2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day

Above, looking south on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway, in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall. At the bottom of the FDOT sign you'll notice the grafitti that I mentioned two years ago at a HB City Commission meeting, where I noted with disgust how most of U.S.-1, one of the three main roads in and out of the city, had grafitti on nearly every sign and pole -and had for years- due to the city and FDOT doing such a piss-poor job of keeping it under control, thus creating a bad first-impression for visitors. Typically, then-City Mgr. Mark A. Antonio's response to my recitation with specificity was that he'd never noticed any of that before. This from the same person who had worked in that same building since it'd opened over ten years years prior. I then retorted that one didn't need to go far to see it, only walk out the door of the commission chambers we were all in and walk to the sidewalk in front of City Hall. There was no missing it, since it's all been there for years, along with the gang tags on other signs and light poles. As of today, it's all STILL there, as responsible parties continue ignoring the problem, the perfect metaphor for the city's myopia, something I said to conclude my remarks that night. April 17, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day

Matt Drudge's 17-year old news and information website, the invaluable 24/7 tool in a sea of increasingly incurious, biased and not-so-bright American news media, set a new record in 2012, besting his 2011 total by over a BILLION pageviews. 
Or to be specific, 1,007,231,416. 
http://www.drudgereport.com/

Meanwhile, farther north in South Florida from the Drudge HQ, but much closer to home for your purposes, 2012 was another record-breaking year at the Hallandale Beach Blog, with a total of 343,830 pageviews.

December 2012 was another record-breaker, not only setting a record for THE busiest month EVER in the now six years of the blog, with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or a daily average of 2,029 views, but with a new daily record set the Sunday before last, two days before Christmas, December 23, 2012 with a total of 5,324. 

It was the third record-breaking month in a row!
Yes, thanks to readers from South Florida and around the world who let their fingers do the walking, December 2012 was, indeed, awesome!

Just to give you an idea of how things have looked this year -and the last two weeks- here's some numbers to crunch and wrap your head around:

January 2012             Pageviews: 26,636
February 2012           Pageviews: 22,584
March 2012                Pageviews: 19,167
April 2012                   Pageviews: 20,626
May 2012                    Pageviews: 23,979
June 2012                   Pageviews: 21,971
July 2012                     Pageviews: 23,036
August 2012               Pageviews: 22,312
September 2012        Pageviews: 23,290
October 2012             Pageviews: 35,433
November 2012         Pageviews: 41,898
December 2012 Pageviews: 62,898

Total: 343,830

Individual daily pageviews at HBB for the second half of the month:

Dec 14, 2012 Pageviews:  1,226, 
Dec 15, 2012 Pageviews:  4,455, 
Dec 16, 2012 Pageviews:  4,651, 
Dec 17, 2012 Pageviews:  1,834, 
Dec 18, 2012 Pageviews:  2,906, 
Dec 19, 2012 Pageviews:  4,156,
Dec 20, 2012 Pageviews:  2,289
Dec 21, 2012 Pageviews:  2,476
Dec 22, 2012 Pageviews:  4,519
Dec 23, 2012 Pageviews:  5,324
Dec 24, 2012 Pageviews:  2,229
Dec 25, 2012 Pageviews:  1,464
Dec 26, 2012 Pageviews:  1,230
Dec 27, 2012 Pageviews:  1,054
Dec 28, 2012 Pageviews:  1,155
Dec 29, 2012 Pageviews:  1,059
Dec 30, 2012  Pageviews: 1,214
Dec 31, 2012  Pageviews:  970

Where's the Disney story in the Miami Herald?

Below, an email I sent earlier this afternoon to Miami-area resident and longtime South Beach Hoosier favorite Matt Drudge, with the hopes that he'd turn his immensely powerful combination telescope and microscope of The Drudge Report in the general direction of Orlando and Miami.

This illuminating Orlando Sentinel story by Scott Powers and Jason Garcia is perhaps as
good an example as any I'm familiar with that properly illuminates both the 'fixer' mentality and backroom-dealing culture of Tallahasseee, and the Miami Herald's own clueless-ness in the year 2008, a large organization that is neither deft enough nor quick enough on the draw to properly use the myriad resources it possesses, to the detriment of its remaining number of readers.

As to my own original thoughts below about the future of the Herald Building itself,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IMG_1642.jpg consider yourself warned.

