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

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

Could it be more hidden?

Wow! Very curious but pleasant surprise from Miami Herald! 

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

Example: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And again, with me knowing nothing about it beforehand.

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

Is Adam Carolla the new Sheridan Whiteside? Skewers American media's strange love affair with Piers Morgan, slams the narcisissm running amok in U.S.

On an appearance on KTLA-TV (Los Angeles), Adam Carolla channels Sheridan Whiteside and skewers the American media's strange love affair with new CNN chat host Piers Morgan, and slams the narcisissm running rampant in the U.S., giving numerous examples of things that bother him.
Now that's funny -and true!
The best of all posssible worlds!



Adam's podcast, available for free, is currently the most-popular podcast on iTunes.
He'll be appearing at the South Beach Comedy Festival next Thursday the 3rd at the Colony Theater on Miami Beach and up at the West Palm Improv on Friday March 4th.

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0D00462AE2E06E5F
http://www.adamcarolla.com/ACPBlog/

http://www.ktla.com/



The Man Who Came To Dinner, with Monty Woolley as Sheridan Whiteside, only one of my ten favorite films -and literary characters- ever.

The title says it all: "You Can’t Play a New Media Game By Old Media Rules" by Matthew Ingram

This Matthew Ingram piece is an excellent analysis of the changing media landscape, and the legacy media's attempt to freeze things in place to maintain their old advantages.

Sometimes, even when that old media is, in fact, a popular website or blog itself, like Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke's site that I've had on my blog roll since I started this humble blog of mine just over four years ago.

In general, those efforts as such aren't working as American news consumers continue voting with their feet -and eyeballs- to get more and better written information with unique content.

And to bring this issue to a local level, it doesn't help when the majority of South Florida's mainstream media is risk-averse, seemingly wanting stories either nice-and-neat when they deign to show-up somewhere, or, delivered to them like hotel room service over the telephone, without the reporter ever leaving his or her desk.

Worst of all, most of them DON'T and WON'T show-up at public events that are clearly newsworthy, a noticeable fact very much on the minds of people like myself, who actually DO SHOW-UP at government meetings and public policy forums in South Florida.


gigaom.com
You Can’t Play a New Media Game By Old Media Rules
By Mathew Ingram
Feb. 24, 2011, 9:02am PT

If there’s one aspect of the media business that has been disrupted more completely than any other, it’s the whole idea of “breaking news.” Just as television devalued the old front-page newspaper scoop, the web has turned breaking news into something that lasts a matter of minutes — or even seconds — rather than hours. If your business is to break news, your job is becoming harder and harder every day...

Read the rest of the post at:
http://gigaom.com/2011/02/24/you-cant-play-a-new-media-game-by-old-media-rules/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29


http://gigaom.com/
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/
http://www.thewrap.com/

South Florida news media acts like they are STILL the Belle of the Ball. Nope!; Charlotte Greenbarg's contributions to South Florida

Much more so than I would've ever imagined when I first started this blog of mine four years ago -many years after I should've started it while living up in the D.C. area- I've been spending a lot more time thinking and writing about my perspective on the inherent problems of an incurious news media, a crew that in South Florida, at least, often seems more inclined to RUN FROM from news stories, than to them, and attempt to explain what happened and why to curious readers or viewers.

That regressive attitude towards traditional norms of news-gathering by local South Florida reporters, editors, producers and news executives, has very serious negative consequences for the larger society in South Florida, where many of the sorts of resources that other American communities take for granted, simply DONT exist here, like an All-News radio station or a Local News cable TV channel.

Yes, media outlets that would offer daily or weekly forums for the community to talk about current events or news in an informed environment, and not merely parrot what one has heard or seen in print elsewhere, whether liberal or conservative.
But South Florida has neither of them.

In this sort of environment, lots of selfless people in the community who expend a great deal of their energy and time to make a positive difference for it, get ignored, or, at least, see their positive contributions greatly marginalized, especially compared to the sort of public profile they might enjoy in other parts of the country with more traditional views of news reporting.

That is to say, parts of the country unlike South Florida where reporters don't have to be begged to attend public meetings that they'd have covered 10, 20 or 25 years ago -without even being asked or contacted.

