Obamacare death panels won't save legacy media's Newsweek: You could've been a MSM news mogul for the small introductory price of $1

On September 18, 2009, I wrote a post about my observations about Newsweek magazine's future, and as you can tell from the title I gave that post, Obamacare Death Panels have bad news for Newsweek: Doctors will pull the plug on mag at $75 a year; Newsweek R.I.P.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamacare-death-panels-have-bad-news.html
I suggested that the reality was that there wasn't much of a future for them, because they had become increasingly irrelevant to the larger public discourse going on in America, in large part, due to their own insular liberal, hipper-than-thou parochialism and dis-connectedness to the country west and south of the Hudson River, and some rather uninspired editorial choices.
It was a mess.

Not that I was alone in my observations, given Michael Kinsley's spot-on take in The New Republic, Backwards Runs Newsweek, which could've easily been made the year before it ran last May and been just as accurate.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/backward-runs-newsweek

It's hardly breaking news that Newsweek had never been relevant in the first place in longstanding public policy backwaters like South Florida, since as far as I can remember, it was never ever cited by anyone at any time at any public policy gathering I or any of my civic-minded friends ever attended from the mid-'70's on.

But in certain places throughout the country where ideas, especially new ideas, still really matter and have not just currency but urgency, and are argued about and discussed at length -and I don't mean that in a pejorative fashion but simply as a descriptive- it actually was relevant as recently as ten years ago.

I know because I've been to places where that really was true, at least among a certain sub-group of the local population that I knew, which is to say, friends of mine whom reporters and columnists call for quotes.

Places with serious, smart and well-educated people who read voraciously and who consume multiple hard news sources and trade/specialty journals weekly by the barrel and mega-bite.

Cities like Boston, New York, New Haven, Washington, D.C. , The Research Triangle in North Carolina, Atlanta, Nashville, Louisville, Austin, Chicago and Evanston, Champaign/Urbana, Milwaukee, Madison, Ann Arbor, Columbus, Lawrence (KS), Albuquerque, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and Silicon Alley, Sacramento, certain parts of Los Angeles and Orange County, and yes, Bloomington.

See http://www.theatlantic.com/richard-florida/ for more on why it is certain U.S. cities are incubators of ideas, public policy amd innovation, while other places, like South Florida, aren't.



To its own dismay, Newsweek had become the proverbial boyfriend who hadn't gotten the hint that he was about to be tossed overboard in favor of the new, more-interesting boyfriend, who was lurking discreetly off-camera, who doesn't take her for granted.

Boyfriend #1 is blindsided, of course, but to anyone actually paying any attention, it had seemed self-evident and rather inevitable since it was clear that there were no longer any sparks in the relationship, just a drab, mundane sameness and shallow me-too-ism. Loser.

Well today, or rather yesterday, we learned that you, too, could have become a media mogul for the low introductory price of exactly $1.

But the fact that one American dollar was more than hundreds of people and entities thought Newsweek magazine was worth as a going concern is perhaps the most salient fact of all, and a real warning to those who currently take their dwindling readership for granted, like the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who are barely relevant or trusted in their very own neighborhoods, as they continue to dangerously list.
Man the lifeboats!

-----------
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100606096_pf.html
Post Co. discloses Newsweek's price tag: $1

The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 6, 2010; 7:11 PM

NEW YORK -- The Washington Post Co. has revealed exactly how much cash that audio equipment magnate Sidney Harman paid for Newsweek magazine this summer: $1.

The Post Co. also agreed to cover up to $10 million of Newsweek's existing bills. And it will hold on to certain employee pension liabilities, though it did not spell out a dollar figure in a regulatory filing Wednesday.

No one thought Harman paid much for Newsweek, which lost almost $30 million last year amid circulation and advertising declines.

But the magazine's sale for less than its $5.95-per-issue price on newsstands is still a grim milestone for a brand that was once a prized asset at the Post Co., which bought Newsweek in 1961.