And yes, I'll admit, I completely forgot about the Terra Group's purchase of the building, but the general point still holds true.
Winner of the 2005 'Best Architectural Eyesore': The Miami Herald Building, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132-1609
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/bestof/2005/award/best-architectural-eyesore-42698

See also:
http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2006/07-27-06/eightstoryfrontpage.htm

Sometime soon, I'll share some thoughts on what it was like to be in that huge building in the late 1970's, and look out towards the bay from the desks of the Sports Dept. of the late and much-missed Miami News.
___________________________
Thursday July 3rd, 2008
12:30 p.m.

Dear Matt:

I'm somewhat dumbfounded that you haven't yet linked to the infuriating story about Disney once again playing its Bigfoot card behind the scenes to carve out some special treatment for itself. The story in today's Orlando Sentinel by Scott Powers and Jason Garcia is as clear and to the point as you could ask for.

Now, personally, me being me, I'd like for the article to have asked State Rep. Stan Mayfield,
who helped craft the legislation, to publicly identify these "lawyers" (i.e. lobbyists), who were able to $weet talk him and his committee into inserting such a patently deceitful exemption 'exception' on behalf of Disney & Co.
Yeah, I'd really like to know who they are.

The fact that the reputed largest newspaper in the state, the Miami Herald doesn't mention this story anywhere in the paper today, a front page story to be sure, and on its antiquated and third-rate website, rather than have their own bureau reporters ferret out the true facts, runs two AP dispatches, the most recent of which contradicts/clarifies the first, is another larger
question worthy of discussion.

Clarification: Parking Lot Guns-Disney story
http://www.miamiherald.com/775/story/591998.html
Disney says it's exempt from new gun law
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/592379.html

That's a question that might more reasonably be brought up in the not-too-distant future, when, aping the recent moves of The Tribune Company, McClatchy will likely raise the idea of selling the property where the Herald HQ is located, right on Biscayne Bay, where it's long been the largest eyesore on the Bay.

You can place this example of the Herald once again ignoring the troubles of a large state employer on the agenda/autopsy page, right after that delicious item I told you about the day it happened last September.

That was where the Herald ran a story in their third-rate Sunday opinion section, Issues & Ideas, shortly before a Dem presidential debate at the U-M, where one of their Latin America experts wrote that Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was actually born in Mexico, which would surely come as shocking news to his mother, who was in Santa Monica, CA when Bill was born.

You'll recall that I stated to you at the time how this merely confirmed my own doubts about
the tenuous grasp of the U.S. Constitution by most reporters, other than the Second Amendment, and in this case, not only the individual reporter at the Herald who wrote this, but his editors as well. A two-fer.

That this simple "fact" could've been discovered and refuted by a nine-year old in all of about 30 seconds via Richardson's own presidential or gubernatorial website, or that the newspaper never ran a correction, is just one of the many reasons why the Miami Herald has been in economic and editorial free fall for years.

Matt, I can hardly wait 'till the geniuses at The McClatchy Company try to re-assure their stockholders that they won't have any trouble getting the City of Miami or Miami-Dade County to change their zoning laws to accommodate McClatchy's desire to sell the property, and turn it into bayside luxury condos. (What else!)

That's when I think you'll see South Florida residents (inc. bloggers) decide that "what's good for the goose is good for the gander," and decide it's time for that area to become the beautiful bayside park it should've always been.
(The one the city and county completely botched with Bicentennial Park years and years ago, and are now trying to fix with their current equally flawed project.)

Then we'll see how dedicated to the concept of transparency and accountability the Miami Herald's Editorial Board is, when South Florida civic activists make it their business to give the proposed deal the highest possible degree of scrutiny.
You know, just for ol' times sake.
'Chinese wall' and all that.

Hmm... as of Noon, there were only 346 Orlando Sentinel reader comments on their website.
That's like, what, the total of all comments to the Herald in a good week?
Exactly, hence my email to you now.

Please consider adding it before the 4th of July.

Adios!

Dave
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/

______________________________ __________
Orlando Sentinel
Walt Disney World fires back on guns at work
Scott Powers and Jason Garcia, Sentinel Staff Writers
July 3, 2008

Walt Disney World employees won't be packing any heat in the company parking lots anytime soon.
The giant resort has declared that much of its sprawling property is exempt from a new state law that allows Floridians with concealed-weapons permits to keep firearms locked in their cars at work.
Disney, which has 60,000 employees and a long-standing policy against allowing guns on its land, cites an arcane -- and late-added -- loophole in the new law, which took effect Tuesday.

To see the rest of the story:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/custom/tourism/orl-disneyguns0308jul03,0,4282076.story
________________________________________
Reader comments at: http://www.topix.net/forum/source/orlando-sentinel/T7AB2CU04R1EK4NK0