Answer: It's about Donald Trump. Question: Why is a month-old story still on Miami Herald's Broward homepage under 'Breaking News'? Blame Jay Ducassi

As of 1:20 a.m. Monday May 16th, in the opinion of the editors of the Miami Herald, this April 13th Herald story about Donald Trump not only deserved

to STILL be on the Herald's Broward County homepage under Breaking News, but desercving of being ranked fourth.

THAT'S why it's the Miami Herald.

May 16, 2011 photo by South BeachHoosier

Answer: It's about Donald Trump.Question: Why is a month-old story about Donald Trump -from April 13th- still on the Miami Herald's Broward homepage under 'Breaking News'?

(Due to computer problems, I was not able to post this on Saturday.)

That April 13th story has been there for WEEKS, and as of 5:30 p.m. Friday, the 13th of May, is placed as the #4 story under Breaking News.

Hmm-m... you think that nobody at the Miami Herald HQ on Biscayne Bay is paying attention?

Oh dear friends, it's SO very much worse there than simply NOT paying attention and giving readers in South Florida the solid first-rate reporting and analysis they want.

So very much worse!!!

I almost have to laugh at the idea of it being something that simple, since if it was only chronic inattention to detail, you could always change that with some personnel moves, including some long overdue firing.

It's even worse -it's the culture of second-rate, after-the-fact reporting where some story or issue you never heard of before, that's actually been going on for weeks or months, suddenly appears in the Herald's periscope and appears out-of-nowhere, lacking lots of important context, facts and even-handed reporting,

I was already seeing troubling signs of that myself when I came down here from D.C. in 2003, where important stories lacked any photos or graphs, and where once solid news reporters suddenly seemed to be appearing less-and-less in print, and having their column inches filled by people whose understanding of the particular issue consistently seemed less than mine or that of my friends.

That's one of the reasons I kick myself for not having started this blog then instead of in 2007 when the die wasn't just cast but was painting entire parts of South Florida as no-go zones for Herald reporters -municipal city halls.

As to this curious case involving Donald Trump -whose NBC-TV show I have intentionally never watched- it's much more old-fashioned: greed.

The powers-that-be at the Herald want eyeballs coming to their awful, clunky, embarrassment of a news website, even if many if not most of those eyeballs are from readers who don't live in the Sunshine State and couldn't care less what you or I think about anything, much less, about what we think of Donald Trump's aspirations.

That's how shameless the Miami Herald has become.

Otherwise, that Trump story would have gone straight into the Herald's Paid Archives, wouldn't it, like most other articles a week-old?

The awful Herald Archives that's an industry joke, and which doesn't include photos or graphs and often has spelling and syntax problems, unlike not only better newspapers, but even newspapers with lower circulation.

But that article hasn't gone into the archives, has it?

There's absolutely nothing accidental about that 'oversight.'

Below is a snapshot of the Broward County homepage at the Herald 16 days after the Trump story first appeared.

As you can see for yourself, the link for it -in the left column- is, according to the editors of the Miami Herald, the number-one Broward County Breaking News story.

Really? Sixteen days later.

Why?

As to the larger issue of the Herald's perfectly dreadful -NOT just dreadful, perfectly dreadful!- coverage of Broward County person, places or issues, plain and simple, rather than have current news about Broward there of relevance to people living or working there -like me- as I have been commenting here for years, instead they run non-Broward stories there so often that most of the time, most stories appearing there have nothing to do with Broward County and its residents and business owners.

That's how bad it is, and trust me, I have dozens and dozens of screenshots I have taken over the past few years that prove that point, regardless of what time of the day it is.

In fact, you're just as likely to find stories on the Broward homepage about flooded Miami Beach streets or something going on in Pinecrest or Doral or Kendall as you are about Fort lLuderdale or Hollywood or Pembroke Pines.

Or, need I even say it here, Hallandale Beach.

In fact, I mentioned that Miami Beach street flooding story last year in this space.

Why do you suppose that I have written here from time-to-time that the Herald's terrible local news coverage, esp. of local government, is something that incompetent people like HB mayor Joy Cooper is thankful for?

She's laughing at how much she can get away with with without anyone outside of the city ever hearing about it, esp. the people who voted her head of the Florida League of Cities.

Yes, laughing her ass off!

Who should you blame for this situation?

The correct person to apportion the largest share of the blame to is Jay Ducassi, the former Herald reporter and current editor of the Herald's State & Local section.

Under his direction, the newspaper's quality and quantity of coverage of local and state issues has steadily plummeted into sheer ludicrousness, and now it finds itself a joke within the newspaper industry.

At least, among people paying attention, which may or may NOT include you.

I hold Jay Ducassi personally responsible for the 1,001 reasons that former Miami Herald readers and subscribers have jumped overboard in droves to save their heads from exploding with anger at the sheet stupidity and witlessness of most of what appears there most days.

It's so much worse than embarrassing folks that you would be surprised at how many emails I receive from people I now know -and didn't before- who send emails about what is going on there, often sending me examples of one article or another that had the current Herald's trademark -lack of context, lack of facts and one-sided bias.

What we here at the blog refer to as the Patricia Mazzei-ification of the Miami Herald, since chances are good that almost any story that carries her name on it, esp. her's alone, lacks important context and facts the reader should know about and is full of spin and bias.

Unless something unexpected happens, the posts I promised you about her and Alfonso Chardy, her male counterpart in terrible journalism, are likely going to be here before the end of the month.

That context, facts and fair-mindedness are always missing in their stories about illegal immigration is particularly noticeable, which is why so many of the articles that I'll post here by them have that in common.

You will almost never see anything approaching a level playing-field in their stories, as they are always on the side of the illegal alines with a hard luck story that has been fed to them by their go-to source, Cheryl Little, the greatest media manipulator in South Florida.