Rather incongruously given the actual facts-on-the-ground, and the clear appetite for MORE not LESS local news coverage among local media consumers, at least those of my acquaintance, the local South Florida news media acts like they are STILL the Belle of the Ball, overly-picky and choosy about just whom they are seen with.

The negative results of such wrong-headed thinking are all around us in South Florida -and my city of Hallandale Beach- with crooked or inept government officials getting away with things because there's nobody covering them and their city or agency.

They don't use "legacy media" as a pejorative for nothing.

Do you remember my words here recently about posting video about longstanding problems or issues myself, and to STOP waiting for the local news media to, well, first, wake-up, and then to show-up?
If you do, good.
This post of mine today is just a reminder of why I plan on doing just that.

In the future, I'm going to try to do a better job of mentioning people I know or at least am fairly familiar with, whom I believe to be deserving of more attention for their efforts to make a positive difference in the community.

After reading the following, the next time you see my friend Charlotte Greenbarg's name, whether it's mentioned in print or you see her on a local TV newscast, you'll understand that she's someone who's not only NOT new to the fight for meaningful educational reform, but rather was someone who was fighting hard for students years ago against the system, and was NOT willing to salute mediocrity and pretend that it was genuine merit or success.

This description of here is from the BrowardPalmBeach New Times,
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/bestof/2009/award/best-political-activist-845585/ which voted Charlotte their Best Political Activist - 2009

Charlotte Greenbarg

You don't have to agree with Greenbarg's politics or her stance on every issue — but you better give Charlotte her respect. Because when it comes to activists and political watchdogs in Broward County, there's not one who is more vigilant than Greenbarg, president of the nonprofit Broward Coalition. She keeps an eye not only on her home city of Hollywood but on the construction department at the Broward County School Board, where she sits on the audit committee. There, Greenbarg holds the often buffoonish officials' feet to the fire with her no-nonsense questions. She has been at the forefront of ending the "Pay first, ask questions later" mode of business at the district and has given much-needed moral support to School Board auditor Dave Rhodes, a man who has the fortitude to tell the truth in that house of lies and who actually tries to keep waste and corruption down to a low roar. Greenbarg is one of the good ones — and Lord knows Broward needs all of those it can get.

Her education reform group's website is www.ivbe.org.
The Broward Coalition is at http://www.browardcoalition.org/

---

THE INDEPENDENT VOICES FOR BETTER EDUCATION STORY

By Charlotte Greenbarg, Vice-President and Founding Member

We are one of the state’s first groups advocating education reform and accountability at the grassroots level. In 1990 seven people, veterans all of the public school system wars, sat around a table at a Coral Gables restaurant (Marshall Major’s). One was an attorney who worked for ESE children’s rights. A Dade School Board member muttered as he listened to the attorney explain how the system was depriving the students of their rights, but had to cut short his presentation to make a flight, “I hope someone puts a bomb on it.” Others were savaged by the bureaucracy when they went public with health hazards in schools, Sunshine Law violations, fraud in ESE student numbers, lack of achievement by poor and minority students, asking for public participation on all advisory committees and exposing the corrupt teachers’ union.

I was the deepest insider, president of the Dade County PTA/PTSA, and I saw it all in the belly of the beast. PTA had a free office in the administration building, use of staff for all functions, use of the printing and public relations offices, phones and complete access to anything needed. I helped the billion-dollar bond issue for construction pass, and saw it poured down a well of corruption and incompetence. I asked questions I knew the answers for and was lied to. I even had the audacity to ask for parent participation in negotiations with the unions.

We learned that working from within was futile. The print media was so co-opted they would use the public relations pieces handed to them by the system flacks almost verbatim.

We did our research and publicized our findings. The longer poor and minority children stayed in the system, the worse they did. The more money poured into the system, the lower the scores went. The board rewarded the lobbyists who raised thousands for their re-election campaigns with huge contracts from the fourth largest system in the country. We documented the overruns in construction by using the system’s own agenda items that not too many people bothered to read. Board members called us “loose with the truth” and shut off the public television station’s broadcasts of the public input portion of the meetings. Even the print media couldn’t stomach that, and the Board reversed the decision.

