Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Broward County Ethics in Action! Sometimes the gravy train of cronyism leads you and your family to a yacht vacation to The Bahamas; Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norman asks Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel to answer questions about his family's yacht vacation after the Sheriff claimed paying $1,500 settled the matter. But websites say the value of that yacht trip is MUCH MORE!; @CityEthics
Friday, July 12, 2013
More from Local10's Bob Norrman on the epidemic in Broward County of elected officials living outside districts they represent, contrary to the FL Constitution; FL state Senator Jack Latvala, Chair of Senate's Ethics & Elections Comm., will NOT tolerate this blatant corruption and wants investigations launched into these illegal actions right now!; And let's not forget FL state Rep. Joe Gibbons' strange views on raising a family -putting an elective office ABOVE living full-time with your own kids!
More from Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norrman on the epidemic in Broward County of elected officials living outside districts they represent, contrary to the FL Constitution; FL state Senator Jack Latvala, Chair of Senate's Ethics & Elections Comm. -and a recent recipient of my emails about whats' really going on in Hallandale Beach- will NOT tolerate this blatant corruption and wants investigations launched into these illegal actions right now!; And let's not forget FL state Rep. Joe Gibbons' strange views on raising a family -putting an elective office ABOVE living full-time with your own kids!
This is but the latest chapter of several sordid chapters in the serial criminal misrepresentation I have written about here at HBB over the past year or so on candidates and elected officials who do NOT live in the legislative districts they want to represent or do currently represent.
My last two blog posts on this sore subject, full of facts and videos, were:
JULY 5, 2013
More on Broward County politicians' residency ruse: Is intentionally violating & evading the Florida Constitution 'the new normal' for ethical standards in the Sunshine State? Latest facts & chronology regarding at least 5 Florida legislators from Broward -and one Broward Commissioner- who DON'T live full-time in the districts they were elected to represent
http://hallandalebeachblog.
@JackLatvala wants @FLGovScott & @willweatherford to get to bottom of dubious residency claims by @MariaSachs & Co http://t.co/jLTVNMS7T5
— MediaTrackersFL (@MediaTrackersFL) July 11, 2013
The three of them have been positively ingenious and patient about observing our local pols and pol-wannabe's in their natural state of obfuscation and mis-representation, and in Stephanie's case, highlighting the almost-comical situation where a woman who lives in Miramar in Broward County, wanted to run for City Commission in North Miami Beach in Miami-Dade County, and who almost got away with it if not for Stephanie's dedicated zeal to prevent yet another repeat of what the video up top represents.
@wplglocal10 Congratulations for the investigation about the representatives living in different counties...great job #Bob Norman
— Marcelo Medina (@mmarcelomedi) July 11, 2013
Hey Bob Norman--You missed Joe Gibbons !!--http://t.co/NN1vbTX8tf
— Broward Bugle (@BrowardBugle) July 12, 2013
Obviously that completely changes for Saturdays once college football season starts up late next month so why not have such a needed program at 10 a.m. on Sundays as the lead-in to This Week With George Stephanopoulos, followed-up by Michael Putney with his excellent This Week in South Florida?
A nice two-hour bloc of serious news in an area that is literally starving for more serious news coverage and analysis.
-----
Sen. Jack Latvala's webpage on Florida Senate website:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/s20
As you can see from the video above, Sen. Latvala's already shown he's more than a little upset and is keen on getting the ball moving rapidly towards formal investigations and prosecutions, but let him know that you, too, are fed-up and won't tolerate any more of the despicable business-as-usual/wink-wink attitude in South Florida of the Florida Constitution.
You can reach him at "Latvala, Sen. Jack"
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
NOT Breaking News: Rep. Frederica Wilson still holds common sense, FL-17 constituents & taxpayers 'hostage': Spend, spend, spend and MORE TAXES!
http://www.local10.com/video/28721271/index.html
The interview with Rep. Frederica Wilson concludes at 13:04 mark.