The filing comes as speculation builds that Harman's Newsweek will form some kind of partnership with The Daily Beast, a news and opinion site owned by Barry Diller's media conglomerate, IAC/InterActiveCorp, and run by former New Yorker magazine editor Tina Brown.

In a piece commemorating the site's second anniversary on Wednesday, Brown answered the buzz about a deal with Newsweek by saying, "Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time."

Calls to The Daily Beast and Newsweek seeking further comment were not immediately returned. The Post Co. also declined to elaborate on its filing.

-------

The Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/

Media and investigative reporter Howard Kurtz joins The Daily Beast as Washington Bureau Chief.
By Tina Brown
October 5, 2010 12:40pm
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-05/howard-kurtz-joins-the-daily-beast/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsR4

-----
New York magazine's Daily Intel blog
What Would a Tina Brown–Helmed Daily Beast–Newsweek Hybrid Look Like?
By Chris Rovzar
10/6/10 at 3:20 PM
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/so_what_would_a_tina_brown-hel.html

New York magazine's Daily Intel blog
Michael Kinsley Attacks the New Newsweek, and We Feel Bad About It
By Jessica Pressler
5/22/09 at 10:11 AM
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/05/michael_kinsley_hates_the_new.html

New York magazine's Daily Intel blog
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/

Obamacare Death Panels have bad news for Newsweek: Doctors will pull the plug on mag at $75 a year; Newsweek R.I.P.

Obamacare Death Panels have bad news for Newsweek:
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'

Blah blah newsmag remake blah blah.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/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/2009/05/michael_kinsley_hates_the_new.html

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.

See rest of story at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091103713.html

With Hallandale Beach's Keystone Kops in charge, when will the Avenaim family finally get justice? And what about longstanding security problems at that building that have been overlooked?

With Hallandale Beach's Keystone Kops in charge, when will the Avenaim family finally get justice?

So, what's going on with Brian Bethell, the man who murdered Albert Avenaim of Aventura in Hallandale Beach -and two other innocent South Florida men- in 2006?
http://cbs4.com/video/?id=13909@wfor.dayport.com

The Brian Bethell who turned 43 recently.

You know, the man who brought two small kids with him and his girlfriend when they decided to go on a shopping spree with the dead men's credit cards at a Coral Springs Wal-Mart, as they had done before?

The man who was caught NOT due to anything in particular the Hallandale Beach Police Dept. had done, but rather because Mr. Avenaim's family had the good sense to take the initiative and put-up fliers at the store about the suspect, along with reward information.
This was why store employees recognized Bethell when he swung back by the store.

CBS-4's excellent reporter Ted Scouten did this report on the reward on March 3, 2006
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/wal-mart-employees-who-led-police-to-killer-get-reward/450206456

Yeah, the Hallandale Beach Police who were so concerned about the safety/conditions of the 2500 Hallandale Beach Blvd./Millennium complex for employees and visitors, that they provided evening security -from the comfort of their squad cars- for a few weeks after the murder of Mr. Avenaim.

But who, when asked, specifically, refused to say whether or not they were off-duty while they were parked in their squad cars, and when asked about all the self-evident missing, broken or obscured parking lot lights near the crime scene, acted like they couldn't quite hear you, even though you were just inches away.

This being HB, the squad cars were up near the Hallandale Beach Blvd. entrance, rather than being near the actual Avenaim murder crime scene.

(Not that their superiors higher up the chain were any more forthcoming with information, as Chief Thomas Magill and Capt. Robert Rodgers both played dumb about that whole
situation after I specifically asked them about it last June.)

Yes, the Hallandale Beach Police whose concern for public safety was such that, according to Capt. Rodgers, they wouldn't specifically ask, encourage or nudge the owners of the complex towards fixing their longstanding safety/lighting problems.

As it happens, those self-evident problems are ones I've discussed at length over the past two years with a few print and TV reporters here in South Florida, and which were NOT addressed by the complex's owners until only 3-4 weeks ago.

