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

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

The National Journal

POLITICS

Can Marco Rubio Live Up to the Hype?

He's the GOP's Barack Obama, a fresh-faced politician with an immigrant name, a playlist full of rap, and a collection of fawning press clips. The challenge: He's selling the same old party message.

By Beth Reinhard

Updated: February 14, 2013 | 8:50 p.m. 

February 14, 2013 | 8:20 p.m.

The freshman senator from Florida had joined four veteran colleagues to unveil a proposal for the first major overhaul of immigration law in a quarter-century. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced “my friend, Senator [Marco] Rubio, who obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue of immigration reform.”

Two weeks earlier, Rubio had laid out a similar set of principles in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue.” The article came as a surprise to McCain and other members of the bipartisan group of senators who had been sketching out an immigration plan with and without Rubio for weeks. The blueprint was inspired by legislation that McCain first spearheaded in 2005.

The dig was subtle, but Rubio didn’t let it go.

Read the rest of this at: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/can-marco-rubio-live-up-to-the-hype-20130214

Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Marco Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals.

Bet I can guess what Beth Reinhard will say about Marco Rubio. 

Yes, and so can you! 

That's the problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote.

Just like her last piece on him.

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

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

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

Bill Bradley for instance.

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

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

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

And Univision, of course, in their creepy stalker-like relationship with Rubio, where they are always looking to see if he's spending too much time with someone else.

Y
es, Univision, the Spanish-language channel that the Miami Herald is always kissing the butt of and overplaying the significance of, but who will, not so curiously, not mention in print that they didn't air President Obama's State of the the Union address, which is why they won Tuesday night in the TV ratings.

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

http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=univision

I thought they were the new "It"?

Qué pasa, Herald?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I guess I'm the only one who remembers that, huh?

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

As many of you regular readers know, I've directly asked the Herald's top management why there's been no replacement and no mention made in the paper of what their plan is, if any, for an eventual replacement.

And, what their plan for improvement in print and online was to keep the faith of readers.

That's been met with stony silence. 

Followed by more silence.

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

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

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

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

in South Florida.

But not right now.

Now, each newspaper and its management seem locked in a battle of lethargy to do the least amount of original enterprise reporting possible.

  

------

TheWrap

Ratings: Univision Wins Night By Skipping State of the Union

By Tim Kenneally

Published: February 13, 2013 @ 10:03 am

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/ratings-nbc-wins-key-demo-state-union-coverage-77506

November 1, 2010

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

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/hallandale-beach-blog-endorses-beth.html

September 3, 2010

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

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/addition-by-subtraction-beth-reinhard.html

-----

Univision staffer attacks Sen. Marco Rubio on Facebook

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/08/3224442/univision-staffer-attacks-sen.html

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

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

Why is the McClatchy Company's Miami Herald continuing to ignore media reports the FBI has emails detailing activities of Herald fave, "Cuban-American" Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, repeatedly having sex with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic -at a resort owned by his Miami pal? No story's complete without a South Florida angle, so why are they acting like ostriches?; This cover-up is exactly the sort of thing that causes reasonable people like me to seriously question the future of the Herald, since their longstanding political bias and sheer laziness are both cancers in the digital era

Updated on Monday January 28th, 2013  5:15a.m.

Why is the McClatchy Company's Miami Herald continuing to ignore media reports that the FBI has copies of emails in its possession detailing unflattering and illegal globe-trotting activities of Herald favorite, "Cuban American" Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey?
The allegation is that Menendez has repeatedly flown-down to the Dominican Republic and had sex with underage prostitutes, and that one of the persons who facilitated these activities was his pal, a Miami surgeon and resort owner named Salomon Melgen.

This unwillingness to report seems especially curious given that there is the requisite South Florida angle, since no scandal in this country seems complete without some connection to this area.
And once you know that the behavior is alleged to have taken place at a resort owned by Melgen, and yet as you can see for yourself above, the Herald has published nothing about him or Menendez related to this story, it becomes especially obvious.