Monday, August 1, 2011
On eve of Tuesday's budget meeting at 6 pm, Broward School Board is still hiding crucial facts from students, parents & taxpayers
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Marco Rubio is doing EXACTLY what he said he'd do last year -making a difference on policy in D.C. and NOT being an aloof, empty suit
ABC News video: Sen. Marco Rubio on ABC News' Nightline with correspondent Jonathan Karl, March 28, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqs0WAD7ZRE
Article: Exclusive Interview With Marco Rubio: GOP Rising Star Hints at VP Spot. Florida Republican Keeps a Low Profile as a Junior Senator, But Has Big Plans
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tea-party-favorite-florida-sen-marco-rubios-national/story?id=13249824
http://abcnews.go.com/nightline
ABC News video: Sen. Marco Rubio appears on GMA, Good Morning America, with host George Stephanopoulos, March 30, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAI4x-jI-_k
Local10.com video: Sen. Marco Rubio speaks with Channel 10's Michael Putney on his Sunday morning TV show, This Week in South Florida, about the federal budget gimmicks currently in place, i.e. continuing resolutions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iGaPvq16Zo
Sen. Marco Rubio video: In His Own Words: Week In Review, March 11, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOMt0fFBAA
NBC-6 Miami news video: Report on Sen. Marco Rubio's Miami office Open House.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMnMiP2QnB8
-----
Michael Putney: http://www.local10.com/station/269244/detail.html
This Week In South Florida March 27
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen speaks about Libya, new troubles between Israel and Palestine and the conviction of an aid worker in Cuba. Plus, what are the Miami-Dade County charter changes that will be on the May ballot?
Video at: http://www.local10.com/video/27347033/index.html
http://www.sfltv.com/
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Compare and contrast results of Broward Courthouse vote and New Trier HS building project being defeated by voters; Kudos for JAABLOG
afternoon, as I'd originally planned on being up in
Fort Lauderdale for the Commission vote:
February 2nd, 2010
12:45 p.m.
Just called up to Broward Govt. HQ before leaving
to attend and film the public comments portion
of the Broward County Commission meeting on
financing of a proposed Broward Courthouse.
Good thing I made that phone call because they
already voted this morning to approve it, 6-3,
with Commissioners Gunzburger, Rodstrom
and Wexler voting no.
P.S. Just checked JAABLOG before sending this.
http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/
Good thing, too, as he's got more details!
SURPRISE, SURPRISE!
Posted by JAABLOG at 2/2/2010 12:50 PM
The County Commission is building you a new courthouse!
http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/2010/02/02/surprise-surprise.aspx#Comment
-----
Wednesday afternoon I wrote this:
Per the news below from Chicago's North Shore,
since I lived in Evanston and Wilmette, and had
lots of close friends at IU from New Trier,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
I'm thoroughly aware of the educational/aspirational
mindset there, where the well-educated dual income
parents are VERY into the school, and the kids getting
anything and everything that'll help them.
Sometimes, to an unhealthy degree, since this is the
same school where lots of politically powerful/affluent
parents got their kids into U of I using that special
admission system the Tribune exposed last year.
http://www.
Not that you ever read or heard about that education
scandal down here, of course.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Listen to Trib reader Stu's simple logic and tell
me it doesn't sound exactly like something that could
be said of the latest Broward Courthouse fiasco,
when common economic sense fell by the way-side
yesterday:
"If the board were to have done long range capital improvement planning, they could could have gone to the voters with an incremental plan, doing one facility or section every few years. Instead the board appears to have this very large and over reaching apetite wanting everything now."All too predictably, the Broward County Commission
chose to channel David Farragut at precisely the
wrong time as they collectively voted
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead..."
Since my email yesterday, I added something to
JAABLOG's excellent second commentary about
the Broward Courthouse vote, which I've pasted
at bottom.
There's lots of insight and good info from other
readers, too.
P.S. I'm lovin' it!
McDonald's brings frappes to Chicago area
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Chicago Tribune http://www.
New Trier high school building project defeated
By Jeff Long
February 2, 2010A $174 million building project at New Trier high school appears headed for defeat. The margin was about 63 percent against the project and 37 percent with 97 percent of the vote counted.
Officials called the building project at the Winnetka high school vital to bring the North Shore campus into the 21st century and correct lingering problems, such as having a third of the property inaccessible to disabled students.
But residents opposed to the project said in the weeks leading up to the vote that its scope was too vast, and the price tag too much of a burden in today's economy.
Under the plan, a cafeteria built in 1912 would have been demolished, as would a gym that dates to 1928, a tech arts building constructed in 1931, and a music hall built in 1950. New construction would have included a cafeteria, library, fieldhouse, gym, and 41 classrooms.
Reader comments at:http://www.
-----------
JAABLOG
Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me ...