Yes, the Hallandale Beach Police Dept. led by the still-serving Chief Thomas Magill, whom as I've chronicled here, is a man who tried to have two innocent Hallandale Beach Police officers criminally prosecuted -for something they didn't do. See http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/dial-m-for-magill-and-mendacity.html

According to a recent check of the rather poky Broward County Clerks Office website,
http://www.clerk-17th-flcourts.org/bccoc2/pubsearch/case_summary.asp?FMCE96017183=CIV&FMCE96017183=CIV&01017198CF10A=CRM&05116917TC30A=CRM&06006136MM10A=CRM&hidCaseNumber=06003321CF10A&06003321CF10A=CRM&06005634CF10A=CRM&06003572CF10A=CRM&06005168CF10A=CRM&CACE01010726=CIV&hidSendingPage=search_results&hidCourtType=CRM&hidGeneralType=CRM&hidS=party_public&SearchT=&mscssid=&user_type=&hidPageName=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clerk-17th-flcourts.org%2Fbccoc2%2Fpubsearch%2Fpublic_search.asp%3F&btnSummary=View+Selected+Case

Brian Bethell will FINALLY go on trial on the 28th of April -a week from tomorrow.

Key Dates - Future Scheduled Events
04/28/2008 JURY TRIAL
Judge: PAUL L BACKMAN

You'd think that as the trial phase was getting closer, you'd see something about it in local media, but I've read nothing in the newspapers, seen nothing on TV, or, shocker, heard nothing about it on radio, in the South Florida of 2008 where a niche apparently exists for Mexican music but not an all-news radio station. Que pasa?

Over the next few days, if everything goes according to schedule, I'll be cobbling together all the things that I already know and have already written about the Millennium situation -and kept in the deep freeze Draft for months- which, along with some photographs I've taken over the years, will buttress my points.
I'll post them to both Hallandale Beach Blog and parent blog, South Beach Hoosier, too.
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/

You can then draw your own conclusions.
________________________________
Speaking of the curious lack of media curiosity down here with regards to the upcoming Bethell murder trial, below you'll find a series of emails and notes which I've put together, which, taken in toto, paints a very accurate but damning portrait of the local news media as they currently
choose to practice their craft.

It also includes a bad memory for yours truly on a summer that might've been spent so much better.
What will soon follow is an excerpted copy of an email that I sent on February 8, 2008 to about a half-dozen or so Local 10 TV reporters, including Roger Lohse.

In case you don't recall the specifics of the news story under discussion below, it was Lohse's Local 10 news report on February 7th concerning the curious circumstances of the July 2007
accidental death of Myron Kafka of Hollywood, in the lobby of Millennium's HQ at 2500 Hallandale Beach Blvd. http://www.local10.com/news/13750861/detail.html

Perhaps this might help jog your memory a bit:

excerpted from:
AROUND SOUTH FLORIDA
The Miami Herald
July 24, 2007
Miami Herald Staff Report

HALLANDALE BEACH BODY FOUND TRAPPED BETWEEN ELEVATOR, GATE

An employee at a Hallandale Beach medical office discovered the body of an 81-year-old man early Monday morning, police said. The man, identified as Myron Kafka of Hollywood, was trapped between an elevator and a metal gate. The incident happened inside the Millennium Building, 2500 E. Hallandale Beach Blvd. The 5,000-square-foot structure houses several medical offices, authorities said. Police believe the slender man got caught between the gate and the elevator. He did not appear to be crushed, police said. "We don't know how he died or how long he has been there," said Andrew Casper, a Hallandale Beach police spokesman.
_____________________________________
A later report from AP: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wirestory?id=3412355

Man Dies Trapped Between Elevator, Gate
Elderly Man Dies After Becoming Trapped Between Elevator, Security Gate at Medical Building.
The Associated Press

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla.
An elderly man died of a heart attack after he became trapped between an elevator and a security gate in a medical building, authorities said.

