Showing posts with label The Juice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Juice. Show all posts

Monday, January 10, 2011

A longstanding question about the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes that nobody else ever asks publicly

For a publication that in its articles and columns makes a big deal about accountability and transparency, why doesn't the the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes management team ACTUALLY run their work email addresses on their website, so that readers can contact them directly about either complaints, compliments or suggestions, instead of hiding behind one of those preposterous walls of anonymity as they currently do?
It's the year 2011 for God's sake.
Link
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/about/staff/ http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?to=614131

Despite all
their myriad longstanding problems, which I've chronicled on my blog at great length, the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel ACTUALLY run their management's email addresses on their websites and in the newspaper, since as you all know from what I've written and posted here over the past few years, I heard more than a few times from former Herald Senior VP and Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, so why won't the NewTimes?

You already know the maxim about the goose and the gander, there's no need for me to repeat it here.
But it IS very noticeable that the NewTimes doesn't practice what they preach.

And just out of curiosity, how much money do you think the NewTimes make a year from their escort/sex ads?

And why do the
Herald and Sun-Sentinel never take anyone there to task when they make self-evident factual mistakes, or seem to conspicuously leave out pertinent facts from a so-called article, even though it so often reads like a personal or political screed, which had pretty much been the situation at The Juice blog since Thomas Francis left? http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/

Though I have been listed on their blog roll for a few years, I haven't read it since Thomas left, since it seems to be nothing but shallow screeds preaching to the choir, of which their current offering is par for the course.
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2011/01/tucson_shooting_gabrielle_giffords_olbermann.php

And if you guessed that they used Allen West's name in the headline -again!- go to the head of the class.


In that sense, they're like the oddball guy who keeps showing up at the beach or park with a snake on his shoulder, so desperate to get attention that he'll do anything.

It's sorta funny, but mostly, it's just sad, and a waste of space.

Personally, I'd much rather pay a dollar or two every week and have more well-written stories and less schlocky articles and ads.

But that's just me.

I guess there's gold in them thar escort ads.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss -the apple doesn't fall far from the Mike Good tree in Mark Antonio; Hallandale Beach NEEDS an outsider as CM

Three-quarters of the 2010 Hallandale Beach Rubber Stamp Crew that have made this dysfunctional ocean-side South Florida community a perennial laughing-stock, in large part by keeping its own citizen taxpayers in the dark and on the outside looking in, while Mayor Joy Cooper and City Manager Mike Good did whatever they pleased.
Above, as they appeared in a 2008 campaign flyer, left-to-right:
William Julian, Dotty Ross and Joy Cooper.
Missing
Rubber Stamp: Anthony A. Sanders.

The predicates for my blog post today have been evident for days now, but on the chance that you haven't seen them all yet, they are the following:

Hallandale Beach to take another look at city manager
By Amy Sherman,The Miami Herald
May 6, 2010

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hallandale/fl-hallandale-city-manager-20100505,0,3707930.story

Hallandale Beach city commissioners voted Wednesday to bring back an item in two weeks that could lead to firing City Manager Mike Good.

Commissioners said Good has been unresponsive and preoccupied with personal problems that Mayor Joy Cooper said included "back problems, cancer, a daughter falling victim to easy access to pain clinics, an ailing grandmother . . . and of course the continued stress of dealing with the antics of Commissioner London."

Commissioner Keith London is the pony-tailed commissioner who has challenged the status quo and often been at odds with Cooper and Good.

Good told commissioners that his family issues had been resolved, and suggested that commissioners evaluate him again in six months.

"The mayor is right in the fact that I have had a lot of issues," Good said.

Under his contract, Good, who is 49, would get nine months of severance pay and health insurance for himself and his family until he is eligible for Medicare.

Commissioner Dorothy Ross was the only member to vote against the motion.

-----

Hallandale Beach firing chronically absent city manager
By Jennifer Gollan, Sun Sentinel
May 20, 2010

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hallandale/fl-hallandale-firing-20100520,0,3480334.story

Longtime Hallandale Beach City Manager Mike Good is being fired after failing to show up for work off and on since January. He is entitled to a severance package that could cost taxpayers $306,893, according to the city.

City commissioners cited chronic absences, an uncommunicative work style and questionable contracts as reasons for his dismissal.

Good, 48, could not be reached for comment despite three messages left at his home and office.