Posted by JAABLOG at 2/2/2010 9:29 PM
http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/2010/02/02/fool-me-once-shame-on-you-fool-me-twice-shame-on-me-.aspx#Comment
Here's what I wrote there, part of which I posted
here on Monday:
First, some facts about Tuesday's vote on financing
a new Broward County Courthouse, a story that only
the Daily Business Review, JAABLOG and I wrote about.
Not asking for plaudits, just noting it for historical context.
For those courthouse denizens who animate this blog
with their constant contempt of Broward taxpayers thru
your comments here, who think that a new Broward
County Courthouse is very important, guess what?
The South Florida news media could hardly care less
about you. You barely register on their horizon.
You are insignificant.
In the days and weeks before the vote, the two daily
South Florida newspapers and the four network TV
stations sat on their hands and reported nothing
about this issue.
Neither the Herald or the Sun-Sentinel have
mentioned this subject in print or online since
last September, when a Guest Op-Ed purported
to have been written by Comm. Stacy Ritter was
published in the Sun-Sentinel.
Once again, on something very important,
South Florida's news media has shown they were
sleeping on the job, and let the people down.
Did you EVER see anything last year on TV about
the ties that the members of the Lieberman-led
Task Force had to the Broward legal establishment,
who desperately want a brand new pony?
Preferably, with a brand-new barn and a lifetime
supply of feed. On the taxpayer's dime.
Nope.
There never was one,
Watching the coverage Tuesday night at 11 p.m.,
actually thinking there'd be some interviews
-with somebody!- this point was drive home
all over again.
At 11:16 p.m. CBS-4's Antonio Mora did a 15-second
read without any visuals and said the vote happened
"last night," which as we know, is incorrect.
At 11:27 p.m., Local10's Laurie Jennings also did a
15-second read with archived visuals of yellow tape
and leaking ceilings.
There's the press coverage of your shiny new pony.
And why is it that so few usually well-informed
people actually know how poorly Lieberman
handled the rigged Task Force last year?
I wrote last year on my blog how she and the
county administrators didn't follow basic aspects
of the state's Sunshine Laws, and instead,
tried to fool the public by arranging for the agenda
and assorted relevant public docs for the last meeting,
which should've been online before the meeting,
to be placed online HOURS AFTER the last meeting
was already over.
Not that they actually had the final public meeting
listed online days before the meeting, since they didn't.
Lieberman was the one in charge -the Chair.
But the media didn't care -just like now.
Keep up the great work, JAABLOG!
While most of South Florida's media suffers from
Super Bowl Swoon, JAABLOG keeps it real!
Kudos!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Shallow End of Pool for Miami TV News; ABC-TV's Castle & Susan Sullivan
11 o'clock newscasts, Channels 4 and 10,
i.e. CBS4 and Local10, each ran stories
on women having surgery, plastic and
laser.
Sadly for viewers with a public policy
bent, these sorts of stories are the
longstanding bread-and-butter of
Miami TV stations, but are also part
of the reason that so many Men
aged 25-49 find it so easy to forgo
the local newscasts at 11 p.m. and
switch to ESPN's SportsCenter,
because they know from experience
that there will likely be at least one
if not two dopey, chick-centric stories
that center on women with some very
serious self-worth problems and
high-degree of shallowness.
That there are so many women like
that living in South Florida is NOT
exactly Breaking News, of course.
What is is the number who honestly
think that anyone else cares about
their self-worth issues or their
flabby arms or whatever.
Leave those private discussions to
your family and friends, please.
The rest of us just don't care,
comprende?
Screenshot I took 10/5/09 of Local10's teaser during ABC-TV's Castle.
Some free advice for the female reporters assigned
to these stories that always center on somewhat
vain and self-centered women with more money
than sense, who are only too happy to have TV
cameras follow them into their doctor's office.
The next time you get stuck on one of these stories,
right before you close, look at the subjects and say:
"You're not alone because of your looks,
you're alone because of your superficial
personality."
Think of it as your doing a good deed for the
larger South Florida community.
Because you are!
ABC-TV's Castle is one of my guilty TV
pleasures.
I'm happy to see that in its second season,
airing opposite CSI Miami, the show
really seems to be getting better and more
nuanced, as the writers become more
confident of what the characters would
say or do in various circumstances.
http://abc.go.com/shows/castle
For me, last night's episode, Inventing
the Girl, was the best effort yet.