The death of Myron Kafka, 81, was considered accidental, Hallandale Beach spokesman Andrew Casper said.
Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper said Tuesday that Kafka had been dead at least two days when staff from the building discovered his body on Monday.
Kafka was trapped in the 14-inch space between the elevator doors and a locked, illegally installed security gate, authorities said. Perper said Kafka may have been there since Friday afternoon, when he was last seen alive. According to the medical examiner's report, Kafka had been at his doctor's office, located in the building.
Officials ordered the gate removed and cited the property for installing it.
_________________________________
Long ignored public safety problems at 2500 Hallandale Beach Blvd.; HB Police ignore problem
Friday February 8th, 2008

I would like to speak with you soon -and possibly meet with you if possible- so we can talk about some other serious public safety problems I know about concerning the 2500 Hallandale Beach Blvd./Millennium complex, the subject of Roger Lohse's Thursday night report on Local 10's 11 p.m.newscast.

They consist of some first-hand observations I initially noticed in the aftermath of the Feb. 10th, 2006 murder of Albert Avenaim of Aventura, outside of Padrino's Cuban Restaurant, in a particularly senseless death, even by South Florida's grisly standards.
www.local10.com/news/7000578/detail.html
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-36379.html

This Sunday will mark exactly two years since Mr. Avenaim's untimely murder.

What do you suppose has changed about the Millennium complex, safety-wise, in those two intervening years? Nothing.

And if you count the responsible property owners STILL not doing the minimum to do right by the public, and I do, it's actually worse than nothing, it's negligence.

In the days after the murder, I saw some things that just didn't make any common sense, but which, to me, were self-evident signs of negligence -dare I say gross negligence?- by the property owners and management, abetted in part by the City of Hallandale Beach's own incompetence, which, typically, responded with a fig leaf, rather than employing a pro-active
approach that showed some common sense and foresight.

Frankly, I suspect most of what I know to be completely unknown to the various insurance companies that cover the myriad owners/investors of that particular property, since the insurance companies probably assume that there's no way their clients at Millennium would intentionally put people in harm's way, whether employees or patrons of the various business establishments renting space there.

Through photographs I've taken of the property since Mr. Avenaim's murder two years ago, I can show that is NOT the case.

If anything, a reasonable person might infer from the preponderance of evidence that their inaction fell far below the standard that one reasonably expects, and actually shows a callous disregard for public safety, since it's clear they haven't maintained the property in a safe
manner.

As you may already know, Millennium and their various partners have some rather lofty -I say grandiose- plans to transform that property into a huge office/condo complex showplace, complete with all sorts of amenities for their tenants and the public.

And who's leading that effort?

Well, none other than garrulous State Senator Steve Geller, the FL Senate Democratic leader, and someone I'm very open about regarding as a cancer on Broward County's political system and public policy arena, as my blogs make clear.
Yes, the Steve Geller that has his office located at the HB City Hall.

(Geller is one of the individuals I hold most personally responsible for the State of Florida moving its presidential primary from March to last week, despite the perfectly predicted
downside of losing all Democratic delegates to the Denver DNC this summer.)

How do I know that Geller represents Millennium?

I was one of the select few to attend a sparsely-attended public meeting that Millennium was forced to hold, in December of 2006, in HB's Cultural Center behind their City Hall.

I got there early, expecting some emotional fireworks because of the rather predictable concerns about exacerbating the already bad neighborhood traffic-flow on HBB, the completely out-of-proportion size of the plan, etc., and sat at the table next to Miami Herald reporter Jennifer Lebovich.

Once I got there and had grabbed a donut and some coffee, and returned to the table I had all to myself, my biggest thought while jotting down some thoughts in my legal pad was making sure to leave early enough so that I could get home and not miss a minute of a new episode of LOST.
Really. I'd forgotten to program my VCR.

But then, quite unexpectedly, to my great surprise, in walked Geller and his retinue with trademark showy boisterousness, with him not waiting even two beats before continuing on a rant/harangue disparaging then-Gov.-Elect Crist in tones that would've been loud enough for everyone in the room to hear if the room had been half-full -wishful thinking- say, 150-200 people.

As it was, counting his Millennium crew and the interested public, such as it was, there were no more than 25 people in that room, so his voice was bouncing off the walls.

