How do you solve a problem named Kopelousos?

My comments follow the article.

____________________________

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/858154.html

Miami Herald

Multiple lane, ramp closures on I-95 set for this weekend

By Larry Lebowitz

January 17, 2009

Drivers will encounter several lane closures this weekend on Interstate 95 near the State Road 112/Interstate 195 interchange in Miami as demolition work continues for the next phase of the 95 Express project.

The Florida Department of Transportation schedule calls for:

- The ramp from southbound I-95 to eastbound I-195/Julia Tuttle Causeway will be closed to all traffic from 11 p.m. Friday until 12 a.m. Saturday and from 11 p.m. Saturday until 12 a.m. Sunday.

Southbound drivers are urged to exit at Northwest 79th Street eastbound to southbound Biscayne Boulevard and then turn east at Northeast 36th Street to the eastbound I-195 ramps heading to the beach.

- State Road 112 and I-195 will be closed in both directions near I-95 from 11 p.m. Friday until 12 a.m. Saturday.

Drivers heading to the beach on eastbound State Road 112 will be detoured south on I-95, exit at eastbound Northwest Eighth Street, go under I-95 and turn left onto northbound Northwest Third Avenue to northbound I-95, to eastbound I-195.

Heading west on I-195, drivers will detour onto northbound I-95, exit onto westbound Northwest 62nd Street, make the U-turn under I-95 to the southbound I-95 on-ramp and then exit onto westbound State Road 112.

-- Up to two travel lanes will be closed in both directions on I-95 near the State Road 112/I-195 interchange from 11 p.m. Friday until 12 a.m. Saturday. At least one lane will remain open in each direction overnight.

-- Two southbound lanes on I-95 will be closed near the State Rad 112/I-195 interchange from 11 p.m. Saturday until 12 a.m. Sunday.

Reader comments at: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/858154.html?commentSort=TimeStampAscending&pageNum=1

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

How do you solve a problem named "Kopelousos?" 

Last year, after constantly shaking my head at the poorly thought-out moves/banal awareness campaigns of FDOT, I added FDOT head Stephanie Kopelousos to my list of Google Alerts, and that move has paid the sort of dividends I'd hope for from Day One. 

I am continually informed of her incompetent plans, the current state of her sloppy thinking, with quotes, as she flits from one part of the Sunshine State to another, traveling largely in stealth mode, dodging questions. 

I urge those of you who question the practicality of the 95 Express project in a chaotic place like Miami, to consider doing a Google Alert of her yourself. 

You'll discover that there is a whole world of criticism of her and FDOT from all over the state, including mine: that she seems to be deathly afraid of being in a room full of well-informed citizens, with press in the room. 

She prefers to be with govt. officials and industry types.

re SFRTA Transit Workshop in Miami-Dade on Nov. 14

Above is the information I've previously mentioned about the upcoming SFRTA/Tri-Rail Workshop in Miami-Dade County on Friday November 14th at the Miami-Dade Expressway office located at 3790 N.W. 21st Street, across the street from Tri-Rail’s Miami Airport Tri-Rail Station.

Workshops are scheduled to begin in the Boardroom at 8:30 a.m. and end around 12:30, and parking is available at the Tri-Rail lot across the street.

Information is available online at http://www.tri-rail.com/announcements.htm.

RSVP at (954) 788-7958

At the August 22 meeting of the SFRTA Governing Board, the professional staff was directed to plan transit workshops this fall in each of the three counties, to be followed by a "Regional Transit Summit" in January or February. The Palm Beach workshop has already been held.

The thought is that the workshops and summit will help build public momentum and support for transit in advance of the legislative session in Tallahassee.


I've already made some suggestions to some folks involved about being sure to schedule it at a time when the pols aren't too distracted by other events going on in the state where they hope to cop invites or comps to to attend, like the Daytona 500 on February 15th, the BCS Title game on January 8th, especially if the Gators are involved in the latter, as I still think they may against Texas, or, the Super Bowl in Tampa on February 1st. http://www.tampabaysuperbowl.com/

I expect that Gabriel and the folks at Transit Miami http://www.transitmiami.com/ will have a lot more to say about the workshop in Miami as the date draws near, but I did want to remind you all for the second time here that it is going to be happening within the next three weeks, so mark your calendars.