The newspaper has ignored this story for quite some time, even before the election three months ago, when people at ABC News were investigating it, an election which made incumbent Menedez one of three Hispanics in the U.S. Senate, and the presumptive choice for Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if John Kerry becomes Secretary of State, which is a scary-enough prospect on its own, given how consistently unsound his judgment has proven to be over the years.

So ask yourself, is this an example of a an old-fashioned media cover-up by a Miami newspaper that has come to be well-known across the country for ignoring negative news about specific "pets" of its management and Editorial Board, or just the latest example of the arrogant laziness that's been going on for years at the Herald, which has so many predicates over the past few years?

Among those predicates is one that this part of Broward County is especially familiar with , that of the Herald iignoring for well over a year the facts surrounding an affair conducted by former Broward School Chair Jennifer Gottlieb with an individual with business before Broward Schools, a story that investigative reporter Bob Norman deconstructed so well. 

Here's my post of July 26, 2010 on the subject of Gottlieb that remains one of the most-read posts I've had in over five years:

Weeks later, Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel & Miami TV newscasts STILL consciously ignoring Bob Norman's spot-on story re School Board's Jennifer Gottlieb

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/weeks-later-miami-herald-sun-sentinel.html

and
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-perfect-end-to-perfect-wednesday.html

So as you can see, this behavior of putting their head in the sand like an ostrich is nothing new
by the current news crew at the Herald.
It's just more of the same that nobody likes.

I sent a version of the above and what's below to Herald publisher David Landsberg,

Executive Editor Aminda Marques and Managing Editor Rick Hirsch asking just that very

question.

Menendez has been a favorite of Herald management and the Editorial Board because of his

political views towards Cuba, not because of any great original policy ideas of his, or even 

anything of particular note that he's said or done.
-----

And as indicated above from my screen grab of a few minutes ago, you have posted nothing at all on Menendez's Miami surgeon pal and connection?

How come?

http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=Bob+Menendez = nothing

The Daily Caller                                                                                                      
Emails show FBI investigating Sen. Bob Menendez for sleeping with underage Dominican prostitutes
By David Martosko, Executive Editor 
1:52 AM 01/25/2013

http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/25/emails-show-fbi-investigating-sen-bob-menendez-for-sleeping-with-underage-dominican-prostitutes/

Thinking that this story will eventually go away on its own if you don't report it, is NOT really much of a 21st Century strategy for managing news, and is exactly the sort of thing that causes reasonable people like me to seriously question the future of your newspaper if it continues to show that it can't be relied upon by readers to honestly report the news without personal or political favor.

What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there...

What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there...


Those of you who come to this blog regularly will recall that back in December and January, I sent a very thorough letter to the top management of the Miami Herald -Publisher David Landsberg, Executive Editor Aminda Marques and Managing Editor Rick Hirsch among others- and some folks at parent company McClatchy Company regarding longstanding problems that I'd been aware of and had observed both in the newspaper and on their website. 


Problems that, from my perspective, at least, they seemed to be expending precious little time, energy and resources on resolving any time in the near-future, judging by the physical product they continue to churn out and what you continue to see on their crummy static website.


Clearly, that doesn't speak well of what's going on down at One Herald Plaza, but then that's not breaking news, either.


After sending those emails, I later re-purposed them and posted those comments here on December 21, 2011.


For another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County, more lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza -Part 1
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/for-another-consistently-lousy-year-of.html

Part 2 of More lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza for another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/part-2-of-more-lumps-of-coal-in.html

I heard via email from several other concerned media watchers in South Florida -some of them with names you'd instantly recognize- who also don't like the look of things at the Herald -or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, either, for that matter.


People who, like me, feel that that given its enormous resources, even with a smaller staff, the Herald is not only short-changing the community in its geographical area, but has actually abdicated many of its basic reporting coverage responsibilities in critical ways, and yet can't even point to better and more nuanced reportorial coverage of the places it will actually deign to cover. 