It featured a great back-and forth volley
between co-stars Susan Sullivan and
Nathan Fillion sitting on the sofa of Rick's
great apartment, perhaps the best-looking
living room on TV.
At one point, after talking about her grudging
acceptance of the fact that she'd been cast in
a Broadway show as the grandmother and
not as the fetching ingenue she once might've
been, Rick throws her a lifeline by saying
that she can now show "wisdom" on stage,
Martha suddenly pulls out from behind the
couch this 8 x 10 b/w glossy of herself,
below, which nearly caused me to jump off
the couch from a severe case of dรฉjร vu.
Screenshot I took 10/5/09 of Susan Sullivan during ABC-TV's Castle.
When I was living at Briscoe Quad
my first two years at IU, I had a male
friend who was a huge, huge fan of
Susan Sullivan,
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0838360/
who was then a star on CBS-TV's hit
Falcon Crest.
He had this same EXACT photo of
her in his dorm room!
If I remember correctly, I think he'd seen
her on Broadway before or something.
I mention this because of both the shock
of seeing that photo I recognize pop-up
on my TV screen completely out-of-the-blue,
and also because my friend was probably
one of a handful of persons I knew at IU
who was hip to whatever was happening
on Broadway, plus the scuttlebutt.
In his case, it was the result of his having
parents who were ardent live theater fans
who saw everything, no matter how obscure
or Off-Off Broadway.
He knew what actor and actress had
played what character in what show
-or been an understudy- as a result
of growing-up with a treasure trove of
Playbills in his parents living room,
arranged alphabetically within the year
the show had opened.
I was so envious listening to him talk
about it and the shows he'd seen, while
I'd had to make do with cast albums.
(If blogging had existed back then,
I have no doubt that his parents
would've surely had one of the most
popular and influential -and
profitable- blogs or websites around
on the subject of Broadway,
on-stage and off, including financing,
because they quite literally seemed
to know everyone who was anyone.)
Listening to him describe their collection
of souvenirs sounded a lot like me and my
perfectly preserved collection of Dolphins,
Hurricanes, Floridians, Gatos/Strikers/
Orioles game programs, going back to
1968, complete with used game tickets.
In a sense, my friend was sort of like
the theater version of me, and my keen
knowledge of American sports and
sports trivia, that often swamped others
who were older who thought they knew
a thing or two.
The benefit of having a very, very good
memory.
FYI: In real life, Susan Sullivan is
married to psychologist and author
Dr. Connell Cowan, who co-authored
with Dr. Melvyn Kinder, only two
of THE best books I ever read,
Women Men Love, Women Men Leave
and Smart Women/Foolish Choices.
I actually bought copies for friends when
they came out in paperback.
To end this unexpected tangent on Broadway,
The Jackson 5 from the early '80's
performing "Corner of the Sky" from
Pippin, a wonderful song from their
Skywriter album,
Along with a host of other songs,
my friends on the floor and I played this
a lot on Saturday mornings and afternoons
at IU on game days, with our stereo
speakers propped up in the windows
facing towards Assembly Hall and the
football stadium, so fans downstairs on
17th Street walking over there for a
game could get in the spirit of things.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Obamacare Death Panels have bad news for Newsweek: Doctors will pull the plug on mag at $75 a year; Newsweek R.I.P.
Doctors will pull the plug on mag at $75 a year;
Newsweek R.I.P.
Well, it's not like we didn't get a well-informed
head's-up from South Beach Hoosier favorite
Michael Kinsley about five months ago on
what was to come from the magazine side of
the Post-Newsweek family, of which Local 10
(WPLG) is a blood-relative.
(I discussed the positive side of this family
relationship in my March 31, 2007 post
about my 1982 summer internship at
Channel 10 that fell by the wayside because
of some very silly and truly anti-competitive
rules at the IU Telecommunications Dept.)
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/hbs-national-moment-in-news-proves.html )
In case you already forgot or never ever
heard about Kinsley's all-too-true LIVE
autopsy on Newsweek and traditional news
magazines in general, i.e
The shot that was heard around... well,
The Beltway and certain media-centric
zip codes in New York City, here it is:
The New Republic
Backward Runs 'Newsweek'
---------------------
Two takes on what Kinsley wrote:
New York magazine
Daily Intel
Michael Kinsley Attacks the New Newsweek,
and We Feel Bad About It
May 22, 2009
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/
Lisa Takeuchi Cullen:
Michael Kinsley, don’t be hating on Newsweek
http://trueslant.com/lisacullen/2009/05/22/michael-kinsley-dont-be-hating-on-newsweek/
--------------
As to Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham?