We were asked by the Center for Education Reform to provide our data showing that as the tax dollars went up, the scores went down. What we advocated became the basis for the current education code. Now each School Advisory Council must have majority non-employee membership, schools are held accountable for student performance.

We work by networking with others who spread our message to the groups to which they belong. Most of our communication is done over the Internet and in the media, which has over the years, realized we were right. We invite you to join us. All donations are fully tax deductible under the IRS rules for 501 (c)(3) organizations. Our website is www.ivbe.org.

Please contact me through the website or call 954-927-9902. We welcome your participation!

IVBE is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.

All donations are tax-exempt to the full extent allowed by IRS rules

IVBE NURSERY RHYME

By Grandma Charlotte Goose

Rock-a-bye, children, on the money-tree top,

Billions misdirected, watch the scores drop!

Will we wake up, or will cradles all fall?

And down will come country, Educrats and all.

This little ditty was published along with a letter to the editor in the Florida Journal, Wall Street Journal, in l994. We pointed out that Blueprint 2000 was an illusion created by the education establishment to make the public believe that some kind of real reform was going to take place. We included documentation from the Florida Auditor General as well as letters from then-Senator Jack Gordon and then-Representative Art Simon. Senator Gordon told us that “…nothing much had changed (from existing laws)”, and Representative Simon said, “I call it the ‘non-accountability bill’ “. Time has proven both them and us correct. In the l998-99 session of the Florida Legislature, all references to the Florida Commission on Reform and Accountability, created by the B-2000 legislation, were removed, along with all the funding.

A sagacious friend calls, I listen; an old benchmark returns; no North Beach video here today

What's right in front of you and never been used...

Above, the pathetic little sign erected on the side of the city's North Beach complex, facing away from most passing traffic, is the perfect reminder of the sort of over-paid geniuses who populate Hallandale Beach City Hall. January 21, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Per my last blog post on the longstanding fiasco that is Hallandale Beach's two-story North Beach facility, located just steps from the Atlantic Ocean, and which despite being given to this city's residents for FREE on August 3rd, 2007, has NOT been open to the general public but once in those intervening 41 months, my plan for the blog today was simple.

I'd post numerous photographs of the facility from several different angles and perspectives so those of you who come here regularly could get a better sense of just what is at stake here, and why the vast majority of this city's concerned and well-informed residents, full-time and seasonal, are VERY ANGRY at HB's mayor, city manger and city commission for squandering a valuable and dynamic resource for what is now three-and-a-half years.

A facility that communities in South Florida not located on the ocean, like Hialeah, Pembroke Pines, Miramar, Miami Lakes, Sunrise, Tamarac, et al, would positively kill to have in their city, especially for FREE.
(And then there's the observation deck on top, too...)

Yes, those are just some of the many South Florida communities which, however poorly-run they might well be on a day-to-day basis, you know with certainty have at least some elected officials who would've had the common sense to see what a dynamic facility it could be, and who'd have done everything in their power to "fix" and and open to the public ASAP.
All the more so so they could pat themselves on the back at the public dedication.

Now contrast how those hypothetical and presumably enthusiastic dedications elsewhere might've been to the very somber and subdued one that will surely take place in Hallandale Beach on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., where the very people who are most responsible for totally mismanaging this and screwing-over the residents of this city, are going to be present, and try to say with a straight face to them that the only way that you residents can utilize it is if you pay for it. Yes, it's been one slap in the face after another for 41 months.

(Not like it's the only city boondoggle in this city, since the city's municipal storage parking lot on Ansin Blvd., near1-95, that cost well over a million dollars, had but seven vehicles utilizing it the other day when I paid my most recent visit of the past several months, leaving what seems like hundreds of parking spots empty. It was very weird! Oh, trust me, dear readers, I have literally dozens of photos and video of that facility, too, just waiting to see the light of day here.)

Yes, Tuesday afternoon here promises to be yet another "only in Hallandale Beach" moment for this city's beleaguered citizen taxpayers, one more civic insult for them to endure, individually and collectively.

I was also going to post video here of the North Beach facility, showing just how close it is to State Road A1A/South Ocean Drive, the sand and surf of the beach, as well as the neighboring Beach Club condos, which are the three tallest buildings in the entire city.

