about it until I told them via email and my subsequent
blog posting.

Well, that was more than ten days ago and the story has never
seen the light of day in the Herald or any of its myriad blogs.
Nowhere but my humble blog.
It's really dumbfounding.

Patricia Andrews, the Herald's former Broward bureau chief
was someone who had covered Hollywood and Hallandale Beach
back when I was living-up in the Washington, D.C. area, so I quite
naturally thought that she'd be especially receptive to hearing
about some very troubling things going on in the area that I and
many others were eyewitnesses to.
She was not.
She NEVER responded to a single email of mine,

She also never responded to occasional emails from about a dozen
or so other concerned HB residents, asking why she and the paper
were ignoring all the self-evident corruption and non-compliance
with the state's Sunshine Laws at HB City Hall.

Even now, the Herald has never written about the mayor suing
HB civic activist and blogger Michael Butler, a trusted friend of
mine, or even more troubling, the current HB Police Chief having
tried to frame and prosecute two innocent people -cops, no less-
in order to ingratiate himself with HB City Manager Mike Good
and Mayor Joy Cooper -and that TWO separate Broward
County juries ruled against him and the city by returning
verdicts against the city in less than 15 minutes.

Verdicts that resulted in HB taxpayers paying hundreds
of thousands of dollars in damages.

Yet the status and future of this corrupt Police Chief has NEVER
been discussed in a HB City Commission meeting, for obvious reasons,
even though in most parts of the country, that conduct would've
resulted in an immediate firing -and him being in prison now.

Another stellar example of Broward SAO Mike Satz doing
nothing!

None of what I've just mentioned has ever appeared in the Herald,
yet now they want my assistance?
I don't think that's going to happen.

For the record, the Herald has sent exactly one reporter to a HB City
Commission since June of 2008.

Before I forget, go to this animated video on paidcontent.org's site
titled Stop the Presses: How to Save Newspapers by Ted Rall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7qd8v8v2qk

Adios!

Dave

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Abad, Eva - Miami
Date: Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:17 PM
Subject: REMINDER: Community News meeting AT THE MIAMI HERALD
To:

If you haven't RSVP's please contact me as soon as you can.

Thanks!!!

Eva Abad
HR/Community Affairs Specialist

Executive Assistant

The Miami Herald

-----Original Message-----

From: Abad, Eva - Miami
On Behalf Of Vanaver, Elissa - Miami

Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 1:39 PM

To: Abad, Eva - Miami

Subject: Community News Network

Thank you for contacting us about The Miami Herald's new Community News Network. Now that we're launched, we invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 6, to learn more about how you can post your news, photos and videos on our new community channels.

Date: Tuesday, April 6

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: The Miami Herald

1 Herald Plaza

Conference Room A

Please RSVP to Eva Abad

Elissa Vanaver

VP of Human Resources

Assistant to the Publisher

That's why he's Michael Barone and you're not: When Liberal Leaders Confront a Centrist Nation

I've been reading and following columnist and pundit
Michael Barone since even before I moved to D.C.
in 1988, or even before he was a regular on the original
McLaughlin Group, when that was the only
syndicated political chat show, and everyone I knew
watched it religiously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barone_%28pundit%29

It's still a LOT more popular in the Beltway area
than in the uninformed burbs of South Florida, plus,
now that I think about it, I rarely see a promo for it
on WPBT-Channel 2 -why is that anyhow?-
where it runs on Fridays at 8:30 p.m.
http://mclaughlin.com

(At various times while I lived in the greater D.C. area,
especially the Clinton years of the go-go Nineties,
I used to bank at the Riggs Bank, specifically, the
branch on 17th Street, N.W. & Eye St., three blocks
north of The White House and the OEOB.

This was the sort of place where on payday, Fridays,
you'd regularly see very well-heeled K Street D.C.
defense lawyer or lobbyists doing their weekly
transactions, like transferring money into their college
daughter's checking account so she can continue
living the McLean or Potomac lifestyle while they
were away from the financial Mother Ship.
No doubt while their daughter's roommate has to do
a 'Work Study' job like I did at IU.