"It is long overdue," said Commissioner Keith London on Thursday. "The untold secret all around town is that guy does not show up for work."

Indeed, Mayor Joy Cooper said Good's ouster was somewhat delayed because he refused to schedule it for commission discussion over the last six weeks.

City commissioners on Wednesday night suspended Good for 45 days. He has five days to request a public hearing to appeal the decision. If he does not respond, the commission will likely move to fire Good in the next 30 days.

Assistant City Manager Mark Antonio was named interim city manager. The city is working out how much he will earn as part of a new contract.

Good joined the city in March 1985 as a welder and rose through the ranks, becoming city manager in November 2002. His total compensation last year for salary, pension, health benefits and other insurance and car allowance was roughly $275,139.

He drew stiff criticism in December 2008 when he grossed $422,373 in salary and benefits. That sum included $176,054 in accrued vacation and sick time he collected after he resigned, only to be re-hired days later. At the time, the city reasoned it would save money by halting contributions to his pension plan, which promised retirees a set benefit.

Commissioners on Wednesday offered Good five months of severance worth roughly $88,547. He is also entitled to health insurance for him and his family until he is eligible for Medicare at 62, and tuition and books so he can complete his masters degree in public administration.

Good is not owed any money for unused sick and vacation time, Antonio said, adding that it is not clear how many unpaid days Good took.

The deal is still pending Good's approval.

In a telephone interview, Cooper said Good stopped consistently turning up for work in January and then he took family medical leave for two weeks, using sick and vacation time. His attendance failed to improve, leading commissioners to take preliminary steps to fire him Wednesday.

London said he was also troubled by some of Good's actions. For example, he said Good approved a yearlong contract worth at least $36,000 with consultant Joseph Kessel but failed to inform the commission. City rules require the city manager to report such expenditures to commissioners each month.

"The city manager's obligation is to report to us when he uses his spending authority," London said. "He is breaking the city ordinance. This is city taxpayer money."

The July 2008 contract calls for Kessel, a Realtor with Keller Williams, to assist the city manager with finances, public relations, growth management, and strategic planning.

Prior to becoming a Realtor, Kessel was a chief operating officer for Esat Corporation, a Melbourne-based healthcare technology company that went bankrupt in the dot com bust; and an executive vice president at Sequoia Corporation, a healthcare technology company bought by Fort Lauderdale-based Citrix Systems, Inc.

London said he had asked Good for documents showing how much Kessel has earned, but never received them.

Cooper said she had "no issue" with the contract.

"I was aware that Joe Kessel was doing work under contract," Cooper said. "He was contracted with the city manager to work on the purchase of a property for Sunset Park a year and a half ago. And he also worked on redoing the Golden Isles Tennis Center."

Cooper said she could not explain why other commissioners did not know about the contract, not could she provide details on how Kessel helped clinch either deal.

In an interview, Kessel said he received only $4,200 around the end of 2008.

"I don't know what the big to-do is," said Kessel, who also serves on the Hallandale Beach Area Chamber of Commerce board.

-----

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Mayo on the Side blog of columnist
Michael Mayo
Hallandale Beach city manager Good on chopping block
Posted by Michael Mayo on May 19, 2010 09:07 AM


The Hallandale Beach city commission is poised to fire longtime city manager Mike Good.

A resolution to be considered at a 7:30 p.m. meeting tonight cites Good's "repeated and ongoing failure to report to work during normal business hours, failure to maintain communication with the city commission and city staff, and his resulting failure to adequately perform his duties and responsibilities as city manager."

Read the rest of the post at:
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/columnists/mayo/blog/2010/05/hallandale_beach_city_manager.html


-----

BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes
Broward
Handsomely Paid Hallandale City Manager Had 50 Percent Attendance
By Thomas Francis, Thursday, May. 20 2010 @ 10:14AM

During last night's Hallandale Beach Commission meeting, Vice Mayor Bill Julian cited documents indicating that over the past six months, City Manager Mike Good came to city hall on only about half the work days.

That spotty attendance record made it hard to meet with city staff, business owners and other members of the community. Julian said it was one of the primary reasons he reversed his past support of Good and voted to continue moving toward terminating Good's employment.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/05/mike_good_hallandale_beach_attendance_missed_work.php

-----

BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes
Broward
Hallandale Vice Mayor Speaks About Firing His "Friend," the City Manager By Thomas Francis, Thursday, May. 20 2010 @ 2:32PM

Hallandale Beach Vice Mayor Bill Julian says that he considers Mike Good a "friend" but that the city manager's absenteeism made it necessary for the commission to find another person for the job.