As I've expressed here more than a few times, I really wish that a TM-like grass roots organization had existed when I was growing-up down here to give the general public a lot more of a voice and a counter-weight to some of the bad decisions that were already being made regarding the Metrorail's future, since the Tri-Rail would make even more sense now if some of the places my friends and I then frequented, had possibilities of being integrated into a larger regional transit network.


When I'd come home from IU during the summer, and wanted to be able to get around sensibly and quickly, and not forever be in traffic jams on S. Dixie Highway, when I was living down near The Falls, I'd have gladly spent a few hours a week at an office somewhere, say near Dadeland or South Miami, working on strategy and outreach to make sure that the future routes in the county would be based on common sense, natural boundaries and social networking, to create more places where South Florida could interact in a relaxed atmosphere.


You know, at a minimum, be able to ride a transit system with a Metro that actually (and originally) connected MIA to the downtown area and the business/legal districts or sports arenas and stadiums, as is common sense in most other communities, but NOT the natural order of things down here.


Now that so many people who live down here have no knowledge of what the county's Metrorail was supposed to be like, or the original promises for expansion, it's easy to think that the area's inherent political apathy and backwardness were the principal reason the stations were placed where they were, rather than purely political, ethnic and labor-based decisions, back before there were single-member districts on the Dade County Commission.


Almost 13 months ago, on September 25th, back in simpler times, before the Herald's Larry Lebowitz opened so many people's eyes here with his week-long series by connecting the dots on past negligence and incompetency in Miami having real world consequences for this area's growth and sprawl, there was a Miami-Dade County Citizens Advisory Committee meeting titled "Orange Line, Phase II, North Corridor Metrorail Extension Preliminary Engineering Phase."

See http://www.miamidade.gov/transit/corridor/n_corridor/n_meeting_schedule.asp and http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2007/09/10/daily39.html


Map of Orange Line is at: http://www.loopconsulting.com/projects/mdt/images/Map.jpg


That, of course, was the very line that was supposed to be finished in 2012 and, once finished, allow U-M students to get on the Metrorail near campus and go straight to the stadium formerly known as JRS, but which I've taken to calling Chez Huizenga for short.



(It's like the way people like me, i.e. traditionalists who know something about Dolphin owner Joe Robbie's many fights with the City of Miami in general and with Miami City Manager Cesar Odio in particular, who dared Robbie to leave -which I've described in my blog- still call the stadium in North Dade, Joe Robbie Stadium. Intentionally, to draw a distinction between what it originally represented, resolve and relief for Dolphin fans, and what it has become under Wayne Huizenga -a three-ring circus.)


NOT that this helpful bit of info about the Metrorail was EVER mentioned in any of the Herald or Sun-Sentinel articles or editorials before the move from the Orange Bowl was officially announced last year by U-M President Donna Shalala, nor mentioned by the local TV talking heads on the 6 and 11 o'clock news.

Maybe if the Daily Business Review had mentioned it, they'd have said so, since the local TV folks seem to really love stealing their material without attribution, where that seemed to be especially pronounced at WFOR, News4.


Thirteen months from now, I wonder what sort of things we will all know and accept as common knowledge about this area and the pols who are making such short-sighted transit decisions for the community's future growth.
Gist for another series for Larry?

This is, if nothing else, a target-rich environment!

In case you somehow missed it originally, after months of mind-numbing research, Larry gave
readers an exhaustive and cringe-worthy 'inside' look at Miami-Dade Transit issues, in his excellent front page series, one of the best the Herald has had.

With the help of interactive multi-media http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/transit/ he reveals in minute detail the hows and whys of the myriad broken promises made to voters and riders over the years, and connects-the-dots on the corruption, cronyism and political sleight-of-hand that have found such fertile ground here, even while transparency and accountability have not.