Almost like it was a game, one of the persons who
always seemed to just beat me into the bank was
a highly-visible someone who always seemed to be
just 2-3 customers ahead of me in line: McLaughlin
Group regular Eleanor Clift of Newsweek magazine.)

In D.C, McLaughlin aired on the NBC affiliate,
WRC, and was part of my regular routine on
Saturday night before heading out for the night.

This essay was part of my daily email this from
Rasmussen Reports this morning.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com

The big news this morning there was that American
voters now give the GOP first-time lead on health
care.
That comes as no surprise to me given what we've
all seen the past few weeks, with so many uninformed
members of Congress unable to explain what
Obamacare would and would not entail, to voters
who have actually read the bill, or, explain away the
logic of so much secretiveness surrounding 1/6th
of the American economy.

For all the MSM talk in January and February of
David Axelrod's folks being so oh-so smart and
Chicago street-savvy, it's as if they never learned
the fundamental lessons of President Bush's failed
(irresponsible) immigration amnesty plan of two years
ago, which also featured no congressional hearings
that voters (and members of Congress and the
media) could watch or follow to become better
acquainted with the actual facts and provisions.

But when you insist on NOT having congressional
hearings where representatives of The White House
have to make their case publicly, and then have groups
opposed speaking against those policy ideas but for
others, you're asking for trouble.

But then you compound that fatal flaw by also insisting
on doing everything behind-the-scenes, even to the
point of refusing to publicly release the names of health
care leaders meeting with West Wing types, just as
was the case with Hillarycare in 1993, or groups
like La Raza working on the Kennedy bill at the
Bush White House, it's perfectly logical that people
would be very suspicious, especially middle-class
people who are usually apathetic -and proud of it-
about most aspects of American public policy.

People who find it easy to tune out discussions of the
legal ramifications of McCain-Feingold or redistricting
-see www.FairDistrictsFlorida.org- while they eagerly
wax philosophic, blog and Tweet about the particular
merits of one singer over another on a TV show I never
watch like American Idol.

(I used to see the last two minutes when they bleed
over to HOUSE's time-slot.)

Given that predicate, what's really surprising is that
The White House, DNC and Beltway press are so
surprised at the reaction of the American people.
It was entirely predictable.

Here's what I wrote on the Herald's webpage last
Thursday to the dreadful -what else is new?- Beth
Reinhard column about the town meetings on health
care.

Tempers flare in South Florida over healthcare overhaul

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/1173602.html

To me, this town hall/Obamacare issue has really
pinpointed the Herald's central identity problem,
in that they are now so short-staffed and so very
poorly edited -but still more smug and arrogant
than reality ought to allow- that they now cover
local South Florida stories like they're parachuted
out-of-town reporters who arrive with their misplaced
preconceptions, false stereotypes and condescending
know-it-all persona, who want to treat everything
down here in South Florida as either precious,
eccentric or unique, even if it isn't.
It's the Iowa Caucus Syndrome.

Like our crime and corruption isn't really crime and
corruption, with an emotional and physical toll on
victims, like other cities and regions, but rather just
a local lifestyle choice.

That's the same attitude and response I run into when
I try to explain just some of the many unethical and
shady things are going on at Hallandale Beach City Hall,
and they turn to me and say,
"That's just Hallandale Beach."

In the Herald's case, that has been made all the worse by
their increasingly wasting half their column space by writing
about how other reporters elsewhere have characterized
similar events, contaminating the local perspective, rather
than accurately reporting and illuminating what happened
right in front of them -HERE!

This is both insulting AND infuriating, besides being bad
journalism that doesn't serve local readers, that no matter
how much I want to give Herald Executive Editor
Anders Gyllenhaal the benefit of the doubt, at some point,
you can't help but wonder when is the bad dream going
to end?

