The new agreement announced yesterday between the three largest South Florida newspapers, the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post, to share certain stories, while perhaps sounding perfectly reasonable in theory at Sigma Delta Chi forums among a certain subset of the green eye shade crowd, never quite addresses the legitimate concerns of readers/citizens, who might reasonably wonder what will happen when nobody from any of the three newspapers chooses to send a reporter to a City Commission meeting, or other important civic meeting or forum in their town.
I think I already know, because this has been happening MUCH more frequently in Hallandale Beach, the ocean-side 4.4 square mile duchy I live in, sandwiched between Hollwood and Aventura.
And don't even ask about South Florida TV stations' coverage of local news if it doesn't involve a crime, a bullet-riddled body or a scandal of some sort!
"Fuggedaboutit!"
Brazilian-born South Florida artist and personality Romero Britto is clearly a popular and talented guy who's very emotionally invested in the welfare of South Florida's community, especially kids.
(See http://www.britto.com/ and http://www.hollywoodfl.org/artspark/playarea.htm )
The self-evident facts clearly show that he does much more than his fair share of heavy lifting when it comes to philanthropy and community involvement, which should be applauded, of course.
But surely a reasonable person might wonder whether everything he does in the community MUST be covered by South Florida's local TV stations -yet it is!
His PR people, whomever they are, must have some sort of crazy, crazy magic up their sleeves, because Britto is on South Florida TV newscasts more than anyone else I can think of, save local pols or Police Dept. PIOs whom we all recognize on sight because of sheer frequency, like Detective Delrish Moss of the City of Miami P.D., or Lieutenant Pat Santangelo of the Florida Highway Patrol.
See http://www.blinkx.com/video/fhp-pat-santangelo-on-move-over-law-crackdown/19np4U58jIer7Ji-yMwWww
Rare is the 72 hours in South Florida TV news when we don't see one of them on the air at least once!
This generalized problem of local news coverage leads some residents of the area to wonder if something 'really happened' or was said publicly, if the only people who actually know about it with anything resembling 100% certainty are the very ones who attended.
Folks who, themselves, might have some particular political or personal bias or generally unknown conflict of interest about the subject under discussion, and yet with no reporter present, the accurate accounts of what transpired there become more opaque and self-serving in the re-telling by the few witnesses. Where's the objective observer, comprende?
As it happens, the Miami Herald has not sent a reporter to several important Hallandale Beach City Commission meetings involving large developments that will dramatically change the face of the city, small as it is.
That includes both the DOMUS project on U.S.-1 at S. Federal Highway and S.E. 8th Street, and the Hallandale Square project on the S.E. corner of U.S.-1 and Hallandale Beach Blvd., the largest intersection in the city, and therefore a "face" on the city, such as it is.
If a Miami Herald reporter had shown up for the Hallandale Square project by Taubco, perhaps they'd have noted for the record -and everyone else's benefit- the central fact that unlike most development approvals the HB City Commission must weigh in on, where there is a first and then a second reading on the project, the Hallandale Square project by Taubco only needed that one meeting to get final approval.
Given that central fact and that it would clearly change the "face" of the city, as was said so often by different parties, though the public meeting started at 7 p.m., the portion of the agenda dealing specifically with the Hallandale Square project didn't begin untill just after 10:55 p.m.
And when you add the amount of time consumed with back-and-forth questions and comments by the City Commission, the City Manager and his staff, and Debbie Orshefsky -of Greenberg Traurig, a campaign supporter of Mayor Cooper- who acted as the lead public presenter of the project and managed the visual presentation, actual residents of Hallandale Beach didn't get the chance to speak intelligently in response to the myriad assurances and promises they'd heard that night by Taubco until after 1 a.m.
You know, as to give but one example, actually meeting the standards that the city requires for number of trees on the property, a parameter that Taubco did not meet prior to the meeting.