Well, there's been a change of plans for the blog today. And a concurrent change of philosophy in how some things will be done going forward into the future.

Late Saturday night I received an unexpected phone call from a friend who is more aware than most of the stories and personalities that have come to animate this blog over the past four years.

Someone noted for their candor and savvy who knows a lot more about me than most people I know and deal with regularly in Hallandale Beach and South Florida, and who has been encouraging when it was needed, but also pointed-out mistakes or areas that needed improvement when they were needed, too.
In the case of the latter, both in the blog and in my life.

As it happens, this person is also pretty aware of many if not most of the blog posts that never made it online, for whatever reason, since they're part of the sounding board that I consult from time to time when I rethink something that seemed genius, funny, or insightful at the time, but which... well, maybe not so much.

This person reminded me of some of the things that we had discussed just a few weeks ago when talking about things we'd both learned in the past year and some things we both wanted to avoid in this new one, as well as some new ideas and traditions we wanted to inaugurate.
One of the things on that short list of mine, which I've hinted at here but written about more forcefully in emails to friends, with very specific examples, was to stop enabling South Florida's lazy and dis-interested news media.

To stop making excuses for the middling mediocrity that characterizes far too much of what passes for news media in South Florida, and their sorry excuses to me and others privately when they pump us for information and either don't do the story at all, or do it in such a piss-poor way that I don't even recognize it, and wish I had never wasted my time talking to them.

(You know, like my bad experience with Channel 4's I-Team, which proved to be a one-way street just months after I was invited down to the station in Doral and met everyone.
Unfortunately, I got sucked-in and didn't wise-up and cut them out-of-the-loop until months after I should've.)

I needed to stop pretending that certain people I'd met in the local news media really gave a crap about Hallandale Beach, Hollywood or Aventura specifically, or Broward and South Florida in general -or the intricacies of public policy- when they called or emailed, wanting information from me or access to something or someone I could arrange.

Instead, go back to using the measuring stick that I'd used so well -usually- in Bloomington and Chicago and Washington, where the benchmarks were genuine accountability and actions spoke louder than words.

It probably won't surprise many of you that over the past four years, I've tried many times to get the local Miami TV stations and local South Florida newspapers to give various compelling stories I knew about some play, and in the case of the North Beach facility in particular, had many sit-down discussions with reporters and columnists about the facts and context of what has or hasn't taken place, even sharing chronological photos to show that nothing was being done for LONG periods of time.

All so that something positive would come from it, and that people here in HB could actually gain some use and enjoyment from something on the beach that already belonged to them, and which had been, in essence, stolen from them by Hallandale Beach City Hall's custodians.

To paraphrase that very animated phone conversation with my friend, here's a taste, and I should mention that this savvy person used to make a lot of money in media circles:

"Why the hell are you going to run photos and video on Sunday of that facility and video or whatever of that oblivious Antonio guy totally stepping all over HB's citizens at London's meeting, with his totally unacceptable comments to citizens about who works for who, when you know that the press down there is so f-ing lazy that they will use whatever you've done, ignore you, and then try to make it seem like they always knew what was going on, just finally decided to do something about it themselves?

Dave, don't help them, ignore them or beat them at their own game, but whatever you do, DON'T make their job any easier. Better yet, start FINALLY doing those video reports you kept talked about doing months ago, and simply go around the
news media and post your stuff to your YouTube page. And though I know you already know this well, let me just remind you: reporters are NOT your friends."

So that's what I'm doing.

The promised photos and video will be up soon, but I'm no longer making public promises here on the blog about that sort of thing when there's nothing positive to gain from it.

Believe me, last night, once I realized I was changing my plans, I was very keen on publicly revealing what news and print reporters and columnists and correspondents have taken information from me in the past, who has called me up or who has sat across a table from me and promised me that finally -finally-their editor or producer or news director was going to let them file that story.

But as my friend reminded me, there's no point in burning a bridge when they don't have to know they're being burned -digitally.
Eventually, it'll sink in when they don't hear from me anymore.

No more promises.
Results, not words.
The old benchmark is back in play, and there will be no substitutions.