When is the Herald finally going to shape-up?
Would it be better for the long-term if the Miami Herald
went kaput and something else emerged from the ashes
that was actually interested and able to cover local
stories properly? Or, to use a particularly apt sports
metaphor, addition-by-subtraction?

Just recruit some smart, savvy and enthusiastic grads
from Medill and Ernie Pyle and elsewhere and let 'em
loose on all the unsuspecting pols and crooks hereabouts.
People with smarts and skills who don't care who
lobbyists Ron Book is or who he knows or whom he
and his daughter bankroll with campaign contributions,
or even who rides home to South Florida on his plane
from Tallahassee.

I used to think no, but as I stated a few months ago
here on the blog, and even said in an email to Gyllenhaal
last year, that he responded to, the question of the
Herald's future is increasingly not a rooting matter for me,
but more an academic or sporting proposition.
When does it all fall apart for good?

HallandaleBeachBlog wrote on 08/07/2009 04:54:25 AM:

What do these Obamacare stories and the tea-bag stories have in common? The Herald being VERY late to the party in covering them, and reporting on something in their own area like they were tourists, sporting cliches we've all heard on TV for days already.

Not surprising given that the Herald NEVER wrote a single thing about the 4,000-plus turnout at the Orlando "tea party" on March 21st. No articles, no photos, no nothing.

That's really surprising since any time you get that many people in an apathetic FL city to do anything at one time, it's newsworthy.

Just NOT to the editors of the Miami Herald, apparently, a paper that never used the phrase until March 21st, weeks AFTER the topic had gained national currency.

What do the candidates seeking to succeed Meek think about Obamacare or 'cap and trade'?

Can't say, the Herald's reporters and the rest of SoFL media won't ask them.

Maybe I should just call them and put their answers on my blog, so people in SoFL will know their views, huh?

And now, the feature presentation...
-------

When Liberal Leaders Confront a Centrist Nation

A Commentary
By Michael Barone

Augusts 13, 2009,

There are more conservatives than Republicans and more Democrats than liberals. That's one of the asymmetries between the parties that helps to explain the particular political spot we're in. The numbers are fairly clear. In the 2008 exit poll, 34 percent of voters described themselves as conservatives and 32 percent as Republicans; 39 percent described themselves as Democrats but only 22 percent as liberals.

Read the rest of the essay at: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_michael_barone/when_liberal_leaders_confront_a_centrist_nation

Michael Barone archives are at:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_michael_barone

Someone needs to watch the politicians -it won't be the Miami Herald

My comments follow the column

-----------------

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/beth-reinhard/story/949348.html

Miami Herald

Someone needs to watch the politicians

By Beth Reinhard

March 14, 2009

In an eerily prescient plot line in Carl Hiaasen's 2002 novel Basket Case, an intrepid reporter whose stories have sent three politicians to jail leaves the newspaper for another job and isn't replaced.

Another reporter is told to keep an eye on the local government, but he covers a city council that also meets Tuesday nights, forcing him to alternate his attendance between the two municipalities.

The politicians time their misdeeds accordingly: Property taxes and garbage fees go up, a tire dump and a warehouse park are built in residential neighborhoods, and everybody gets a pay raise.

The weary reporter quits, so the newspaper dumps his job on somebody else -who also covers city council meetings on Tuesday nights.

"For the corrupt politicians in our circulation area, it was a dream come true," writes Hiaasen, a Miami Herald columnist who says newspapers regularly inform his fiction. "The unsuspecting citizens of three communities . . . were being semi-regularly reamed and ripped off by their elected representatives, all because the newspaper could no longer afford to show up."

Imagine this scenario playing out in city after city, and you have a pretty good idea of the political fallout of a newspaper industry on the wane. This is the best thing that ever happened to crooked pols since manila envelopes.

This week, The Miami Herald announced its third round of layoffs in a year. Just another day in an industry where a number of media companies are struggling to survive.

This column is not a self-serving sob story about people losing their jobs, because that is happening to everyone except foreclosure auctioneers and bankruptcy lawyers. The public's interest is at stake here, as newspapers have long been the meanest and best government watchdogs around.