In fact, since a finalized Development Agreement was not ready before 5 p.m. the previous Friday, the usual deadline for an item to get included on the Wednesday City Commission agenda, that unusual exception became, itself, the subject of much discussion by almost everyone, since that meant that the City Commission was given lots of information (and last-minute changes) to digest, on the fly, in a very small period of time.
In fact, even Mayor Cooper felt the need to tell City Manager Good and his staff that this should not happen again in the future, and that henceforth, a Friday deadline will really mean something.
Just not this time!
I stayed for the entire meeting and spoke around 1:15 p.m., and though a little more groggy than I expected, I asked Ms. Orshefsky a series of questions I had about Hallandale Square's exterior design and the proximity of ingress/egress for trucks to areas that were described as being for outdoor eating.
In general, the plan reminded me -too much!- of shopping areas I was already familiar with, especially in Northern Virginia, which had seemed great while on the drawing board, but instead had fatal flaws that proved self-evident once the project was complete and built.
Ms. Orshefsky was not happy at all with the general tenor of my questions, negative as many of them were about the project, and after I specifically asked her to pull up some slides so that I could ask more detailed questions about what she had depicted to the City Commission, when she seemed to be a tad bit slow in doing this, and with Mayor Cooper urging me to proceed with my questions post haste, I said "No" into the microphone and that I'd wait for Ms. Orshefsky to put up the appropriate slides I wanted to discuss in detail.
Though you wouldn't know it that particular night, in many cities and counties across the country, including ones I've lived in, it's common that after the initial project presentation is made by an applicant or their attorney before the elected officials, city employees take control of the computer managing the Power Point display, slides or video, so that the public gets the same thorough treatment as the developer.
This procedure helps prevent, slowness, sudden and unexpected 'forgetfulness' or 'accidents' by the lead presenter.
That's a common sense procedure the City of Hallandale Beach would be smart to employ in the future so that citizens don't have to worry about developer attorneys like Orshefsky dawdling on purpose in pulling up particular slides in order to squeeze you when you only have three minutes to speak, as is the case in Hallandale Beach.
And did I mention that the many renderings/drawings of the Hallandale Square project, the project that many of the City Commissioners themselves said would change the face of the city forever, were NEVER publicly displayed for Hallandale Beach citizens to examine in the many hours prior to it finally coming up, just before 11 p.m.?
Four hours of waiting to see what what it looked like.
And someone please explain to me again why it is that Taubco didn't hold a single public meeting with HB citizens in the immediate 12 months prior to that one and only hearing in June. Especially after all the changes they made to their initial plan, which was shown to the public at the beginning of 2007?
That's Hallandale Beach government for you!
A Miami Herald reporter at the meeting might've noticed some of these things and written about some or all of them, but since nobody from the Herald deigned to make an appearance...
By not sending a reporter to the August 6th meeting, the Herald completely missed the drama and anger that ensued when Pastor Anthony Sanders was chosen as an interim City Commissioner by the HB City Commission, under Mayor Cooper's prodding, within ten minutes of the supposed 'surprise resignation' of Comm. Francine Schiller.
Again, not to belabor the point about what might've been written, per se, but it's not unreasonable to think that a smart and resourceful Herald reporter at the meeting might've written that this political maneuver by Mayor Cooper seemed to have all the appearances of being a 'done-deal' well before the public meeting ever started that night.
Especially once you know that Mayor Cooper had already been speaking to Pastor Sanders for weeks about something happening down the line, and that City Manager Good was, in fact, the very writer of Comm. Schiller's note of resignation, due to health reasons.
Given those particular facts, how hard is it to suppose that Mayor Cooper and City Manager Good consciously choose to wait until after 5 p.m. Friday to put their plan in place and write Schiller's letter of resignation, so they could skirt public disclosure rules about it and it wouldn't appear as an advertised Commission agenda item, prior to the August 6th meeting?
Why?
Because formally putting it on the agenda would've necessitated giving sufficient public notice and would've allowed residents of Hallandale Beach opposed to the move -but not to Pastor Sanders personally- the time to call neighbors and friends about appearing at the City Commission meeting that night to make their feelings known.