Sort of like so many promises and deadlines I've heard in Hallandale Beach since arriving here that have fallen by the wayside.

re Journalism, Reporters as heroes in film, Blogs about Media Buyouts and Layoffs

1940 film classic His Girl Friday with dream team of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, a film which I've seen, conservatively, about four dozen times.
Info at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032599/
Trailer at: http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=102055&titleId=206

So, given that a story that I'm referencing below involves newspaper layoffs, guess I hardly need tell you there's a Medill angle to the story. http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/
I think there's a federal law to that effect now because of a provision inserted secretly into the financial bailout bill last week, requiring a Medill p.o.v. on any media story about newspaper layoffs.

(Local South Florida Medill grads include Evan Benn and Breanne Gilpatrick of the Herald, and Jordana Mishory of the Daily Business Review.)

Sorta like the one that requires all Florida media organizations to quote Susan McManus of USF ad nauseum. Or, in WIOD's case, twice an hour all day -as they did Tuesday.

Did you miss these recent McManus pearls of wisdom:

Undecideds could decide presidential race Florida Today, FL - Oct 5, 2008

"Obviously, they're the swing voters," University of South Florida political science professor Susan McManus said. "You've got two hurdles to jump with them ...

HIGHER SENIORITY: Older voters have clout Anderson Herald Bulletin, IN - Sep 27, 2008

“Despite the media’s focus on the youth vote, the most influential voters in the McCain-Obama

matchup are likely to have some gray hair,” said Susan McManus

So, am I wrong in saying that she has had every single demographic you can think of as the election game-changer?

McManus is the Bob Shrum of Pol. Sci profs turned analysts.
She's no Larry Sabato! !!!

See http://people.virginia.edu/~ljs/ and be sure to check out Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball, which features analyses of presidential elections, Senate, House and gubernatorial races: http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/

There's only one prescient political crystal ball in working order these days and Prof. Sabato has it.

Honestly, is everyone at WIOD a dopey Miami college student getting credit for those jokes they call regular newscasts? It sure seems that way. They run the same audio over and over and over...
They're positively unbearable, worse than ever.

Before you scroll down any farther, read this great blast-from-the-past from a TIME magazine cover story and guess when it was written:
"What's interesting about the current explosion of news is that it has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in the amount of news gathering.
Over the past few years, in fact, cost cutting at the networks and many major newspapers has reduced the number of correspondents digging up stories around the country and the world."

The answer is at the bottom of this post.

Speaking of Medill, http://www.northwestern.edu/features/snapshots/ a place that I came to know and truly appreciate when I was living, learning and loving in Evanston, hard by Lake Michigan http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/pan/ and becoming friends with so many of their students, faculty and administrators, here's a site full of great media blogs that you might want to consider bookmarking for future use: http://blognetwork.poynter.org/media/

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

It's worse than sad, it's tragic really that none of the South Florida-based foundations has ever thought to have the good sense to fund anything approaching either the necessity, scope or quality of Medill Reports in order to keep the myriad bureaucrats on their toes: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/govt/.

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/govt/aboutus.aspx

About Us
For the People…around Chicago is a project launched in the spring of 2008 by the Medill News Service to merge in depth reporting with social networking. For years, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism has reported on news and affairs through affiliations between Medill’s graduate journalism program and news organizations throughout the world. We still do that with a flourish through Medill Reports Chicago and Medill Reports Washington.
This project attempts to expand our universe, or more importantly, to create linkages beyond news organizations to groups that have a particular interest in an issue. That enables our stories to continue to be a part of the ongoing conversation about that issue. We cover stories that examine what’s working and what’s not around Chicago. We are well aware that news organizations, including Medill, tend to move on to the next issue, and then another one. Our work gets buried in the flow of continuing events, and those groups and individuals who stay with an issue can feel abandoned.

What we hope to do with this project is to become more connected with you; the network of groups and people who invest in particular issues. Any stories we cover are available to you to redistribute over the web, to republish in your newsletters or other material, to link to from your website, or to embed directly onto your site. Only one proviso; that you credit us with the stories so people know we’re involved. If you are an organization or individual or blog that cares about the issues we cover, let us know so we can link back to you to enhance the network.