When the scrappy, Pulitzer Prize-winning Rocky Mountain News shut down on Feb. 27, it posted a poignant video on its website in which reporters and readers talk about the vital role of the Fourth Estate. Editor John Temple says readers frequently refer to the paper not as "the Rocky," but as "my Rocky," reflecting their feeling of communal ownership in the newsgathering enterprise.

This is personal.

In Florida, a robust and competitive network of daily newspapers has thrived in a sort of journalism hothouse, where strong public records laws and weak-kneed politicians laid fertile ground for muckraking. But every paper has been forced to reduce its coverage or give up entire communities in recent years. The Tallahassee press corps has shrunk dramatically, and in Washington the owners of the Tampa Tribune and the Palm Beach Post plan to shutter their bureaus.

Sure, the explosive growth of blogs and other online outlets is helping fill the void. Some of the best scoops of the 2008 campaign first appeared outside the mainstream press. Local gadflies, out-of-work reporters and other rabbler rousers are posting great stuff.

But the best journalism is frequently labor-intensive and expensive. Someone drawing a paycheck has to take the time to sit through the city council meeting, scour the annual budget or truth-squad a campaign ad.

The Herald and other papers are partnering with former competitors in an effort to fill the gaps. Big-mouthed readers have always helped us stay in the loop, and we need you more than ever to be our eyes and ears on the ground.

Somebody has got to get to that Tuesday night city council meeting.

Beth Reinhard is the political writer for The Miami Herald.

Reader comments at:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/beth-reinhard/story/949348.html?commentSort=TimeStampAscending&pageNum=1

Abandoned Miami Herald vending machine next to FEC

Raiload tracks, Biscayne Boulevard & N.E. 187th Street,

Aventura, FL

April 21, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

The Miami Herald has not had a reporter at a

Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting since early

June of 2008, when Breanne Gilpatrick attended the

joint meeting with the City of Hollywood at the Hallandale

Beach Cultural Center.

She was only there because like the situation cited above,

both cities have their meetings on Wednesdays.

But she was clearly there for Hollywood, as Hallandale

Beach was simply the side dish.

That meeting was noteworthy for two things: that there

were many Hollywood City Hall officials who confided

to me that they could not find the building because

there were -and are not now- any directional signs

on U.S.-1 indicating where it was located, and also

for the fact that HB Mayor Joy Cooper tried to

persuade the City of Hollywood -unsuccessfully-

to adopt her strategy of threatening to sue the

State of Florida so they didn't have to comply with

the state's deadlines and requirements

regarding ocean outfall pollution.

This coming Wednesday, the date of the first City

Commission meeting in May, that will mark precisely

eleven months since the Herald deigned to show up.

Woody Allen famously said that "Ninety percent

of life is just showing up"

So what lessons should we draw from never

showing-up?

Over those same eleven months, as one shocking

thing after another has transpired here, I've directly

and indirectly contacted Beth Reinhard numerous

times to make her and her colleagues aware of matters

of public interest here fully deserving a level of scrutiny,

as well as Herald Broward section editor Patricia

Andrews, Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal

and Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos.

(The latter really ought to have a weekly column,

not a once-in-a-while schedule the Herald gives

him, which only serves to make anything he writes

about seem dated by the time you read it,

an arrangement he himself can not be happy with.

Seriously, why no Herald blog for him?)

Whatever my serious disagreements with them about

the quality or volume of product churned out, Messrs

Gyllenhall and Scumacher-Matos have taken the

time to write back a few times with their thoughts and

concerns after such correspondence, but Reinhard

and Andrews, nary a peep.

Welcome to the State of South Florida Journalism

2009.

---------------

Draw near and consider:

Much has been said, written and analyzed, and yet this

overwhelming mass of facts has heretofore furnished no

evidence to the unconscious Miami Herald and its

journalistic kindred, from which to pluck a belief that the

acts of the crowd at Hallandale Beach City Hall and

their dutiful cronies were unethical forays, and that there

really has existed and continues to exist at 400 South

Federal Highway a most unethical and malodorous stench.