While many people who wrote agreed with me just about 100%, others admitted that they hadn't personally noticed certain things I brought up to Herald management, but that once I mentioned it and they'd had some time to think about it, they found themselves largely agreeing with me that in a competitive marketplace, there was no logical reason for failing to resolve some of these longstanding problems that Herald readers have with the newspaper.


That was especially the case with the Herald's atrocious coverage of Broward County people, places and government, both local and county, where almost every night of the week, you can go to the Herald's Broward homepage, and yet consistently find that less than 40% of the listed stories have anything to do with Broward County.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/#navlink=navbar


Who deliberately runs a newspaper like that? 


In any case, besides some small initial response that first week after they were sent, which came just before the holidays, six months later, nobody from the Herald's management has since followed-up with me or gone public in the newspaper about what and when the Herald is going to do something to prevent the slippery-slope from becoming "the new normal."


A good first step, though long overdue, would actually be hiring an Ombudsman, one who actually lives in South Florida and who not only has a weekly column, but is also equipped with a daily blog.


Someone to better represent readers with deep concerns about the Herald's reporting and editorial bias, misrepresentation of facts, consistent curious choice to leave some key facts out of certain stories, and the perennial concern about Herald flackery on behalf of South Florida's business interests and the personally powerful & privileged -like the newspaper's love affair with M-D Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho, of whom seldom is heard a discouraging word.


But it's been more than a year now since Edward Schumacher-Matos left for NPR and the Council for Foreign Relations, and nothing is happening, even though that's actually something fairly easy to fix on that laundry list of unresolved problems there...
When are we going to see some tangible signs of positive change at the Herald?


And have you seen how weak their offerings are on their YouTube Channel? http://www.youtube.com/user/MiamiHerald/ 


Without naming names, I know for a fact that there are twenty-something female bloggers in Scandinavia who are so popular that they produce more original video content and get more eyeballs seeing their original content on their YouTube Channel than the Herald gets for their's. (And they do it themselves, too.)


In fact, I know one such blogger in particular who has produced a number of videos within the past six months, most of which have been seen more times than ALL the Herald's videos for the past nine months combined. 


You'd think that by now, the folks locally at the Herald and in Sacramento for McClatchy, would have the good sense to be embarrassed at having all the resources they have, in a large market like this with so many interesting, bizarre and controversial things going on, yet posting such feeble content.
But, apparently, they're not.
------

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/01/2194496/looking-back-on-4-years-of-critiquing.html

Miami Herald

Looking back on 4 years of critiquing The Herald

By Edward Schumacher-Matos

May 1, 2011

Nearly four years ago, I wrote my first column as ombudsman. This is my last. I leave having learned a lot about you, the readers. I leave having failed you, too, in one promise.

I learned foremost that you care — about your community and your newspaper. You write a daily avalanche of e-mails to me and others at The Miami Herald or post comments online, often with passion, over issues in South Florida and the state.

When you don’t like how your point of view was treated in an article, you often threaten to cancel your subscription. Few of you actually do, at least for reasons of coverage. If anything, your reaction shows that you are reading the newspaper. And while most of my columns have been critical of something The Herald has done, you and I share this secret: For every article we disagree with, there are many, many more that we like. No other local news outlet keeps us as well informed.

I also learned your hottest buttons: Cuba, Israel, immigration, taxes, gay rights. And, of course, party politics. Your antennas are acute for any indication that The Herald might be tilting pro-Republican or Democrat.

But whatever your political inclination, the stories you like the most are investigations that ferret out local corruption. As The Herald has redefined itself through smaller staffs, shrinking paper size, and online expansion, you have overwhelmingly implored that it continue investing in the investigations that it does so well. After that, you most like local stories, though the Caribbean Basin and Middle East are local for you, too. You are sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

Few places in the country are so interesting. I am leaving to take up a new post as ombudsman of National Public Radio. I look forward to the political sensitivity of that role as NPR and the media nationally wrestle with how to finance responsible journalism and serve communities. But I will be sad to leave you.