At the meeting yesterday, Julian pointed to documents that showed that in 2010, Good only made it to work roughly half the time.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/05/hallandale_vice_mayor_speaks_a.php

-----

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Hallandale Beach's proposed exit deal for Mike Good
7:02 PM EDT, May 20, 2010

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hallandale/fl-hallandale-firing-box-20100520,0,3956290.story


Total annual compensation: $275,139

Base salary: $212,972

City contribution to 401(k): $30,754

Health, life, dental and disability insurance: $19,413

Car allowance: $12,000

City's exit offer: $306,893

Severance: $88,740

Health insurance: $16,554 a year until age 62, for a total of $215,000.

Tuition and books to finish masters degree in public administration (he has nine credits left): $3,153

SOURCE: City of Hallandale Beach


-----

BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes

If a City Manager Is Hit by Scandal and the Dailies Don't Report It, Did It Really Happen?
By Thomas Francis, Friday, May. 21 2010 @ 9:07AM


Hallandale Beach Vice Mayor Bill Julian says he was "not concerned" about reports of an ethically dubious contract between City Manager Mike Good and a local real estate agent because those reports did not appear in the Miami Herald or Sun-Sentinel. They appeared here in Juice and in a print edition of New Times.

The city is finalizing its termination of Good, but Julian's remarks illustrate the difficulty that the region's major newspapers have in performing watchdog duties, given their dwindling resources and economically frail condition. If they cannot, the question is how that affects local government.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/05/hallandale_city_manager_firing_julian_cooper_good.php

-----

A couple of things for you to consider after reading the above:

First, addition-by-subtraction works in local government as well as it does in sports, and this situation proves that, since people can actually imagine a future where information is not kept by the hired help (staff) from both the elected officials and the citizens of this community.


Second, the next few months are going to be
VERY DIFFICULT for quite a lot of people in this community who have become quite accustomed to taking a lot of things here for granted, not least, in some cases, their job at HB City Hall, whether elected or otherwise.
This is all for the -wait for it- GOOD.

Many of my friends and I plan on having a lot to do with that.

People who have supported and winked at the ruinous Mike Good & Joy Cooper Regime without question for years
without ever uttering a single independent thought are going to find themselves under the microscope.

I won't name them all here, but some of them are named Alexander Lewy, Patricia Genetti, Joe Kessell and the Brown family, the latter of whom seems to have been the lucky recipient of more HB taxpayer grants and CRA loans than seems either reasonable, logical or desirable.

Their condescending words and brazen behavior, along with their complete unwillingness to deal straight-forwardly with the citizen taxpayers of this community, plus the generally
questionable -and perhaps even illegal- way things have been done for years at HB City Hall under Good & Cooper and the city staff, leads me to state publicly here what I've already expressed in emails around the region over the past year: these particular people, along with their many pals, clones and acolytes around town, should be prepared for their words and behavior to get the full-airing before the community its long deserved but heretofore avoided.
Me, I'm happy to help make that a reality!


As some of you who communicate with me fairly often already know, the two HB City Hall apologists who have the most to fear most immediately from Hallandale Beach voters knowing what their real words and behavior are like are Alexander Lewy and William Julian., both candidates for City Commission in November.

This summer, their own foolish and condescending words and brazen behavior will be like a hanging noose they self-administer, while the rest of us just watch.

Trust me, the more you know about these two, the more that you will see why they are like poison for this community: TOXIC!


Are the beleaguered citizens of Hallandale Beach honestly supposed to believe that all this dysfunctionalism at HB City Hall was going on for years without ANY other Broward elected officials noticing what was happening on U.S-1, when it was patently obvious that everything that happened there happened ONLY with the direct approval of Mike Good and Joy Cooper?

So nobody at the Broward County Commission, the Broward League of Cities, the Broward MPO or the South Florida Regional Planning Council had any idea?
Really?

Of course, in the recent past, as she has always been so quick to remind everyone without any prompting, Joy Cooper was the head of the Broward League of Cities, so perhaps that explains why the elected officials over at that not particularly taxpayer-friendly group looked the other way.

Do you think that Joy Cooper being in charge at the LOC is the reason that she told Mike Good in 2008 to get some money together and build her a brand new office up on the second floor of City Hall, even though there was nothing physically wrong with her old office?