Along with the print and electronic news media to record it and report it beyond the tiny confines of the Hallandale Beach City Commission chambers.
That a conscious skirting of state ethical rules occurred is exactly what many citizens of Hallandale Beach believe happened that night. (At night, but in broad daylight!)
And that's true of the HB residents I've spoken to from every part of the city, not just the 'usual suspects' who come to most civic meetings in the area.
They -and I- feel the sheer amount of odd coincidences are a bit too much to swallow.
What coincidences?
Well, a Miami Herald reporter at the meeting might've written about this particular political move coming exactly while Comm. Keith London -the very last interim appointee and someone intimately familiar with the process- was not physically present at the meeting.
Comm. London was present at the meeting via telephone -which Comm. Schiller has done increasingly over the past 18 months- but by being conveniently 'out of sight,' many HB residents believe that the powers-that-be at HB City Hall all but insured that Comm. London was out-of-the-loop, since he is dependent on the City Clerk's office at the dais to let Mayor Cooper know he would like to speak on a matter.
Coincidentally, last year in making their plans for City Commission meetings during the summer, when giving info as to their various summer/vacation plans, if any, so a working schedule could be created that suited everyone on the City Commission, though Comm. London had publicly told everyone when he was going to be away, just as other members had,
a not-so-funny thing happened in Hallandale Beach that summer.
While he was away, a city meeting got scheduled.
Hmmm... imagine that?
That, my friends, is the moral and ethical caliber of the people you're dealing with at 400 S. Federal Highway, opposite Gulfstream Park Race Track.
If a reasonably bright Herald reporter had been present at that meeting, it might've gotten mentioned in the newspaper's account of the meeting that the vote on the interim appointment took place before any residents of the city had been given the opportunity to publicly address the City Commission on the subject, much less, remind them that this was completely contrary to the very procedures the city had used less than two years prior, in November of 2006, when, following a number of meetings that were hours long, Keith London was named an interim HB City Commissioner, following the election of Comm. Joe Gibbons to the Florida State House of Representatives.
Then again, maybe the latter is the very reason nobody was permitted to speak before the vote.
Again, it wouldn't have required a genius Miami Herald reporter, not even a future Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, just one that could report what he saw and heard that night with an ample amount of facts sprinkled in for good measure.
There was a whole process that took place in 2006 that was completely absent on August 6th, and given that the publicly announced date of the resignation was the 29th, yesterday, the City Commission had 22 days in which to do whatever was necessary to ensure a fair and democratic process, with one already scheduled public City Commission meeting for August 20th, where they could've handled this in an above-board fashion.
But that's not what they did, is it?
Yes, sometimes one reporter -or the absence of one- completely changes the dynamic of what happens in a community, especially one riven with cronyism, secrecy and paranoia.
I'm looking especially forward to seeing what longtime South Beach Hoosier journalism expert and blogger favorite Alan Mutter, witty creator of the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, has to say about all this newspaper news consolidation, and read what he thinks this presages.
Especially in light of all of his experiences, positive and otherwise, with other 'great ideas' that emanated from newspaper front offices.
Alan broached the general idea back on June 18th about a closer business collaboration among the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald in this excellent post titled The case for a JOA in Miami, which I meant to link to here at the time and comment on, but, well, forgot to. http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/06/case-for-joa-in-miami.html
I meant to link to it here and comment on his thoughts about a new-and-improved J.O.A., but well, forgot to despite having written it down. It happens.
Please don't forget to check here tomorrow, probably later in the evening, as I'll have my own analysis, complete with photos, deconstructing her leadership and the un-solicited post-midnight email I received from Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, after she discovered that I would be meeting with another Hallandale Beach citizen about events and matters of great concern to the Hallandale Beach community.
Even then, completely out-of-the-blue, Mayor Cooper can't control herself, as she alternately plays the role of know-it-all bully, aggrieved victim and innocent bystander.