So, how did I let you down? I announced in the beginning that in passing judgment on The Herald’s coverage — on whether it was one-sided, for example, or unfair or incomplete — I would tell you my position on the issue being covered in the original article. It was a revolutionary idea. Here is what I wrote in my first column:

“I’ll tell you upfront, and I’ll tell you my biases, for in the end what I write will necessarily be my own reasoned judgment. But I promise you it will be as fair as I can make it, never cynical, but sometimes irreverent. I strongly believe in good professional journalism, but I don’t think it’s Holy. You are welcome to agree, disagree or demand to kill the ump.”

That first column had to do with the coverage of the Gomez brothers, two young Colombians who were popular students but unauthorized immigrants detained for deportation. Their saga and the proposed Dream Act that might legalize them remains ongoing. Once a Colombian illegal immigrant myself, I wrote that I was sympathetic toward legalizing the unauthorized immigrants in the country.

Still, I criticized The Herald’s coverage for being slanted in favor of the boys. It largely overlooked legitimate questions held by many readers about the fairness of the Dream Act and legalizing the brothers.

But if I lived up to my promise in that first column, I found as the months went by that to state my position on the issues distracted from my critique of the coverage. I became the issue, instead of the reporting and editing by The Herald. As a mechanical matter, it also made the columns too long, especially if I wanted to explain the nuances of my views.

I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop the practice, but my promise somehow just slipped away.

I still wonder if there is a way to revive the idea, not just for ombudsmen, but for reporters.

We know that journalists are human and have opinions and political preferences. There also is no such thing as pure objectivity. We all see through the lens of our upbringing.

Most reporters stretch mightily to set aside their biases and follow basic journalistic rules. Editors further scrub stories for objectivity and fairness.

But we as a society are now in a cynical “post modern” age in which we have been taught to “deconstruct” articles in search of the writer’s supposed underlying intent. Trust in the news media is low. Would transparency about a reporter’s personal views help recover trust then? Is there a practical way to make it work? Or would it be a distraction from the news itself?

I don’t have the answers but would appreciate knowing your parting thoughts. As the news media fragments into many slivers of opinion, we risk fragmenting as a society and a nation. We need to have at least a common base of facts.

Thank you for the privilege of having been allowed into your homes and your considerations these past four years.

A very curious-but-pleasant surprise for some South Florida bloggers from the Miami Herald, but there's still so much more blogger knowledge & synergy that ought to be publicly displayed on a regular basis. South Florida needs a weekly Broward/Miami-Dade Politics Hour on radio!

Above, my screenshot of today's Miami Herald website showing where the link to their South Florida Blogs are shown on the page by the orange circle, at the bottom of the default, with no icons of any sort to identify it.

Could it be more hidden?

Wow! Very curious but pleasant surprise from Miami Herald! 

Just noticed this NEW change from last week at Miami Herald -they're linking my (our) blog posts under their extant "city" pages, i.e. http://www.miamiherald.com/hallandale-beach/

Example: 

http://www.miamiherald.com/community/v-blog/index.html?goto=http://www.miamiherald.com/cgi-bin/bnn/miamiherald/go.php?http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/broward-judge-patti-englander-henning.html

It's not as easy to navigate as my actual blog page, esp. moving from right-to-left because they seem to have shrunken the blog's page it to fit within their own "window," but while you have to know to navigate to your right to see the important fact-filled right-hand column of the blog, which doesn't show up immediately on their "window," my three Google Adsense ads are included, so that's very good. 

(This'll make more sense when you see the URL above.)

After I watch the Duke-North Carolina ACC Lacrosse title game that starts on ESPNU at 3 p.m., I need to spend some time checking whether they're doing this for every city in Broward and Miami-Dade that has a blog I'm aware of, or whether they're now including bloggers on those "city" pages who are not currently on their own "South Florida Blogs" list, which I know might include some of you reading this.

http://www.miamiherald.com/cgi-bin/bnn/miamiherald/index.php

If the Herald really wanted to play this smart, they'd greatly expand that list of blogs -after asking them first- and then link to the "city" page in their online version of their articles via a link at the end of the article, not unlike a label or tag at the end of a blog post.