Very, very bright guy, obviously, but he
seems almost blind to the fact that in the
eyes of many, including other journalists
I know in Washington and elsewhere
whose names you'd recognize, he is,
quite literally, the placeholder for all the
journalism blandness that stretches from
coast-to-coast.
The sort of too-clever-by-half editorial
commentary -hello, Miami Herald- on
illegal immigration that routinely takes place
in news articles, and not just on the editorial
page.
Supposed news articles where some basic
journalistic questions are never asked or
even hinted at, perhaps for fear of queering
readers about what are undoubtedly intended
by the editors to be sympathetic heart-wrenching
stories about American-born kids of illegals.
Illegal aliens who routinely ignored court orders
and ICE for years and finally got deported
back to Colombia, El Salvador or fill-in-the-blank.
Meacham is also emblematic of the very
high self-regard of many in the MSM,
as well as their cozy relationships with
powerful corporate elites, whom they
are generally loathe to criticize by name,
even while they joke together with the
likes of a Jeff Immelt, GE's Chairman
and CEO, about their latest appearance
on The Charlie Rose Show at the
afterparty at an Aspen Institute event
or over in Davos, hanging out with Bono..
(I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said
before in this regard, but whether in Davos
for the World Economic Forum and chatting
with Tom Friedman, or in New York for
some Clinton Global Initiative meeting,
any place where Queen Rania is, by default,
almost always THE place to be!
See http://www.queenrania.jo/ and
http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2009_March_Queen_Rania/
and http://www.youtube.com/QueenRania )
As Michael Kinsley coyly notes in his excellent
New Republic essay:
In his editor's letter--one of many traditional newsmagazine features that have survived the scythe of change--Jon Meacham says, "We are not pretending to be your guide through the chaos of the Information Age," which concedes a lot of ground from the get-go. Why not at least pretend? Why else would people pick it up, let alone subscribe?Later, he writes with disdain:
And so we progress to "Features," which seems to be longer articles on myriad subjects, many written by outsiders (Michael Bloomberg, Tina Brown…), who are prized because they bring an independent luster. Also, you don't have to give them health care. But the section's lead story is the magazine's cover story: an essay about and interview with President Obama by Meacham himself. This kind of thing was a staple of the old newsmagazine, and it follows strict rules. It always opens with an anecdote or telling detail that flaunts the magazine's access to the great, and illustrates whatever the point of the piece was supposed to be. Disappointingly, Meacham's reinvented Newsweek has not abandoned this stale formula.Then comes a deft and well-delivered Kinsley punch to the jaw of D.C-dom.:
Another piece in the issue--I guess it's supposed to be a "reported narrative … grounded in original observation and freshly discovered fact"--is about curing autism. "It's spring in Washington," the piece begins, "and Ari Ne'eman, with his navy suit and leather briefcase on wheels, is in between his usual flurry of meetings." It's spring in Washington. That doesn't seem to qualify as either an "original observation" or a "freshly discovered fact." Nor does it have any apparent relevance to the story that follows. Could it be a "provocative (but not partisan) argument"? And what about that blue suit? I have news for Newsweek: Washington is the blue suit capital of the world. Let's give them the leather briefcase on wheels.Killing with kindness!
The current purge of reporters across the
country for bottom-line economic reasons
is a particularly tough pill to swallow for
many journalists in D.C., New York and
other hipper-than-thou urban hubs,
particularly among those who were in
J-School in the early to mid-90's,
during the golden era of reporter as
highly-paid and sought-after social
commentator.
That's because they imagined that they'd
be the natural inheritors of the self-aggrandizing
corporate and college speaking tours of
Cokie Roberts and her husband Steve
Roberts, before and after their various
books came out.
The culture which so aggravated longtime
South Beach Hoosier favorite (and Asia
expert) James Fallows when he took over
the reins at U.S. News & World Report,
that he engaged in addition-by-subtraction
by dumping Steve Roberts to show he was
deadly serious about ending that kind of
behavior at any magazine he was at.