A putrid stench that clearly marks behavior most foul

that serves as daily impediment to the full and faithful

discharge of public duty.

The Millenium Building, 2500 East Hallandale Beach Blvd.,

Hallandale Beach, FL

April 25, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

But comes one blogger, me, and one website writer,

Change Hallandale, unafraid of the behind-the-scenes

machinations and armed with facts to fill many a

cupboard, after the Herald long avoided taking notice

of what transpires there, and makes a statement to

the public and continually shows it online, and, presto,

the veil is rent; light succeeds to darkness,

and credit to defamation.

With such a recantation avaunt!

We do not want it; we can do best without it.

We have taken the measure of the Herald lo these

many months and found without exception that it

was lacking in seriousness of purpose and moral

clarity when such qualities were ideal prescriptions

for what has long ailed this town hard by the sea.

And so we persevere, ourselves, in the task once

commenced, for if not us and our allies, who will

carry the torch and ask reasonable questions that

make autocrats angry and seethe, demand a degree

of accountability, from people who clearly delight

in the Herald's apathy, a fact which is but common

knowledge hereabouts?

And what of the political friends and benefactors

of the very Rubber Stamp Crew that has made

this town simultaneously, a mockery, a punchline,

a laughingstock of the worst sort?

Those who are by practice but blind to what lies

directly before their immediate gaze and scurry

like the ostrich, eager to find that comfortable

hole that their empty heads hath grown so

accustomed to?

Patience dear friend, patience!

Do not despair.

The bosom friends of the powers-that-be of

this town are well known to me and others,

and their deeds and names have been entered

into a list that will one day delight and amuse

you, as you read about their offers of aid and

support, knowing that they, too, have become

ensnared in the web of their friends' daily

falsehoods and calumnies.

Trust me, friends, you will come to know these

names too, I promise.

Sooner than they know!

The idylls of summer swelter are near at hand.

When they be over, you at One Herald Plaza

will unsay your present tale, but it will be too late.

The sands of Time will have further turned your

remaining power into idle boasts that prove pitiable,

proving once again that the common curse of

South Florida journalism be not just folly and

ignorance, but vanity and apathy.

If our health is spared and a summer hurricane

passes not by our fair shores, we shall give to

the people of this town, as well as to the state

lawgivers legally assembled, who seek truth,

a brief history of our revelations, and in the

name of reform, accountability and democracy,

all so long in exile from this community,

but with the word of truth, appeal to their justice.

And rest assured, friends, there WILL BE

a public accounting, for who knew what, when,

and who did nothing but join in the mockery

at the public's expense.

That future public accounting animates my daily

travails, as it does so many others in this community,

so sure are we that each day is but one day closer

to that fateful day of public reckoning.

People who long for something better than what

they have heretofore known, and who while longing

for sheer civic normalcy, have instead found gross

deceit and self-dealing, shenanigans of every size

and shape, and false words repeatedly spoken

with no intent of follow-through and resolution.

The tape that may soon bedeck the halls of Hallandale

Beach City Hall and environs?

For those in power in South Florida who are but

dear friends of the Rubber Stamp Crew that

is currently in power, let them say no longer that

they did not know what transpired here under the

guise of governance, and who were the guilty

parties at the very heart of every embarrassing

scandal and debacle, forever plotting, scheming

and attempting to obfuscate the truth,

so that their anti-democratic plans would be

rendered invisible to the citizens they purport

to represent.

For those of us who cared to look, it was there

all the time, but some consciously chose not

to see.

The Miami Herald is but the most obvious enabler

on that long list, but they were not the only ones.

For we who have followed the facts as we found

them, and connected dots not seen by others,

know well the names of the others, too, as

surely as we know our own names.

How can we not?

And you will come to learn them here in

this place, too.

Hallandale Beach Blog

South Beach Hoosier