Other than her being the city's presiding officer at meetings and being able to call emergency Commission meetings, under the city's charter, Cooper has no more power that any other elected commissioner.

So why is it that more than 16 months after Cooper got her brand new office, her name does NOT actually appear anywhere on the building's directory downstairs when you first walk into the building?

That's taking government stealthiness to a new low, but then that's what Hallandale Beach City Hall specializes in.

Are there other City Halls in South Florida that don't actually mention where the mayor's office is located on a bldg. directory?
Me, I get around the area and keep my ears open, but I'm not aware of another one.

At consecutive meetings over a few months this Spring to decide the future of the Westin Diplomat's incompatible LAC proposal, I reminded the Broward Planning Council and the Broward County Commission that Mike Good, Joy Cooper and Commissioners William Julian, Dotty Ross and Anthony A. Sanders had consistently rejected calls by the community to put the developer's documents on the city's third-rate website for citizens to read them and see what was in them, as they consistently refused to second Comm. Keith London's common sense motion to do so.
Mike Good and Joy Cooper didn't like that idea, so it died, over-and-over.

The logical result of this thoroughly anti-democratic, anti-transparency behavior was that HB citizens could only see the public docs on the city's website 28 hours before the first vote in the city took place, before the HB Planning & Zoning Advisory Board.
And the very next day, the City Commission voted.

That's Mike Good and Joy Cooper's view of government transparency in a nut-shell: keep relevant public documents away from citizen taxpayers until the last possible minute, even while meeting and speaking constantly with the developers, lawyers and lobbyists who already knew everything in them.

While the Broward Planning Council, Broward County Commission and their staffs had weeks to examine the docs, 4/5ths of the city's elected officials and the City Manager who is SUPPOSED to work for them decided that they didn't want the people they work for to know what was in those documents.

That wasn't by accident, that was THEIR plan from the beginning to help the developer get the project approved over the wishes of the majority of the community.

The larger question of public officials looking the other way while something wicked or creepy was happening right in front of them is an especially uncomfortable question for people who have actually had an office located in Hallandale Beach City Hall while Mike Good has been City Manager and Joy Cooper has been Mayor -people like Joe Gibbons and Steve Geller and Eleanor Sobel.

Their complete silence for YEARS about what's been going on at HB City Hall will definitely have some negative consequences for them in the near-future, as they fully should expect well-informed citizens to ask some hard questions about their rather convenient laissez-faire attitude towards incompetency and sleazy corruption on the taxpayer's dime.

For instance, can you name one city in the State of Florida besides Hallandale Beach wherein the City Commission has hired their City Manager, Police Chief and Fire Chief WITHOUT that action ever:
a.) being placed on a public agenda in advance of the meeting,
b.) being approved without ANY citizens being present to discuss the matter, and
c.) taking place in a room where the vote was not videotaped?

That doesn't happen by accident, that's intentional.
That's THEIR plan.
Keep Hallandale Beach taxpayers in the dark and on the outside looking in.

As to the ethical fitness of interim HB City Manager, Mark A. Antonio, who already makes just under $200,000 a year in salary and benefits as an Assistant City Manager for this small ocean-side city of under 4.5 square miles, the apple doesn't fall far from the Mike Good tree.

For more info on Antonio's less-than-transparent management style, please see these previous posts:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/latest-unethical-lowlight-at-hallandale.html
and
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/kessel-chronicles-story-thus-far-now.html.
It speaks for itself.

Hallandale Beach's pro-reform citizens desperately want an outsider brought in as City Manager who will work diligently and cooperatively with the community to make it the prosperous city it ought to be in fact.
An outsider who'll uphold the spirit and letter of the state's Sunshine Laws and who will fire city employees who evade it.

Because Hallandale Beach City Hall needs cleaning from top-to-bottom, Hallandale Beach's pro-reform citizens DON'T want to recycle one of the city's high-paid apologists for the ancien régime.
Mark A. Antonio is NOT part of the solution, he's a systemic part of the larger problem.

Friday, April 9, 2010

The Kessel Chronicles, The Story Thus Far -Now with YouTube!

Friday April 9th, 2010 


An email that I sent out this afternoon said...