That would make it a lot easier for news junkies like me to see if anyone else has already written on the subject at hand, perhaps -likely- even better and with more knowledge of the actual facts and context, the lack of which is one of the biggest and most-constant criticisms of the current group of Herald reporters in either county.

As it happens, about ten days ago, partly out of curiosity as much as boredom, I actually checked their "South Florida Blogs" homepage on the Herald's blah website for the first time in about 6-8 months, and it seemed the way it always was -neglected and with zero colorful icons to catch a reader's attention as they scrolled almost all the way down the page, compared to it being located near the top when they first initiated it, when hopes were high I suppose.

Frankly, as I'm sure is NOT a surprise to many of you reading this given how often I've taken the Herald's website to task, that link is very easy to miss and to my thinking, has represented a terrible blunder by the Herald 

Unlike has been the case in cities like Seattle and Chicago, where lots of creativity, energy and outside-the-box thinking took place as how to best utilize the bloggers to help them and get more information out to the public via a media platform, the Herald seemed largely satisfied with just having a link and nothing else.

Now sometimes that outside-the-box thinking doesn't live up to anyone's expectations, most especially the bloggers, as happened with the experiment that was the Tribune's Chicago Now Radio Show that first aired in 2009 on WGN radio from 9 am-Noon on Saturdays

http://www.wgnradio.com/shows/chicagonow/wgnam-chicago-now-about-show,0,4398318.story but which was killed after about a year, despite this sort of attention:

http://www.chicagonow.com/chicagonow-staff-blog/2010/08/chicagonow-celebrates-its-first-birthday/

Still, the axe fell on the radio show -see 6th paragraph of 

http://chicagoradioandmedia.com/news/1169-wgn-am-revamps-weekends-axes-agar-wasson-a-chicagonow

The whole dysfunctional episode in Chicago between the legacy media's Tribune Company, ChicagoNOW and the bloggers makes even more sense when you read what was really going on behind-the-scenes as Mike Doyle recounts in his blog post, The Past Imperfect of ChicagoNow, or, as I prefer to remember it using one of his funnier lines, "You can’t run a 21st-century blog network at the speed of a 19th-century newspaper" which ran a few months before the radio show was killed.

http://www.chicagocarless.com/2010/03/01/the-past-imperfect-of-chicagonow/

This seems to be yet another instance where bloggers were the bait for a legacy media company that wanted to be more relevant, but where the management and bureaucracy of the media powers-that-be and the media platform company weren't too terribly interested in making the product not only more useful for readers, but work for the bloggers, too.

When you consider how many smart and creative people there are in South Florida who have some experience of a sort to add something interesting and new to the news and conversation mix, and yet see how poorly the Herald has reacted to New Media and technology, as I've mentioned here previously in my November 27, 2010 blog post titled
How a video of Paramore in Stockholm & Razorlight in London proves the Miami Herald is too damn slow. Iceberg dead ahead!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-video-of-paramore-in-stockholm.html 
it's amazing to me that McClatchy's Herald or one of the local Miami TV stations -or even these bewildering sycophantic TV production outfits like Plum TV, which seem so focused on very shallow topics and celebs for their affluent or wannabe affluent viewers that they fail to appreciate how silly they appear- haven't yet figured out a way to regularly get knowledgeable and articulate people in South Florida who are bloggers on the air to share a story in an interesting and original way, getting much-deserved attention to news stories or issues that people do care about but which the local news media is largely ignoring, for whatever reason.

But then South Florida is the year 2012 is an area without an All-News radio station and
despite all its pretensions, still hasn't figured out a way to have a weekly one-hour radio show on Miami-Dade politics, govt. and local current events one hour, and then Broward the next -or vice-versa.
Say on Friday morning or at Noon, or Saturday mornings from 10-Noon.

The template for this sort of weekly format already exists on Washington, D.C.'s NPR 
affiliate WAMU, which has had this hugely-popular show on Friday afternoon's from Noon-2 p.m. for over 25 years, with D.C. and Maryland/Virginia.

http://thekojonnamdishow.org/topic/the-politics-hour

It also features the two governors and the DC mayor, separately, regularly taking questions from their well-informed callers, flanked by savvy area reporters to ask questions as well, and not just folks from the WaPo, either.