But sadly, despite her pleas, she is but the first, not the others.
Frankly, it would be somewhat laughable -from a safe distance- if it weren't so damn tragic for the citizens of this small community, who surely deserve so very much better than what they receive from the people at Hallandale Beach City Hall: wave upon wave of apathy, insolence, cronyism, condecsendsion and navel-gazing, masquerading as genuine concern.
Sorry, no more Mr. Nice Guy here at Hallandale Beach Blog and South Beach Hoosier.
That's a thing of the past.
-------------------
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/664264.html
Aug. 29, 2008
Herald, Sun-Sentinel, PB Post to share stories
By Miami Herald Staff
The Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post announced content sharing plans Friday that the editors said will involve exchanging basic news stories at the same time South Florida's major newspapers compete against one another.
The experiment, which will begin Monday and run for a three-month trial period, will enable the papers to trade coverage of routine events and feature reviews.
Editors of the three papers said they will preserve the competition that has been a hallmark of South Florida's newspaper business for decades by limiting the sharing to routine news. Broader stories, investigative pieces, columns and feature stories will not be part of the exchange, they said. El Nuevo Herald, El Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and La Palma in West Palm Beach also will be a part of the exchange.
"'Our goal is to better serve our South Florida audiences while protecting the individual brands and identities of our respective newspapers,'' a statement from the editors said.
Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said that the move was part of many innovations the paper is launching in the midst of the changing media landscape. He said the papers need to begin working together to enhance and extend the newspaper style of journalism in an era of intense competition.
"This is a time to try things, to see what new ideas make our papers and websites better, to break with traditions in the name of providing new and stronger coverage for newspaper readers and websites.''
The papers said they would assess how the exchange is working after three months and decide whether to continue.
In a sign of the times, as of 8:30 p.m. Saturday night, more than 36 hours after the story was first printed, this news was of so little interest that only 6 reader comments had been registered on the Herald's website, and one of them had absolutely nothing to do with the story:
Miami Article Comments Article Discussions: Thread #55660 http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=55660&nav=messages&webtag=kr-miamitm
---------------------
www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-agreement-0829,0,6261223.story
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Sun Sentinel, PB Post and Miami Herald will share content
Staff reports
August 29, 2008
The top editors of the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post and the Sun Sentinel announced today a content-sharing initiative that the editors say will serve South Florida readers with unprecedented local coverage while maintaining the competitive nature of each paper.
Anders Gyllenhaall, executive editor of the Herald, John Bartosek, editor of the Palm Beach Post, and Earl Maucker, editor of the Sun Sentinel, announced the sharing arrangement, in which each newspaper can publish stories from one of the other newspapers or web sites.
In each case where an article from one newspaper is published in another, that story would carry attribution to the contributing newspaper or web site.
The three editors, in a statement released Friday, said they believe they can protect the competitive character of each publication by limiting the content sharing to municipal, governmental, courts and political coverage, police reports and entertainment. Enterprise and
Investigative stories would be off limits from the sharing agreement, they said.
"Our goal is to better serve our South Florida audiences while protecting the individual brands and identities of our respective newspapers," a release from the three editors said.
"As each newspaper experienced recent staff reductions of our reporting staffs, we believe sharing some content assures thorough coverage, particularly in overlapping areas, and allows us to direct even more resources to enterprise, watchdog and investigative reporting exclusive to each newspaper."
The initiative will begin in September.
_____________________________
Broward Palm Beach New Times columnist Bob Norman's take:
The Daily Pulp
Bob Norman
South Florida Daily Newspapers To Unite?
August 29, 2008
In a move that would have seemed utterly shocking a year ago, the South Florida's three major daily newspapers are set to announce a content-sharing agreement later today, according to sources.
While details of the plan are sketchy, the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post have reached an agreement to share certain "non-competitive" information -- perhaps things like prep scores, entertainment listings, reviews, etc.
The idea, apparently, is that the deal will free up more time and money for substantive (and exclusive) news and enterprise reporting by all three newspapers.