Over the past few days I've been playing around with the videotapes I recorded of the Feb. 25th Broward Planning Council meeting and the March 23rd Broward County Commission meeting on the Diplomat LAC proposal, trying to edit out the dead time before and after each speaker commented, with special attention given to Joe Kessel testifying without declaring his particular status as an agent of HB City Hall.

Unfortunately, I can't share them here as I'd 
like to because Gmail's limit on attachments

is 25MB and they're 139 MB, so please go to my YouTube page where I have -FINALLY-uploaded the first of many dozens of videos to come on this issue, and the many others

I've written about in the past: meetings of the Broward Ethics Comm., Broward
Legislative Delegation
, Johnson Street RFP for Hollywood Beach, the Hollywood

and HB City Commission/CRA meetings, et al.
http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

Trust me, when you see how professional
and thorough the recent Hollywood Citizen Budget meeting I attended was, with Dept. Heads, not the City Manager, discussing their dept.in great detail and showing all the pertinent facts and figures, including number of
employees, and answering citizens
questions in an honest and forthright fashion, and compare it to the woefully inexact and dismissive solo performances we've seen of HB City Manager Mike Good in the recent HB Quadrant Dog & Pony shows, you'll see a glimpse of how things ought to be done here: Professionally.


Henceforth, Hallandale Beach City Hall will no longer be able to deny the existence of
longstanding problems that you and I and everyone else in the world -but them!can see clearly: serial apathy, incompetency, rude and unprofessional behavior and self- evident corruption at 400 S. Federal Highway.

The whole world will be watching.
Well, at least the part in our corner of the world that cares or is curious about good government and checks and balances!

The reporters and editors who've heretofore commiserated but
never actually done
anything to bring to light publicly the many matters
that we've had to deal with for years,
will now find themselves in a
most familiar place: on the outside looking in.
Where they already are now.


They will be standing there with all the other South Florida reporters
and editors whoNEVER could be bothered to actually show-up and see for themselves how systematically anti-democratic and corrupt 
the crew at HB City Hall is.

Never
bothered to respond to any of the myriad emails or phone calls that you and I have sent over the years about what was going on.

Never
seem inclined to find out how an entrenched culture of corruption could develop here where HB city employees would think it's normal or appropriate to try to physically prevent citizens like me from attending a publicly-noticed meeting at City Hall for 15 minutes, until they canceled it right before yours truly finally got there -thanks to the assistance of Comm. London- as happened to me just last month?


Did Assistant City Manager Mark Antonio, he of the $150k-plus salary, and a member
of the Evaluation Committee that was meeting that day
try to explain to me when he saw me
there, why the meeting was
suddenly canceled once they knew I was trying to get to the meeting? 

More to the point, did he even attempt to explain why I, the only citizen trying to attend the meeting, was physically prevented by city employees from getting to the meeting?
No, he did not.

Instead,
Antonio just scurried back to his office like a petulant child, actually yelling at
Comm. London
, as he hurried to his bunkerof an office, safe from the reasonable questions
of a citizen taxpayer.


That my friends, is the low moral and professional caliber of people currently working at Hallandale Beach City Hall -and he's one of the persons in charge.
Now multiply that unprofessional attitude dozens of times.

It explains an awful lot here, doesn't it?


But it turns out, for the most part, with the exception of a few individual reporters who've
taken the time to try to understand the context and
nuance of the upside-down world of HB,
we don't really need print and
TV reporters to validate our legitimate concerns, after all.


We knew that all the time, of course, but it needs to be said publicly, so you can get used to it.
When you can independently make the information public and widely-known
to those who are actually concerned, who needs the South Florida media gatekeepers?

Not me.
I'm no longer going to jump through their hoops or send up a flare to
try to get their attention
about what's going on here.


With video and photos of the problems at your own fingertips, if you feel like it, you can share them with all your well-informed and concerned friends and ask them what they think, and make your concerns or comments public.

Chances are, your friends noticed the problem, too -last week or last month or last year- just like you.
And like you and me, wondered why HB City Hall, once again, consciously
chooses to ignore it or not fix it correctly, as if it would somehow fix itself.


(Some of you have already commented to me previously that my getting my YouTube Channel up-and-running is NOT good news for anti-reform and anti-transparency City Commission candidates William "Bill" Julian and Alexander Lewy, since both are deathly afraid of facts and sunshine. 
Yes, that's true, as you'll soon see, or for that matter, any candidate in this area who puts their personal ambitions above the interests of the greater community.)