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/

It would be great to have Larry Lebowitz of the Herald as a field general and Gabriel at Transit Miami as his trusted aide-de-camp ready to unleash their smart, savvy eager beaver reporters at FDOT like a kamikaze squad, forcing the ever-elusive FDOT Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos to finally make a public appearance in South Florida where she's made to answer questions from actual taxpayers, not the industry/trade types, per her usual MO.

And when I think about what such a squad of eager reporters could've done to the Miami-Dade School Board years ago to ferret out the real facts on the $100K crowd that Rudy Crew sought to inoculate himself with, as well as hammer the sclerotic legion of bad teachers and cranky administrators, it literally my heart skips a beat.

By the way, after having missed it many times on Turner Classic Movies over the past 20 years, I finally caught 1952's The Captive City on TCM.

See http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=17060 and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044476/
It was great to once again see the under-appreciated John Forsythe, always so good in almost everything he was in, and a former baseball broadcaster, to boot, cast here as a small-town newspaper editor trying to battle organized crime getting its tentacles into everything he holds dear about his town, and later testifying at the Kefauver Hearings.
(Always wanted to say 'get their tentacles' in a sentence.)

Afterwards, with some time left on my videotape, as I was leaving for an errand, if you can believe this, per a recent conversation of many months ago with a reporter friend, I was almost able to tape Ace in the Hole for her right afterwards.
That's the great 1951 Kirk Douglas film, him as the world-weary once-promising reporter needing a fresh start, and lucking into a great story in a New Mexico cave-in and positively milking it dry -by hook or by crook. The first time I saw it was part of a double feature with Sweet Smell of Success at an art house, probably in Chicago.

Trailer at: http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=154055&titleId=613826 Warning: It's loud at the beginning!

http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=186689&titleId=613826

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=613826

When I got back home, the videotape had ended ten minutes before the film was over! Ugh!
I hate when that happens.

It replays on TCM at Tuesday 10/28/2008 10:00 PM , Friday 11/07/2008 2:30 PM , and Tuesday 12/09/2008 9:30 AM
Catch it if at all possible!

I still have it on another videotape somewhere, but that blew my idea of giving her a tape that had something like 3-4 really great newspaper/crime movies on them that she probably never saw in college, where she began her rise as a tough-talking, wise-cracking, crime-fighting/reporter with a nose for news at a school noted for turning out real journalists, not stenographers.

A real-life Hildy Johnson.

Finally, to reprise a story as old as crime and statistics, witness the logical result of fudging crime statistics, Baltimore-style -a murdered former councilman.

Shades of HOMICIDE: Life in The Street!

I found it while looking for results on Girls High School Field Hockey to see how my niece's excellent team, had done.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.ci.gun08oct08,0,206101.story
__________________________

Baltimore City Paper

October 8, 2008
Media Circus
Taking Things Personally Focusing On Personalities--and Their Bodies--in the Sun's New Look
by Martin L. Johnson

On Sept. 1, Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer published a column on Sarah Palin, the mercurial Republican candidate for vice president.

Published at the crescendo of the first wave of Palinmania, the column (tellingly titled "A Woman--But Why This Woman?") was highly critical of the Palin selection, which Reimer suggested was made to kowtow to special-interest groups on the right.

"I thought it was a natural topic for me," Reimer says in a phone interview. "She billed herself as a hockey mom, and I have billed myself as a soccer mom all these years. As the column clearly shows, I was very animated on the topic, personally and professionally."

But Reimer, who has been writing columns for the Sun for 16 years, wasn't ready for what happened next. The day after her column appeared, the Drudge Report, which gets close to 30 million site visits daily, linked to it as an example of media criticism of the Palin pick. Then the deluge started.