Hope to flesh this out as the day goes on, but one thing is certain: This is yet another sign of the desperation hitting the newspaper industry.
To see the rest of the post, go to: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2008/08/south_florida_daily_newspapers.php
I think I already know, because this has been happening MUCH more frequently in Hallandale Beach, the ocean-side 4.4 square mile duchy I live in, sandwiched between Hollwood and Aventura.
And don't even ask about South Florida TV stations' coverage of local news if it doesn't involve a crime, a bullet-riddled body or a scandal of some sort!
"Fuggedaboutit!"
Brazilian-born South Florida artist and personality Romero Britto is clearly a popular and talented guy who's very emotionally invested in the welfare of South Florida's community, especially kids.
(See http://www.britto.com/ and http://www.hollywoodfl.org/artspark/playarea.htm )
The self-evident facts clearly show that he does much more than his fair share of heavy lifting when it comes to philanthropy and community involvement, which should be applauded, of course.
But surely a reasonable person might wonder whether everything he does in the community MUST be covered by South Florida's local TV stations -yet it is!
His PR people, whomever they are, must have some sort of crazy, crazy magic up their sleeves, because Britto is on South Florida TV newscasts more than anyone else I can think of, save local pols or Police Dept. PIOs whom we all recognize on sight because of sheer frequency, like Detective Delrish Moss of the City of Miami P.D., or Lieutenant Pat Santangelo of the Florida Highway Patrol.
See http://www.blinkx.com/video/fhp-pat-santangelo-on-move-over-law-crackdown/19np4U58jIer7Ji-yMwWww
Rare is the 72 hours in South Florida TV news when we don't see one of them on the air at least once!
This generalized problem of local news coverage leads some residents of the area to wonder if something 'really happened' or was said publicly, if the only people who actually know about it with anything resembling 100% certainty are the very ones who attended.
Folks who, themselves, might have some particular political or personal bias or generally unknown conflict of interest about the subject under discussion, and yet with no reporter present, the accurate accounts of what transpired there become more opaque and self-serving in the re-telling by the few witnesses. Where's the objective observer, comprende?
As it happens, the Miami Herald has not sent a reporter to several important Hallandale Beach City Commission meetings involving large developments that will dramatically change the face of the city, small as it is.
That includes both the DOMUS project on U.S.-1 at S. Federal Highway and S.E. 8th Street, and the Hallandale Square project on the S.E. corner of U.S.-1 and Hallandale Beach Blvd., the largest intersection in the city, and therefore a "face" on the city, such as it is.
If a Miami Herald reporter had shown up for the Hallandale Square project by Taubco, perhaps they'd have noted for the record -and everyone else's benefit- the central fact that unlike most development approvals the HB City Commission must weigh in on, where there is a first and then a second reading on the project, the Hallandale Square project by Taubco only needed that one meeting to get final approval.
Given that central fact and that it would clearly change the "face" of the city, as was said so often by different parties, though the public meeting started at 7 p.m., the portion of the agenda dealing specifically with the Hallandale Square project didn't begin untill just after 10:55 p.m.
And when you add the amount of time consumed with back-and-forth questions and comments by the City Commission, the City Manager and his staff, and Debbie Orshefsky -of Greenberg Traurig, a campaign supporter of Mayor Cooper- who acted as the lead public presenter of the project and managed the visual presentation, actual residents of Hallandale Beach didn't get the chance to speak intelligently in response to the myriad assurances and promises they'd heard that night by Taubco until after 1 a.m.
You know, as to give but one example, actually meeting the standards that the city requires for number of trees on the property, a parameter that Taubco did not meet prior to the meeting.
In fact, since a finalized Development Agreement was not ready before 5 p.m. the previous Friday, the usual deadline for an item to get included on the Wednesday City Commission agenda, that unusual exception became, itself, the subject of much discussion by almost everyone, since that meant that the City Commission was given lots of information (and last-minute changes) to digest, on the fly, in a very small period of time.