True story: Last Thursday, April 1st, I went over to HB City Hall to look at the Public
Notice
board to see if they were trying to sneak 
something thru like what I mentioned earlier. 
Naturally, I looked at the printed calendar of advisory board meetings.

The calendar posted was for March, so I mentioned it to a city employee there and
suggested they put up the one for April.

Late yesterday afternoon, April 8th, I wentover there again.

Guess which month they had posted?

Correct -March 2010.
Like you expected differently?

I'll have the photos and video up later on my blog.

Not surprisingly, given what I'd been hinting for weeks in my emails and what has now become common knowledge, in part thru Thomas Francis' posts in his popular Juice blog at the NewTimes, my first uploaded video is of Joe Kessel, in this case before the Broward Planning Council on February 25th.
In his mind, Kessel's going to Carolina...

See also:

Open Government: idling in the driveway
http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/04/08/open-government-idling-in-the-driveway/


Blog posts from The Juice are in chronological order

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/04/hallandale_mike_good_joe_kessel_consulting_contract.php

Hallandale City Manager Under Fire for Payments to Real Estate Agent

By Thomas Francis, Monday, Apr. 5 2010 @ 11:12AM


http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/04/hallandale_mayor_cooper_kessel_contract.php#more

Broward


http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2010/04/hallandale_digital_outernet_joe_kessel_jenna_jameson.php

Broward

Realtor Being Paid by Hallandale May Have Had Role in Controversial Loan to Pornographer

By Thomas Francis, Thursday, Apr. 8 2010 @ 4:50PM


Sunday, December 28, 2008

It's what passes for "news" in South Florida in the year 2008. Really.

Wanted to call your attention to a clever and sardonic blog post by Eric Barton that was made just last week at The Juice, the new blog that was born at the Broward Palm Beach New Times at the beginning of the month.

It concerns a subject I've written about very often here -perhaps too often for my own good- and yet no matter what I write, I always feel like I'm not even coming close to sharing 99% of what I actually know to be true and believe.

Anecdotes and facts I've heretofore kept to myself or my close friends, for fear that I'd otherwise sound hopelessly naive for having these feelings: the piss-poor job local print and electronic media do of covering local news in South Florida and holding people in authority accountable.
And what they report on instead.

Of which the most obvious example I can cite for you here and which I have personal experience with is -yes!- the Miami Herald NOT sending a reporter to cover a single Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting since June, despite all the emotional fireworks, shenanigans, recriminations and ethical hijinks that have taken place in those six months, 99% of which have never made it into 
print there.

Yet, their Editorial Board deigns to give actual citizens of this city an endorsement last month in the HB City Commission races, based solely on the candidates trooping off to the Herald's Broward office in Pembroke Pines and talking to them for a few minutes en masse.  
_________________________________________________________
Morning Juice: Reporter Solves Porn Problem, Transsexual Makes Boynton More Boring
December 26, 2008 

Channel 10 Solves Problem of Pesky Porn Bus Handing Out Cash

Channel 10 has this whole team of reporters who do nothing but go around and solve people's problems. And recently, Local 10 Problem Solvers tackled this burning question: Who's behind that van of dudes who go around and pay women $500 to have sex with them? Turns out it's Local 10 Problem Solvers' own Matt Lorch. 

Or at least it was for a day when he went "undercover" to find out who's in the van. Here's an excerpt from Lorch's undercover work:

________________________________________
Old conventional wisdom: Combination of heat, sunshine, crime, vibrant clashing cultures, frequent weather-related crises and criminally-inclined pols made South Florida TV a veritable hot house incubator of solid, knowledgeable reporters destined for heavy use at networks: Ike Seamans, Susan Candiotti, David Bloom, et al.

New conventional wisdom: With a few notable exceptions, South Florida TV is largely the domain of clownish, dim-witted third-rate faux reporters who have seemingly ZERO knowledge of South Florida's history/culture pre-2000, and who seem to prefer covering staged press avails on South Beach, to better practice their interview skills for the demo reel they're sending to Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood, than actual enterprise reporting that requires connecting dots that people in power don't want connected.

And in the world of completely predictable upcoming paint-by-numbers TV network news stories, what's the over-and-under date for the first network TV news story on Black churches from Philadelphia, Mississippi chartering buses to the Obama Inaugural?

I'm predicting we'll see it next Saturday, January 3rd, on ABC News.

No doubt while one of the NFL Wild Card games is on opposite.