To see the rest of this story, which includes lots of info on http://www.tellzell.com/ , go to: http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=16827

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

Baltimore City Paper

September 2, 2008

Media Circus
Media Bias Blogs Tell the Story Behind Sun Buyouts and Changes

By Martin L. Johnson

The redesigned Baltimore Sun is more than just a pretty face. Even casual readers of the paper can't help but notice that sections have been cut and some of the paper's familiar bylines no longer appear.

But behind the scenes, journalists at the Sun and other papers owned by the Tribune Co. have launched an angry (if only online) revolt against staff layoffs, management decisions, and what they see as a wholesale dismantling of the Chicago-based company's newspapers.

To see the rest of the story, see: http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=16235

To see other great media stories like the above , go to the Media Circus archives at

http://www.citypaper.com/news/browse.asp?ColumnTitle=Media+Circus

-------------------------------------------------------
So my earlier question was to guess, more or less, when the following saw the light of day:

"What's interesting about the current explosion of news is that it has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in the amount of news gathering. Over the past few years, in fact, cost cutting at the networks and many major newspapers has reduced the number of correspondents digging up stories around the country and the world."

The title featured the headline:

The News Wars

Print! Cable! The Internet!

We're being bombarded by information, gossip and commentary as never before. Is more news good news.

It's from TIME magazine of October 21, 1996

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In an instant!

Upcoming Broward and Miami-Dade Tri-Rail transportation workshops

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/larry-lebowitz/story/696025.html

Miami Herald
Tri-Rail moves along, but still on a rocky road
By Larry Lebowitz
September 22, 2008

The good: Tri-Rail smashed another ridership record last week. The South Florida Transportation Authority reported that 17,241 passengers boarded a Tri-Rail train on Thursday.

It was the second largest day in Tri-Rail's 20-year history, and all the more remarkable because it was just another Thursday in paradise and the record -- 18,452 -- was a once-in-a-lifetime event: the Miami Heat NBA Championship victory parade in June 2006.

Tri-Rail is consistently surpassing the 16,000 boardings-per-day mark -- more than double the 7,500 boardings a day the agency was recording just three years ago at the nadir of the double-tracking construction project from hell.

Public transportation numbers are up across the United States since gasoline prices spiked at $4 a gallon earlier this year. And in Tri-Rail's case, the numbers are continuing to rise even though gas prices have receded, ever-so-slightly back into the $3.70-to-$3.80 neighborhood.

With the 28 percent growth in year-to-year ridership, Tri-Rail ranks third, on a percentage basis, for ridership growth among commuter rail providers nationwide.

Now, the bad: It's still only 17,000 boardings a day in a car-crazed region of more than six million people and a gazillion tourists and snowbirds, and the local governments -- especially Broward and Palm Beach counties -- are making more noise about cutting Tri-Rail revenues next year.

They're already making it harder or more expensive for Tri-Rail passengers to get from the train to the bus to the office or home. Several of the critical connector routes that run from station to workplace and back are in danger.

Broward County Transit and PalmTran are starting to charge transfers that used to be free. Those connector routes are in danger.

Passengers will be digging deeper into their pockets just to get to and from work everyday.

It's still a bargain compared to gas and insurance and maintenance of a personal vehicle. But it's less of a bargain than it was a year ago.

If any of the three counties reduces its share of funding to the train, then it will set off a cascading series of events that will dramatically reduce the subsidies from the other two counties and 50 percent match from the state.

And now, the ugly: The commuter train's long-term future is as hazy as ever.

Tri-Rail has to start prepping for another year of dancing in the corridors of Tallahassee, hat in hand, begging the Legislature and the governor to finally adopt a dedicated local funding source. Rental car fees, license plate renewal fees, fees on fees. Everything is on the table, as it has been since 2003.

A series of Tri-Rail specific transportation summits are being set for each of the three counties between now and mid-November followed by a regional summit that will be set before the Legislature returns next year.

It might be a tougher sell in Miami-Dade, where the locals will already be suffering from DTSF -- Dueling Transpo-Summit Fatigue.

Miami-Dade will be inviting the community to gather and hear, once and for all, why the half-cent sales tax for transportation hasn't delivered many of the major promises of the 2002 campaign, why the money was diverted to other pressing needs, and then start to prioritize what's left.