In fact, even Mayor Cooper felt the need to tell City Manager Good and his staff that this should not happen again in the future, and that henceforth, a Friday deadline will really mean something.
Just not this time!
I stayed for the entire meeting and spoke around 1:15 p.m., and though a little more groggy than I expected, I asked Ms. Orshefsky a series of questions I had about Hallandale Square's exterior design and the proximity of ingress/egress for trucks to areas that were described as being for outdoor eating.
In general, the plan reminded me -too much!- of shopping areas I was already familiar with, especially in Northern Virginia, which had seemed great while on the drawing board, but instead had fatal flaws that proved self-evident once the project was complete and built.
Ms. Orshefsky was not happy at all with the general tenor of my questions, negative as many of them were about the project, and after I specifically asked her to pull up some slides so that I could ask more detailed questions about what she had depicted to the City Commission, when she seemed to be a tad bit slow in doing this, and with Mayor Cooper urging me to proceed with my questions post haste, I said "No" into the microphone and that I'd wait for Ms. Orshefsky to put up the appropriate slides I wanted to discuss in detail.
Though you wouldn't know it that particular night, in many cities and counties across the country, including ones I've lived in, it's common that after the initial project presentation is made by an applicant or their attorney before the elected officials, city employees take control of the computer managing the Power Point display, slides or video, so that the public gets the same thorough treatment as the developer.
This procedure helps prevent, slowness, sudden and unexpected 'forgetfulness' or 'accidents' by the lead presenter.
That's a common sense procedure the City of Hallandale Beach would be smart to employ in the future so that citizens don't have to worry about developer attorneys like Orshefsky dawdling on purpose in pulling up particular slides in order to squeeze you when you only have three minutes to speak, as is the case in Hallandale Beach.
And did I mention that the many renderings/drawings of the Hallandale Square project, the project that many of the City Commissioners themselves said would change the face of the city forever, were NEVER publicly displayed for Hallandale Beach citizens to examine in the many hours prior to it finally coming up, just before 11 p.m.?
Four hours of waiting to see what what it looked like.
And someone please explain to me again why it is that Taubco didn't hold a single public meeting with HB citizens in the immediate 12 months prior to that one and only hearing in June. Especially after all the changes they made to their initial plan, which was shown to the public at the beginning of 2007?
That's Hallandale Beach government for you!
A Miami Herald reporter at the meeting might've noticed some of these things and written about some or all of them, but since nobody from the Herald deigned to make an appearance...
By not sending a reporter to the August 6th meeting, the Herald completely missed the drama and anger that ensued when Pastor Anthony Sanders was chosen as an interim City Commissioner by the HB City Commission, under Mayor Cooper's prodding, within ten minutes of the supposed 'surprise resignation' of Comm. Francine Schiller.
Again, not to belabor the point about what might've been written, per se, but it's not unreasonable to think that a smart and resourceful Herald reporter at the meeting might've written that this political maneuver by Mayor Cooper seemed to have all the appearances of being a 'done-deal' well before the public meeting ever started that night.
Especially once you know that Mayor Cooper had already been speaking to Pastor Sanders for weeks about something happening down the line, and that City Manager Good was, in fact, the very writer of Comm. Schiller's note of resignation, due to health reasons.
Given those particular facts, how hard is it to suppose that Mayor Cooper and City Manager Good consciously choose to wait until after 5 p.m. Friday to put their plan in place and write Schiller's letter of resignation, so they could skirt public disclosure rules about it and it wouldn't appear as an advertised Commission agenda item, prior to the August 6th meeting?
Why?
Because formally putting it on the agenda would've necessitated giving sufficient public notice and would've allowed residents of Hallandale Beach opposed to the move -but not to Pastor Sanders personally- the time to call neighbors and friends about appearing at the City Commission meeting that night to make their feelings known.
Along with the print and electronic news media to record it and report it beyond the tiny confines of the Hallandale Beach City Commission chambers.