I listened to it every week for 15 years and so did almost everyone I know, as well as nearly every serious civic activist and news junkie in the area.

There's nothing even remotely like that currently on South Florida radio/TV.

I'm curious what's happened to the Herald to at least in a small way, shake them out of their longstanding doldrums, since they should've been integrating knowledgeable bloggers into their own coverage over two-and-a-half years ago, when they first introduced the South Florida blog directory and I was included under "Communities" 

http://www.miamiherald.com/cgi-bin/bnn/miamiherald/feed.php?vfolder=16

and didn't even know about it because they never contacted me.

As I've mentioned here previously, I only found out about it in the first place because a friend saw it and asked me why I hadn't told her about it.

Could it be that some of my recent (better!) posts re the Broward IG investigation into Hallandale Beach and some other areas to check into, which I'd sent originally as a bcc email to Rick Hirsch, the Herald's Executive Editor -he's Anders Gyllenhaal's successor- the number-two person, directly under the publisher David Landsberg, caused Hirsch or someone else to re-think about some of those accurate verbal darts I threw last December -and some good ideas I suggested to him and others at Herald HQ- which I then posted online here? I highly doubt it but still...

I'm kind of dismayed, since I'd not usually have even checked that HB city page, since given the way the Herald has largely ignored the city for many years, due in part to the fact that Hollywood also holds their City Commission meetings on the same days, that city page of theirs has usually served as nothing but the dusty attic of an archive of recent stories, all of which I'd already read. 
And nothing else the least bit useful to readers here.

Hmm-m... it figures that given how things over there have been managed the past few years, even when the Herald does something good, like this probably will turn out to be, they do so in such an odd and confusing way.

And again, with me knowing nothing about it beforehand.

Yes, a very curious-but-pleasant surprise, indeed!
But is it just the first step or the one-and-only change?
Wish I knew.

Calling all Super Sleuths: Are you a good enough detective to solve this Mainstream Media news mystery?; Kathleen Parker and the Miami Herald's longstanding lack of columnist diversity

Calling all Super Sleuths: Are you a good enough detective to solve this Mainstream Media news mystery?; Kathleen Parker and the Miami Herald's longstanding lack of columnist diversity

If you saw the following five headlines in print or online, what would be your first guess as to what you'd just come across?

Mitt’s convention speech -In his own words. Well, almost.

Santorum’s failed pander - A false and snobbish attack on the president.

Out-of-touch Republicans - Romney and Santorum’s struggles bode ill for GOP.

Santorum’s war against elites - Campaigning with a chip on his shoulder.

Pushing Michigan away - Why the GOP won’t win the state in November.

What would be your guess for the source of this rather limited political perspective?

a.) A subscriber-only website for wealthy Democratic bundlers, all of whom are members in good standing of "Friends of O"?

b.) A college newspaper of a mid-sized Liberal Arts college in Ohio, with lots of high-minded, moralistic and incurious young women columnists who never attend their own school's home football or basketball games, and who aim to fit right in at some large East Coast newspaper, and just so they leave no doubt about where their political allegiances lie, they make sure they're right there in black & white.

c.) A special preview of the forthcoming print version of the monthly KosKooks4America comic book that will be bankrolled by George Soros?

d.) Your own local area's weekly VillageVoice-owned free newspaper that runs all those escort ads in the back, which opts NOT to do very much original enterprise reporting on local government or politics, opting instead to wait for the MSM to actually report their Conventional Wisdom take on the news, at which point the free newspaper's so-called reporters will run ten sentences of rants based on whatever the MSM headline is.

Those of you who are more Sherlock Holmes and Patrick Jane than Inspector Clouseau in your sleuthing will no doubt be pleased to discover that your intuition and instincts are still well-developed and accurate.

You've still got IT!