THE `BLOGOSPHERE'
South Beach photographer and agitator extraordinaire Bill Cooke took a potshot at Miami-Dade Transit in a recent not-so-private memo to Director Harpal Kapoor on his blog, "Random Pixels.''

Brandishing the 50-cent fare increase that goes into effect Oct. 1 like a barnacle-encrusted scabbard, Cooke riffed on an all-too-common complaint about Metrobus driver habits on his route, The South Beach Local:

"May I suggest that you use a fraction of that money to retrain your drivers. Specifically, you might want to refresh them with the rules that are posted on every bus and train in the county. You know, the ones that prohibit smoking, drinking or eating on buses.

"And you might want to start with the South Beach Local drivers since just this last week I saw no fewer than three drivers at different times eating while driving.

Transit's unionized drivers are supposed to have time in between runs for contractually mandated bathroom and food breaks. But when the routes run late, break time disappears.

''A side benefit of having drivers abide by the no-eating rule,'' Cooke notes, ``would be to cut down on the scores of cockroaches that now ride those buses for free!''

Streetwise thinks Cooke -- and Transit -- are missing an opportunity here. If the agency is so strapped for cash, why can't we charge the cockroaches fares?

Slightly less sarcastic side notes to the Transport Workers Union Local 291 and to Miami-Dade Transit: First, nobody should be riding any public transportation vehicle with vermin.

Second, this isn't an isolated rant from Metrobus passengers on Miami Beach. And it's not just about eating habits.

Do you have a commuting question or an idea for a future column? Contact Larry Lebowitz at streetwise@

MiamiHerald.com or call him at 305-376-3410 or 954-764-7026, ext. 3410.
------------------------------------------------------
SFRTA SPONSORS TRANSPORTATION WORKSHOP SEPTEMBER 26 IN BOCA RATON

The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority will host the first in a series of three county-specific transportation workshops Friday, September 26 on the Florida Atlantic University campus in Boca Raton. The workshop, which is open to the public and free of charge, will be held at the Live Oak Pavilion from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Registration will be held from 12:45 to 1 p.m. Reservations may be made in advance by calling 954-788-7958.

The workshop will focus on discussions about future regional transportation needs, priorities and funding in Palm Beach County. Elected officials, transportation industry professionals, local government administrators, community activists and members of the general public who are concerned about sustainability and mobility within Palm Beach County are encouraged to attend.

Director James F. Murley, FAU’s Center for Urban & Environmental Solutions, will be the moderator. The agenda includes presentations by the Palm Beach Metropolitan Planning Organization, South Florida Regional Planning Council, Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, Florida Department of Transportation, Palm Tran and the SFRTA. Additional topics to be discussed are the Florida East Coast Railroad Study, transit-oriented development and the proposed development for Tri-Rail’s Boca Raton Station.

South Florida Regional Transportation Authority
Palm Beach County Transportation Workshop
September 26, 2008

AGENDA
12:45 - 1:00 p.m. Registration

1:00 - 1:15 p.m. Welcome Remarks
- The Honorable Josephus Eggelletion, Jr., SFRTA Chair
Comments
- The Honorable Bill T. Smith, Jr., Esq., SFRTA Governor Appointee, Palm Beach County
Recognition of Elected Officials
- The Honorable Marie Horenburger, SFRTA Governing Board Member, Palm Beach County
Introduction of Moderator James F. Murley

1:15 - 2:10 p.m Regional Session
- Regional Overview - FAU CUES - presented by James F. Murley
- Southeast FL 2060 Vision Plan - presented by Carolyn Dekle
- TCRPC Strategic Regional Policy Plan - presented by Michael Busha
- SFRTA Strategic Regional Plan - presented by Joseph Quinty
- Q&A

2:10 - 3:20 p.m Palm Beach County - Session 1
- FDOT - represented by James Wolfe
- Palm Beach MPO - represented by Randy Whitfield
- Palm Tran - represented by Charles Cohen
- SFRTA - represented by Joseph Giulietti
- Q&A

3:20 - 4:15 p.m. Palm Beach County - Session 2
- Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC) Study/Tri-Rail Jupiter Extension
presented by Scott Seeburger
- Transit-Oriented Development (TOD)/Station Area Planning - presented by
Kim Delaney
- Tri-Rail Boca Raton Station Proposed TOD - presented by
Tom Gustafson
- Q&A

4:15 - 4:30 p.m. Concluding Remarks - James F. Murley

Don't say you didn't know it was coming!