That a conscious skirting of state ethical rules occurred is exactly what many citizens of Hallandale Beach believe happened that night. (At night, but in broad daylight!)
And that's true of the HB residents I've spoken to from every part of the city, not just the 'usual suspects' who come to most civic meetings in the area.
They -and I- feel the sheer amount of odd coincidences are a bit too much to swallow.
What coincidences?
Well, a Miami Herald reporter at the meeting might've written about this particular political move coming exactly while Comm. Keith London -the very last interim appointee and someone intimately familiar with the process- was not physically present at the meeting.
Comm. London was present at the meeting via telephone -which Comm. Schiller has done increasingly over the past 18 months- but by being conveniently 'out of sight,' many HB residents believe that the powers-that-be at HB City Hall all but insured that Comm. London was out-of-the-loop, since he is dependent on the City Clerk's office at the dais to let Mayor Cooper know he would like to speak on a matter.
Coincidentally, last year in making their plans for City Commission meetings during the summer, when giving info as to their various summer/vacation plans, if any, so a working schedule could be created that suited everyone on the City Commission, though Comm. London had publicly told everyone when he was going to be away, just as other members had,
a not-so-funny thing happened in Hallandale Beach that summer.
While he was away, a city meeting got scheduled.
Hmmm... imagine that?
That, my friends, is the moral and ethical caliber of the people you're dealing with at 400 S. Federal Highway, opposite Gulfstream Park Race Track.
If a reasonably bright Herald reporter had been present at that meeting, it might've gotten mentioned in the newspaper's account of the meeting that the vote on the interim appointment took place before any residents of the city had been given the opportunity to publicly address the City Commission on the subject, much less, remind them that this was completely contrary to the very procedures the city had used less than two years prior, in November of 2006, when, following a number of meetings that were hours long, Keith London was named an interim HB City Commissioner, following the election of Comm. Joe Gibbons to the Florida State House of Representatives.
Then again, maybe the latter is the very reason nobody was permitted to speak before the vote.
Again, it wouldn't have required a genius Miami Herald reporter, not even a future Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, just one that could report what he saw and heard that night with an ample amount of facts sprinkled in for good measure.
There was a whole process that took place in 2006 that was completely absent on August 6th, and given that the publicly announced date of the resignation was the 29th, yesterday, the City Commission had 22 days in which to do whatever was necessary to ensure a fair and democratic process, with one already scheduled public City Commission meeting for August 20th, where they could've handled this in an above-board fashion.
But that's not what they did, is it?
Yes, sometimes one reporter -or the absence of one- completely changes the dynamic of what happens in a community, especially one riven with cronyism, secrecy and paranoia.
I'm looking especially forward to seeing what longtime South Beach Hoosier journalism expert and blogger favorite Alan Mutter, witty creator of the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, has to say about all this newspaper news consolidation, and read what he thinks this presages.
Especially in light of all of his experiences, positive and otherwise, with other 'great ideas' that emanated from newspaper front offices.
Alan broached the general idea back on June 18th about a closer business collaboration among the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald in this excellent post titled The case for a JOA in Miami, which I meant to link to here at the time and comment on, but, well, forgot to. http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/06/case-for-joa-in-miami.html
I meant to link to it here and comment on his thoughts about a new-and-improved J.O.A., but well, forgot to despite having written it down. It happens.
Please don't forget to check here tomorrow, probably later in the evening, as I'll have my own analysis, complete with photos, deconstructing her leadership and the un-solicited post-midnight email I received from Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, after she discovered that I would be meeting with another Hallandale Beach citizen about events and matters of great concern to the Hallandale Beach community.
Even then, completely out-of-the-blue, Mayor Cooper can't control herself, as she alternately plays the role of know-it-all bully, aggrieved victim and innocent bystander.
But sadly, despite her pleas, she is but the first, not the others.
Frankly, it would be somewhat laughable -from a safe distance- if it weren't so damn tragic for the citizens of this small community, who surely deserve so very much better than what they receive from the people at Hallandale Beach City Hall: wave upon wave of apathy, insolence, cronyism, condecsendsion and navel-gazing, masquerading as genuine concern.