The correct answer is that the headlines above all came from today's Opinions page of The Washington Post.  http://view.ed4.net/v/PSLW3N/FXIPE2/YHHH8W4/0Z22UB/MAILACTION=1&FORMAT=H?wpisrc=nl_opinions

My screenshot of today's Washington Post Opinions page email, which I receive everyday.

Yes, that bastion of journalism diversity, where you too can find gainful employment as a reporter, editor or columnist, regardless of your sex, race, sexual persuasion or whichever Ivy League school you graduated from, as long as you are a team player and know how to sing in a choir without being asked.

You will NOT ad lib or deviate from the gospel according to The Washington Post.

The guilty parties above are, respectively:

Dana Milbank, Mitt’s convention speech, In his own words. Well, almost.

Kathleen Parker, Santorum’s failed pander, A false and snobbish attack on the president.

Harold Meyerson, Out-of-touch Republicans, Romney and Santorum’s struggles bode ill for GOP.

Ruth Marcus, Santorum’s war against elites, Campaigning with a chip on his shoulder.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Pushing Michigan away, Why the GOP won’t win the state in November.


If there's anything above that deserves special attention due to its ironic nature, it's Kathleen Parker calling out Rick Santorum for calling President Obama being a snob.
Ironic because the worst kind of insufferable snob is one that won't admit it, and that's what Kathleen Parker is.


Well, that is besides being a journalist with a rather convenient memory, which is almost mandatory to be a card-carrying member of the MSM.
Which is to say that when reality bursts her version of the world, she finds it easy to either compartmentalize what challenges that view, or forget it entirely.
But aren't the facts supposed to matter?


Tell me, in this April 2008 video, who is Hillary Clinton accusing of being an elitist snob?



Hillary Clinton responds to Barack Obama's remarks to Democratic Party supporters at San Francisco fundraiser that "Small towns cling to guns or religion"
http://youtu.be/xNoJ0q6HrK8

"Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families." 

-Hillary Clinton

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/us/politics/13campaign.html

Oh, now you remember!

A close examination of Parker's own past columns over the years show what a genuine hypocrite and snob she is, when, at various times, in order to make herself more marketable, she's tried to create new identities for herself.


For a while, Parker tried to cultivate a public image of herself as the 'thoughtful Moderate,' who called-out the excesses of both liberals and conservatives, or, if she thought that it would play better, cast herself as the  modern-day educated "Southern" woman columnist, someone who was game to play at being semi-folksy in calculated ways once in a while to differentiate herself from the gray blather around her, esp. when she was  in Orlando.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/kathleen/parker091008.php3?printer_friendly


Sure, because Orlando was the South!
Maybe to someone who never leaves Manhattan. 


Locally, there's really no telling why the Miami Herald foolishly has persisted in running Parker's all-so-predictable columns, or even worse, running those of awful Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star, whose dreary and unoriginal columns sound exactly like the Herald's own Editorial Board's predictable and myopic view of the world, esp. on illegal immigration, rather than make any serious effort to develop their own clever and original South Florida-based conservative or moderate columnist, whose fresh, idea-filled columns would run in the OpEd section, not in the State & Local section, which as most sharp-eyed observers would agree, is THE most predictable section of a newspaper its size in America.
Stale and reeking of moth balls.


If you agree, and I know that many of you do, given the feedback I get about the state of the Herald in emails and at various public policy or govt. events throughout South Florida, where I run into and speak to friends and colleagues and people who at least claim to read the blog, maybe you should share your concerns about that (and the Miami Herald's general state of listlessness) with Herald publisher David Landsberg about his singular lack of vision and ambition for the paper in the 21st Century.


In case you forgot, I already have -a few times.
And publicly posted it here on the blog for all to see.


In any case, for whatever illogical reason they have, the Herald keeps running Parker and yet when push comes to shove, how does her column really differ fundamentally in its message from reflexively liberal Dana Milbank's or Eugene Robinson's?


That's just it, it doesn't.
It's the chorus effect.
Lots and lots of the very same perspective are NOT equivalent to a diversity of opinions.