Even when Little's name is not specifically mentioned -though that's almost every time the subject of immifration is broached in the paper- you can clearly see her fingerprints on the stories, which read like press releases from her group, rather than honest straightforward journalism. No dissenting voices are permitted to sound off and make sense.

Ironically, on the one-month anniversary of the Trump story still being Breaking News for the Herald, Little was given some space in Friday's newspaper, opposite their editorials, on a page they call, with a straight face, "Other Views."

Of course, by 'Other Views,' contrary to what is the normal practice at newspapers with a more old-fashioned view of journalism, where at least the appearance of dissent is sought, the Herald doesn't mean contrasting points-of-views, they mean voices NOT named the Miami Herald editorial board, saying things that AGREE with their particular editorial p.o.v.

(Often that is the perfectly awful Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star.)

You won't be surprised to discover that the title assigned to the essay written by the woman who is the number-one South Florida proponent of amnesty for anyone who gets to the United States, regardless of how that came to be, was "Still waiting for Congress to act" -as in immigration.

Wow, what a coincidence, last week President Obama was in El Paso pitching his ridiculous and unpopular amnesty program while once again ignoring Arizona, a position the Herald agrees with.

And now they run an essay by someone who agrees with them on a page named "Other Views."

That's why it's the Miami Herald, no?

That Mazzei has been making a mess of the news up in Tallahassee, continuing to make the same mistakes in a different area code, only tells me that this woman is clearly destined for big things at the Herald.

That's of course very bad news indeed for its rapidly diminishing number of readers.

The sheer witlessness and obliviousness of the news coverage in the paper some days makes it seem but a step above a Junior College newspaper.

A bad Junior College newspaper.

I become that many of you will be believers in what I say in the near-future when you see what kind of old-fashioned evidence is in plain sight: photos of the Miami Herald itself, and the lack of Broward stories.

It speaks for itself.

Oh, and the kicker is that the Trump story wasn't even written by a Herald reporter!

-----

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/13/2165204/donald-trump-to-push-gop-2012.html

Donald Trump to push GOP 2012 presidential candidacy at Fla. Tea Party rally

GEORGE BENNETT

Palm Beach Post

Posted on April 13, 2011

Politicians often claim they don't pay much attention to polls, especially ones taken several months before the first voters head to caucuses and primaries.

Then there's Donald Trump.

Less than two hours after CNN released a poll Tuesday showing Trump tied for the lead among potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates, the billionaire developer and reality TV star wanted to make sure a reporter interviewing him had seen it.

Trump also directed an employee to e-mail the reporter fresh ratings numbers showing that the latest episode of his Celebrity Apprentice show on NBC had clobbered CSI: NY on Sunday night.

And Trump reminded his interviewer that a recent Wall Street Journal poll showed him as the top presidential pick among tea party voters.

"I wasn't that surprised," Trump said of the tea party poll. "Because my values are very similar. They're hard-working people. They're people that don't like to be taken advantage of by other countries."

Part-time Palm Beacher Trump will make his tea party debut Saturday in Boca Raton when he speaks at an outdoor rally organized by the South Florida Tea Party.

It's the latest indication that Trump is serious about exploring a presidential run.

Trump also considered a run in 2000 as a Reform Party candidate who favored abortion rights, universal health care and a one-time 14.25 percent tax on individuals and trusts with a net worth greater than $10 million.

As recently as 2009, he was giving campaign contributions to Democratic senators and Republican archenemies Harry Reid and Charles Schumer.

But as he looks to 2012, Trump is courting the GOP's base of socially and economically conservative primary voters.

"I'm pro-life," Trump told a Christian Broadcasting Network interviewer last week, explaining he'd changed his views on abortion years ago.

At February's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Trump declared: "I will fight to end Obamacare and replace it, replace it with something that makes sense for people in business and not bankrupt the country.

"If I decide to run I will not be raising taxes. We'll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us."

Trump spent much of his CPAC speech pledging to stand up to China and OPEC and other nations he says no longer respect the U.S.

Since then, Trump has made bigger waves by questioning whether President Obama was born in the U.S. and meets the constitutional requirement that the president be a "natural born citizen."

Obama has produced an official certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health attesting that he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. The week after he was born, two newspapers in Honolulu included Obama in birth notices using information from state health department records.

The Hawaii document is accepted by courts and the U.S. State Department -- and by the conservative National Review and many Obama critics -- as conclusive evidence the president is a U.S. citizen. But Trump has joined those in the "birther" movement who demand that Obama produce a 1961-vintage "long-form" birth certificate as proof.

Roger Stone, the legendary Republican political consultant who is a friend of Trump but not an adviser to his latest presidential exploration, says Trump's raising of the birth certificate issue has "served him extremely well It has helped him galvanize a base. I don't think you could run on that issue alone."

Stone points to surveys by Democrat-oriented Public Policy Polling that show Trump was viewed favorably by 31 percent of Republicans and unfavorably by 53 percent of GOP voters in mid-February. At the end of March, after weeks of fanning the birther controversy, a poll showed Trump with a 40/33 favorable/unfavorable score among Republicans -- a gain of 29 points in Trump's net approval rating.

Asked about the birth certificate issue in Tuesday's brief interview, Trump said, "I think there are a lot of people that have questions and I certainly do."

But Trump said he believes voters are responding more to "my stance on China, my stance on OPEC, my stance on foreign countries" who Trump says have been "taking advantage of us."

Trump said he accepted the invitation to Saturday's tea party event in Boca Raton because "Florida is very close to my heart."

Organizers are expecting a large crowd.

So is the poll- and ratings-conscious Trump, who says, "I hear it's going to be like a monster."