To be so self-absorbed as to publicly belittle Crist in front of people -and a reporter- before he'd even taken the oath of office, showed me the side of Geller I'd often read and heard about, but never seen in person for myself.

But I recognized the type, since I'd had dealings with Rahm Emanuel in Washington before he was anybody of note, per se, and he already had that insufferable attitude and ego thing down pat.

Geller's whole shtick was so over-the-top as to be farcical, and I debated back and forth in my head at the time whether I ought to dispense with pleasantries and the subject at hand, and simply drop my knowledge of what hasn't transpired at 2500 HBB on Geller and Millennium, in front of reporter Lebovich, once the presentation was over and the Q&A began in earnest.

In the end, I just didn't trust the judgment of the crowd or Lebovich's ability to synthesize the narrative and connect all the dots in a way that would get all the pertinent facts out.

Given my interests and background, and the fact that I've been to dozens of these sorts of development meetings over the years in Northern Virginia and D.C., I thought I had a pretty good idea how the evening would go.

But listening to the sheer obfuscation and mis-direction coming out of Geller's mouth, his Pooh-poohing of the patently obvious worsening traffic problems on HBB if the project was approved, as if he could wave a magic wand over them, rendering them invisible, well, it was all I could do to not ask him straight out if he and his colleagues even recognized the name of Albert Avenaim -and then go on offense.

As to the seriousness of the safety issues, this isn't just a hunch or my opinion, but rather something which I've captured with photographs over the past two years, though to their great shame and discredit, the City of Hallandale Beach's response, nothing, is almost as criminally
negligent. (Even today, weeks after the Boca Mall murders!)

I've spoken with great specificity about it with a number of people, including serious newspaper reporters as well as the Hallandale Beach Police Dept., including Capt Robert Rodgers and Police Chief Thomas Magill.

The city and Police have done nothing, and the problems I know about remain much as they did two years ago: waiting for another innocent victim.

(You'll recall that Mr. Avenaim's murder was solved NOT as a result of anything the HB Police Dept. did specifically, or even BSO, but rather thru the efforts of the alert Wal-Mart employees, after the guilty party, Brian Bethell, tried to use the third of his his victim's credit cards at their Coral Springs location, his second visit there.
You'll also recall he felt so confident, he even brought along his girlfriend and two toddlers,
which, I think, tells you everything you need to know about him.
Unlike the situation with the individual who called police per the shooting of the BSO deputy in Hollywood late last year, after driving the suspect in his car to the Pawn Shop near 441, who received a monetary reward from Crime Stoppers, I believe Channel Ten reported that the Wal-Mart employees who thought something was fishy with Brian Bethell did not get any kind of reward from Crime Stoppers.)
I myself grew-up in North Miami Beach, but spent lots of time in both Hollywood Beach and Hallandale, so I recall what it was like physically before the final capitulation to the condo canyons.

When my family moved to South Florida in the summer of 1968, when I was seven, we stayed at the small hotel next to the iconic HB water tower for 2-3 weeks, until my parents found a suitable apt. in NMB they liked.

Because of that fact, and our regular visits there over the years, I distinctly recall the way the beach in Hallandale looked then, with actual dunes of some height, and whispering pines along them. It was so peaceful and relaxing late in the afternoon.

What's happened to that area of the public beach since then is a disgrace, with the city not even having the common sense to conduct a shadow study before approving The Beach Club project, which happened while I was still in the D.C. area.

In order to keep my sanity, though it's far from the scope I had initially envisioned or hoped for, largely because of time constraints, I actually had to start a blog once I saw how absurd, pathetic and illogical things were done at HB's City Hall, where both "rhyme" and "reason" are unknown quantities.

Honestly, I can't help think that fictional mid-'60's Sparta portrayed in In The Heat of the Night has nothing on Hallandale Beach now in the backwards department.

Though I've lived in lots of different kinds of towns of varying sizes and nature all over the country, I've never heard of a real city where city employees were and are more risk averse to doing their job properly, and management was less reluctant to see to it that they did.
Lax oversight hardly begins to describe it.