Details are finally coming together for the Miami-Dade and Broward transit workshops sponsored by Tri-Rail, SFRTA, which, I'm reliably told, will include a lot more real public input than usual, not just the agency and engineering/planning consultant types throwing jargon around.

The transportation workshop in Miami-Dade County will be on Friday November 14th at the Miami-Dade Expressway office located at 3790 N.W. 21st Street (across the street from Tri-Rail's Miami Airport Tri-Rail Station) and in Broward County on Wednesday November 19th at the International Game Fishing Association, located at 300 Gulf Stream Way (adjacent to Tri-Rail's Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood Int'l. Airport Station at Dania Beach.)

You know, the non-airport "Airport" station!

Both workshops should begin at 8:30 a.m. and are slated to end around noon.

Special shout-out to Joseph J. Quinty, Transportation Planning Manager of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority for the very helpful information and feedback on some upcoming events that should foster some honest and healthy debate, something not always seen herebouts.

Now mark it on your calendar, toute-de-suite.

See also: http://www.tri-rail.com/announcements.htm

Rep. John Mica fires back at commuter rail critics; Lebowitz reveals all

Monday June 9th, 2008
1:45 p.m.


Received my Central Florida Political Pulse earlier this afternoon and finally noticed the interesting story below that should be of interest to all of you.


For both good and bad sometimes, the one thing that Rep. John Mica of Winter Park -and brother of former Rep. Dan Mica- has always been known for is his dogged persistence.


Based on my experience of seeing him in person at congressional hearings, as well as his comments and persona at Florida-oriented functions in D.C., my sense of things is that Mica won't be giving up the fight for a commuter rail in Central Florida ant time soon.


I also expect that he realizes that the most recent approach, whatever its intentions, simply failed to take into account that the popular sentiment of Central Florida residents alone would not guide elected officials behavior.


He also probably figures it's time for someone like him to use his influence while he has it to force some other third parties, with power, influence and smart upper-management, who've been sitting on the public policy sidelines of this fight, and to FINALLY get suited up and into the game.


To become more fully engaged supporting the common sense transit approach, before Central Florida becomes more paralyzed than South Florida.


You can't win with just diplomats, and it's always good to have someone on your team who's willing to push and cajole others and make crystal clear the reality of their situation.


Make clear that his memory's working fine, thank you, and that his future actions and behavior will be, in some fashion, directly related to their willingness to participate, work hard and share the financial burden of getting things done, rather than simply talking things to death.


That approach clearly has about as much efficacy up in Central Florida as it does down here.


John Mica's just sick-and-tired of Paralysis thru Analysis.


I wish that more local and state elected officials were taking that approach on transit down here, but...


In my opinion, in this particular case, Mica's unwillingness to simply give up on this issue is very helpful, since his spirited marshaling of the facts will, if nothing else, help prevent mis-information from being the coin of the realm down here in the future, where it might be recycled to fight commuter rail locally, along what should be a natural transit-oriented corridor along the FEC tracks.


You know, the place that the City of Hollywood is actively engaged in, however imperfectly, even to the point where Bernard Zyscovich specifically mentioned the positive tangible effect of a commuter rail line, with a station on Hollywood Blvd., on its downtown area last Thursday at the public forum I attended at Hollywood City Hall.


Meanwhile, as with so many things, the City of Hallandale Beach snoozes at their peril.


That point was underscored by the fact that last Monday, at the most recent public presentation by EDAW's Donald Shockey of the city's Master Plan, I was the only person to ask questions about the so-called transit corridor, and whether or not EDAW drew up any projections in their plan that contemplated the tangible effects on the city of a future commuter rail.