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/
In fact, if you listen rather carefully when
Jon Meacham is on a TV chat show,
you might even say that it's apparent that
Meacham has fallen under the spell of the
sound of his own voice, pontificating thru
18th-century historical allusions, something
that was never true of the late Robert Novak
It's my personal belief that we need more
journos digging for facts and examples of
hypocrisy in Washington and among the
powerful, like Bob Novak, not more Jon
Meachams drawing imprecise comparisons
to matters little remembered by most
Americans, as if he was channeling Shelby
Foote's powerful and pithy anecdotes in
Ken Burns' masterpiece, The Civil War.
Please leave the grandiloquent American
historical allusions to George F. Will.
He's already got it covered.
In a media universe that actually made sense
and reflected current and future economic
and social realities, one of the things we'd
have in this country is a weekly one-hour
network TV program starring Fallows or
Kinsley -or both.
They'd one-up Charles Kuralt, John Madden
and the C-SPAN Bus by going on the road,
interviewing and interacting with some of the
dynamic people who are changing the face of
our country with their thinking, acumen and
boldness.
Despite what Congress and the president
say or do to screw with that effort.
A variation of this theme was tried with Tom's
excellent foreign policy/economic specials
a few years ago, on what was then called
the Times-Discovery Channel but is now
called ID: Investigation Discovery.
http://investigation.discovery.com/
Below, Tom's The Other Side of Outsourcing
Hm-m-m... how about calling their series
on business and technological innovation,
The Road to Innovation.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
LOL!
That title has only been used a million times
over the past 20 years, based on my last
1.001 trips to the Business section of
Borders or Barnes & Noble.
Who are the leading thinkers, engineers and
managers at Google, Microsoft, Intel or
JPL, and what sorts of problems are they
routinely running into in trying to continue
their research and innovation?
What sorts of things/solutions might be
possible if those roadblocks didn't exist?
Who are the brilliant former NASA engineers
and technicians who've been so thoroughly
burned-out and exhausted by the myopic
space policy in Washington of the past
twenty years that they've left the Feds,
Cape Canaveral and Houston in the
rear-view mirror, and are now using their
natural curiosity, enthusiasm, brains and
network of smart, savvy friends, to create
their own innovative companies?
Companies that will help make the country
more economically competitive internationally,
to get the country closer towards the sort of
smart, adaptive and energy-efficient technology
that made them decide to apply to grad school
in the first place?
Curiosity.
The sort of firms that ought to be all over the
place in Central Florida if Tallahassee was
paying any kind of serious attention.
(But do you really think such non-serious
pols like Sansom, Geller, Gelber and Crist
did any critical thinking along those lines?
Could their collective neglect and failure to
seize self-evident opportunities here be
any more patently obvious?)
What's going on these days in a chastened
Silicon Valley among the smart set who
didn't put all their eggs in one basket?
What areas are successful VCs putting
their money into so they can put their money
where their mouth and hearts are -and why?
Are so-called innovative Foundation-funded
'strategies' in local communities really producing
practical and tangible results that will have
staying power after the initial round of grants
and media hoopla have run their course?
Why or why not?
That leads to an important related question.
Who are the decision-makers at the
well-known national Foundations like
Ford, MacArthur, Eli Lilly, et al, i.e.,
the groups that bankroll the only PBS
programming that most Americans actually
watch.
What are the common characteristics of
successful applicants, whether individuals,
government agencies, cities or counties?
What do they do to prevent their personal
or institutional biases and daily exposure to
corporate cronyism from impeding their
funding decisions?
Or from clouding the necessary empirical
fact-finding that takes place afterwards to
determine whether the grantee was successful
or not?
Do they have a pronounced tendency to
only give money to those groups or individuals
who will produce most positive publicity
for the Foundation versus those who
actually need it the most?
And name some names the way that Sixty
Minutes did in the mid-70's when it was
earning its stripes, not doing fawning celeb
profiles on over-exposed Tiger Woods.
who bores me silly.
That the particular subjects I've just
highlighted here are all ones that I'd also
like to see in a smart weekly newsmagazine
like Newsweek, but won't, is precisely
the point.
Buh-bye Newsweek.
-----------------------
Washington Post
Newsweek Changes Subscription Strategy
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 12, 2009
Money-losing Newsweek hopes to break even by 2011 and plans to as much as double its subscription rate over the next two years, the magazine's top executive said Friday.
Ann McDaniel, managing director of Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., said the magazine will aim for a "smaller base of very committed subscribers and get more money from each of them," while speaking at The Post Co.'s annual shareholders meeting at the company's D.C. headquarters.
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