Just so you know, that's the bias I bring to this matter.

Not to laugh about it, but I literally saw another prime example just 48 hours ago, right on HBB, where you can see it within spitting distance of the HB Chamber of Commerce.
Hiding in plain sight.
Yes, the forest for the trees.

Please contact me directly when you have some time to talk about the situation.

Sincerely,
DBS
__________________________________________
To give you some better perspective on the above, here's an excerpt from an email I sent on February 21, 2008 and sent to some Local 10 News execs.
More proof that Channel 10 News isn't what it used to be: the latest sad example

To: "Peter Burke" pburke@ibsys.com, "Michelle Solomon" msolomon@ibsys.com

Some constructive criticism, on the chance that it may do some good... but I won't hold my breath.

Two weeks ago, after watching Roger Lohse's Local10 news report on Feb. 7th on Mr. Kafka's
death alongside the lobby elevator of Millennium LLC's HQ at 2500 Hallandale Beach Blvd., a property I'm very familiar with, I tried to alert him and some of your reporters to the fact that I was aware of information that could show that there was a continuing pattern of neglect surrounding the maintenance of the Millennium property, going back to at least the time of the Albert Avenaim murder at Padrino's Cuban Cuisine two years ago -in the very same retail/office complex.

(Why yes, the very same one that State Senator Steve Geller, the FL Senate Democratic leader represents and lobbies on behalf of. Not that your news reports ever mentioned it)
As it happens, February 10th was the second anniversary of Mr. Avenaim's murder.

Sadly for you two, none of the half-dozen news reporters I emailed at Channel 10 bothered to respond to my query, despite my making it very easy for them to reach me and get the information.

I have to tell you, Mr. Burke and Ms. Solomon, even by South Florida's often shallow-end-of-the-pool news standards, that sort of jaded and apathetic response among reporters still surprises.
But it is what it is.

Frankly, the sad truth is that other than Michael Putney and Glenna Milberg, there's no compelling reason to watch your oh-so-predictable newscasts.

Not that you asked, but I've since spoken to a number of other reporters in town, print and electronic, some of whom immediately saw the facts for what they were, and were able to
connect the dots -just as I described them.

They didn't need to be asked twice.

Having photographs to buttress my points surely went a long way towards assuaging any of their doubts, yet strangely, that didn't seem to cut much slack with your own reporters.

By the way, the last time I checked, Brian Bethell, the man who murdered Mr. Avenaim and two other South Florida men two years ago, on his Friday spree killings-cum-Wal-Mart shopping sprees, was scheduled to go on trial in the not-too-distant future at the Main Broward County Courthouse in Ft. Lauderdale, with Judge Paul Backman presiding.

You might want to have someone check that out if you could tear your reporters away from their steady diet of chick lit lite/yenta-oriented botox/diet/fashion/shopping/pseudo-celeb/Idol stories.

In any case, I'll probably be there in court at first to take the measure of the jury and the D.A. to see how it all plays out.

Also, before I close, since your particular company seems to place such a high value on "relevant and engaging content," you should know that the so-called related links on your website's story, below, are nothing but Walgreens cosmetics commercials -not news!And that's been the case for at least two weeks.
So much for any sort of quality control.

Please don't bother responding to this email, your reporters' actions(!) already speak volumes!

DBS, Hallandale Beach, FL
www.SouthBeachHoosier.blogspot.com
www.HallandaleBeachBlog.blogspot.com
Lawsuit Filed After Bizarre Elevator Incident

Lawsuit Filed After Bizarre Elevator Incident. The family of an 81-year-old man whose body was found trapped between a security gate and elevator door at a medical building in Hallandale Beach last year...
Article: http://www.local10.com/news/15251505/detail.html
_________________________________________
Despite my specific admonition not to respond, what do you suppose I received on Feb. 21st?
Yes, an email from Michelle Solomon, someone I'd heretofore never heard of before sending an
email to her about my experiences with the apathetic and not-so-curious Channel 10 reporters.