Sorry, no more Mr. Nice Guy here at Hallandale Beach Blog and South Beach Hoosier.
That's a thing of the past.
-------------------
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/664264.html
Aug. 29, 2008
Herald, Sun-Sentinel, PB Post to share stories
By Miami Herald Staff
The Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post announced content sharing plans Friday that the editors said will involve exchanging basic news stories at the same time South Florida's major newspapers compete against one another.
The experiment, which will begin Monday and run for a three-month trial period, will enable the papers to trade coverage of routine events and feature reviews.
Editors of the three papers said they will preserve the competition that has been a hallmark of South Florida's newspaper business for decades by limiting the sharing to routine news. Broader stories, investigative pieces, columns and feature stories will not be part of the exchange, they said. El Nuevo Herald, El Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and La Palma in West Palm Beach also will be a part of the exchange.
"'Our goal is to better serve our South Florida audiences while protecting the individual brands and identities of our respective newspapers,'' a statement from the editors said.
Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said that the move was part of many innovations the paper is launching in the midst of the changing media landscape. He said the papers need to begin working together to enhance and extend the newspaper style of journalism in an era of intense competition.
"This is a time to try things, to see what new ideas make our papers and websites better, to break with traditions in the name of providing new and stronger coverage for newspaper readers and websites.''
The papers said they would assess how the exchange is working after three months and decide whether to continue.
In a sign of the times, as of 8:30 p.m. Saturday night, more than 36 hours after the story was first printed, this news was of so little interest that only 6 reader comments had been registered on the Herald's website, and one of them had absolutely nothing to do with the story:
Miami Article Comments Article Discussions: Thread #55660 http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=55660&nav=messages&webtag=kr-miamitm
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www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-agreement-0829,0,6261223.story
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Sun Sentinel, PB Post and Miami Herald will share content
Staff reports
August 29, 2008
The top editors of the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post and the Sun Sentinel announced today a content-sharing initiative that the editors say will serve South Florida readers with unprecedented local coverage while maintaining the competitive nature of each paper.
Anders Gyllenhaall, executive editor of the Herald, John Bartosek, editor of the Palm Beach Post, and Earl Maucker, editor of the Sun Sentinel, announced the sharing arrangement, in which each newspaper can publish stories from one of the other newspapers or web sites.
In each case where an article from one newspaper is published in another, that story would carry attribution to the contributing newspaper or web site.
The three editors, in a statement released Friday, said they believe they can protect the competitive character of each publication by limiting the content sharing to municipal, governmental, courts and political coverage, police reports and entertainment. Enterprise and
Investigative stories would be off limits from the sharing agreement, they said.
"Our goal is to better serve our South Florida audiences while protecting the individual brands and identities of our respective newspapers," a release from the three editors said.
"As each newspaper experienced recent staff reductions of our reporting staffs, we believe sharing some content assures thorough coverage, particularly in overlapping areas, and allows us to direct even more resources to enterprise, watchdog and investigative reporting exclusive to each newspaper."
The initiative will begin in September.
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Broward Palm Beach New Times columnist Bob Norman's take:
The Daily Pulp
Bob Norman
South Florida Daily Newspapers To Unite?
August 29, 2008
In a move that would have seemed utterly shocking a year ago, the South Florida's three major daily newspapers are set to announce a content-sharing agreement later today, according to sources.
While details of the plan are sketchy, the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post have reached an agreement to share certain "non-competitive" information -- perhaps things like prep scores, entertainment listings, reviews, etc.
The idea, apparently, is that the deal will free up more time and money for substantive (and exclusive) news and enterprise reporting by all three newspapers.
Hope to flesh this out as the day goes on, but one thing is certain: This is yet another sign of the desperation hitting the newspaper industry.
To see the rest of the post, go to: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2008/08/south_florida_daily_newspapers.php