One that connected Hallandale Beach residents to their jobs and diversions in both downtown Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.


One that would encourage development away from the beach and Hallandale Beach Blvd. and get it focused on points west, maybe even to the Northwest!



As it happens, I was the last member of the public to ask questions that night.



While they used certain generic transit phrases in their presentation and the documents that were printed, for all practical purposes, from my p.o.v., the answer to my question was Nope!


In late February at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center, when the much-anticipated and overdue Hallandale Beach Transportation Study was presented by Kenneth J. Kelgard of HDR Engineering, I was concerned by some of the thing I was hearing, like traffic measures conducted during the slowest part of the calendar year.


But I was more concerned by what I wasn't hearing.



Finally, when given a chance, I took the microphone and asked, among other things, why as a HB resident, I needed to go to Hollywood or Aventura in order to attend a SFECC public forum.



Why were none ever scheduled in Hallandale Beach to get the input and thoughts of HB's own residents, when that might've been possible?



Hallandale Beach City Manager Mike Good said that he would have his staff find out if there'd ever been a possibility of that happening, but I've yet to hear anyone at Hallandale Beach City Hall publicly speak about this matter at any meeting I've attended in the intervening three months.



Both locations were easy enough for me to get to, it's just that the folks at Hallandale Beach City Hall were asleep at the switch when it counted, and weren't pro-active about getting a formal presention scheduled at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center when it might've benefited everyone concerned.


Frankly, to actually have some FEC commuter rail facts interjected into that debate locally would've only been an improvement, since I've met so many people over the past two years around here who have no tangible sense of what it's all about.


What they do recall is usually some hazy remembrance of something they heard in a two-minute local TV news report from early 2007, and is usually incorrect.


I checked the website of the group mentioned below which is sponsoring today's John Mica Regional Rally for Rail, he Central Florida Partnership, but didn't see many specifics.
http://www.centralfloridapartnership.org/index.php?src=events&submenu=about&srctype=detail&category=Meeting&refno=4


Hopefully, there'll be more specifics available by tomorrow morning, and I might even be able to catch some local Orlando TV 11 p.m. news segements from tonight, via my computer.


Closer to home, if you haven't already started reading Larry Lebowitz's insightful Miami Herald series on the broken promises and consequences of Miami-Dade's vote for the half-penny tax increase six years ago, get with the program and get on the bandwagon.


Sunday June 8, 2008
Dade transit watchdog finds its power limited
A special panel was meant to be a watchdog over the transit tax, but government attorneys and politicians took away most of its bite.
http://www.miamiherald.com/428/story/561866.html


Monday June 9, 2008
Some Metrobus routes motivated by politics not need
http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/563276.html


Congrats on the great series, Larry!!!


Your head must ache from all the negativity and incompetency you encountered and wrote about, knowing you couldn't possibly include everything you found out about.


I commiserate.

I know the feeling.
___________________________________
Central Florida Political Pulse

Mica fires back at commuter rail critics
posted by Mark Skoneki on Jun 9, 2008 11:10:57 AM


Jay Hamburg just filed this report


In an effort to rebuff critics of commuter rail, U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, released a national study today that shows the proposed liability agreement is in line with about 20 other similar freight-and-commuter arrangements around the nation. "It will debunk some of the myths relating to commuter rail liability," Mica said of the study done by the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Highways and Transit and Railroads Subcommittees. Some opponents of the $1.2 billion Central Florida commuter rail project have attacked the proposed no-fault liability arrangement between the state and CSX.

Both sides were to carry $200 million liability insurance for the 61-mile system to run from DeLand to Orlando to Poinciana.


To read the rest of the story, go to: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2008/06/mica-fires-back.html

For more information on the issue of liabilty agreements, see
CSX Safety Issues Cloud Liability Deal
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/apr/22/na-csx-safety-issues-cloud-liability-deal/
and the Central Florida Political Pulse archive stories on commuter rail
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/commuter_rail/index.html