Subject: RE: More proof that Channel 10 News isn't what it used to be: the latest sad example
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008
From: "Solomon, Michelle" msolomon@ibsys.com

I have sent this to our news director and general manager.

Michelle Solomon Executive Producer Local 10 Interactive www.Local10.com WPLG WPLG-DT Miami-Fort Lauderdale 305-324-2604 Business msolomon@local10.com www.ibsys.com
_________________________________________
And who is Michelle Solomon?
Read this post from a Fort Myers-based blog and judge for yourself.
The title says it all.

Local10.com Miami Steals Blog Content
http://activerain.com/blogsview/292203/Local1-com-Miami-Steals
__________________________________________
Some other facts/bias you should know about in making up your mind about all this.

I also sent a bcc copy of all my correspondence to and from Channel 10 to the head news person for Post-Newsweek, who is at at the ABC O&O in Detroit, WXYZ.
I never heard back from her.

As for Channel 10 itself, I applied and was accepted to be an intern at Channel 10 after my sophomore year at IU, the summer of 1981.
But I got totally screwed out of the great gig by the IU Telecommunications Dept. Chairman.

As it happens, the Chair back then was actually someone who knew me and my personality, since I'd gotten nothing but A's in all my Telecom classes, and was a heavy contributor to debate, especially in classes he taught.

He couldn't quite believe that as a Junior-to-be, I'd already nabbed a sweet gig at the #1 TV news operation in the state of Florida, and a Post-Newsweek station at that.
(This was back when Channel 10 under the late Ann Bishop, regularly whipped every TV station in sight.)

I had some bright ideas about navigating that internship position into something better the following summer with the Post-Newsweek gang up in DC.

I even had some IU friends in the suburban D.C. area, also Telecom students, who said that if things worked out for me with Kate Graham's 15th Street Crew at the Washington Post or over at Newsweek, perhaps I could even live with them over the summer.
Being in D.C. then would've been heaven, plus I'd have been able to get a first-hand view of D.C. years earlier than I actually did, which might've allowed me to be much smarter about some things once I got there, instead of the way things actually went once I got there.

But instead of being happy for me or giving off Good Vibrations, the Chairman said that the dept. rules were that only students who had already completed their Junior year could get internships, or the credit that might go with it.

I was told that the Dept.'s reasoning was that such a rule would prevent younger students from beating Juniors in the Telecom Dept. to the punch and grabbing precious internships.

(Of course, the only other IU Telecom student I knew about in South Florida was Lisa Abrell, someone I spoke to fairly regularly in classes, and when I ran into her on campus.
She was the bright and friendly daughter of WTVJ/Channel 4's Joe Abrell, who had been the station's News Director, Director of Public Affairs and public policy show host (Montage), and still later, served as a Dolphins VP under the Robbie family, being instrumental in the building of Joe Robbie Stadium.
Certainly Lisa had opportunities I could only dream of, and while I understood how the Dept.s policy might make sense for the Indy or Louisville market, even Chicago, because of the sheer number of IU Telecom students, it made less sense when applied to someone like me, about a thousand miles away.)

The fact that the Channel 10 Personnel Director had had good results in the past with IU student interns at other stations she'd been at was a tremendous help to me, but the fact is, we
really hit it off, so she really, really wanted me to work there.

In fact, to show what she was willing to do, after I'd heard the bad news from the Chair, she had me come down to the station so she could call the Chair up on the phone and plead my case, because she could see that I'd be a great addition to 3990 Biscayne Blvd.

But despite the Personnel Director's powers of persuasion, it counted for nothing in the end.

Unfortunately, as was so often the case at IU, rigid adherence to silly and unwieldy rules often counted for more than actual ability and desire.

I could never look at that professor in quite the same way as I had previously, and made a point of telling other Telecom professors about what had happened to me, so they could warn younger students in the Dept. that the Telecom Dept. would NOT have their back.

No internship for South Beach Hoosier at Channel 10 meant suddenly having to scramble at the last minute for summer jobs that would give me the means to pay three times what in-state Hoosiers were paying for classes.