South Florida Journalism in 2016: The ever-expanding gulf between what the South Florida press corps offers up and the quality, local-centric news coverage the South Florida public craves, has never been as large as now; Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets in her final NY Times Public Editor column that hits out against elite/institutional bias

South Florida Journalism in 2016: The ever-expanding gulf between what the South Florida press corps offers up and the quality, local-centric news coverage the South Florida public craves, has never been as large as now; Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets in her final NY Times Public Editor column that hits out against elite/institutional bias

Revised April 21, 2016 at 3:15 p.m.

As most of you longtime readers of Hallandale Beach Blog know well by now -but which you newer readers don't, especially those of you who have only discovered me the past two years via my tweets @hbbtruth- I started this blog in 2007, largely out of a fit of frustration and anger at the self-evident failure and lack of individual/collective effort I saw on a daily basis by the South Florida news media. Specifically, its collective failure to evolve from what it once was -home to nationally-respected who were in some cases some of the best and most-dogged investigative news sleuths in the country.
It's why so many of them eventually wound up at the then-three national U.S. TV networks and the fledgling CNN when that cablenet debuted.

My complaint, summed-up, was that the South Florida's press corps' failed to build upon this track record, and failed to expand its level of news coverage of public policy and local government in ways that readers/viewers clearly wanted to see and rather expected.

Though I was born in San Antonio, Texas a few years before, my family arrived in Miami from Memphis when I was seven years old in the Summer of 1968, the day after Miami Dolphins #1 Draft pick Larry Csonka of Syracuse signed with the Dolphins.

As everyone who knows me then or now can tell you, I have been a devout news, sports and public affairs junkie ever since then.

But the difference between then and now is that when I was growing-up in South Florida in the '70's, there was an All-News AM radio station, WINZ AM 940 that was a CBS News affiliate and provided lots of news reportes to new York, especially those covering weather, immigration and the Sapce Shuttle.

That has NOT been the case in several decades, nor has there been even one attempt by anyone to lay the groundwork for a Local News Cable channel of the sort that has existed in many media markets throughout thsi country, including some smaller than South Florida's.

Why has COMCAST, long the dominant cable provider in South Florida, utterly failed to deliver on that potential? Well, you know who never asks?
The South Florida news media themselves, including the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
If you want to waste an hour, try going thru their newspaper archives and try to find a single story about the subject in the past 20 years.
That's the sort of media area South Florida is.

That's made worse because with my crazy accurate memory, I've been able to recall  at the drop of a hat the names of individual reporters and anchors at local TV/radio stations and reporters and editors at the Miami Herald and the late Miami News -that I spent so much time at as a High School student- and the individual beats their reporters covered and owned .
And the important news stories they broke or gave much-needed historical context to when it really mattered to residents of South Florida, NOT after-the-fact months later in some investigative piece clearly designed to win journalism awards, NOT keep South Florida properly informed.

I still have an institutional memory of what those people were able to do with much less in the way of resources and technology than the current crew of South Florida journalists have and take for granted, for whatever reasons.

That doesn't just rankle, it makes me cringe, because so much of what I regularly consume from local South Florida media isn't just parochial but even shallower than the above ground swimming pools that once seemed to dominate South Florida and North Miami Beach in the 1970's.

And that means that getting to the heart of some of the endemic and unique problems of South Florida, much less their possible solutions, are one day farther away than they need to be for our community's long-term sake.

Over the past nine years that I have been writing this blog, a recurring theme here has been the cleavage between what the South Florida news media believes is perfectly acceptable in terms of effort and end product for news consumers, and what the public wants and expects from them. 
A graph where X never meets Y.

Over the years, the insufficient level of individual and collective effort expended by the South Florida press corps and the dominant English-language news outlets has only gnawed away at me and other well-informed observers I know and trust, as we are continually see both individual reporter bias, institutional lack of historical knowledge and lack of torpedo every well-intentioned effort to make local South Florida residents better informed about their community and the state that is now the third-largest in the country.

We see the growing gap between what the public expects from print/TV reporters and columnists and TV Assignment Editors and News Directors, in the form of interesting and compelling ways to cover local news, and what is actually presented to us as readers and viewers, as the very seeds for our area's growing technology and information gap.

A growing class and income chasm that won't be made smaller by simply pretending that it doesn't exist.

These same national trends are regularly and correctly decried in Washington as harmful to the nation's future and economic vitality when presented calmly as facts by politicians of varying political persuasions and august public interest groups with demonstrated track records for being non-partisan, but somehow, closer to home, these same problems are largely ignored when they are pointed out by people like myself and other public observers in South Florida who want this community to be MUCH BETTER than it is,.
Even when we use self-evident facts and the news media's own track record as our opening and closing arguments.

It's not exactly a secret that compared to the rest of the country, South Florida's relative youth historically -the City of Miami not being founded until 1897- and large and ever-growing population of Northeastern and Midwestern transplants whose history and allegiances remain elsewhere years after they've moved here, has always worked against the long-term interests of South Florida institutions, civic groups and foundations, even ones who profess laudable societal goals and do try to show some spirit and verve.

But this also means these groups are NOT front-of-mind and front-and-center when it comes to focusing the community's attention on problems the way similar groups are elsewhere in the country.

It's not an excuse, merely a reflection of history and common knowledge, borne of experience living in and growing-up in South Florida.
But at some point, these same groups current unwillingness to point out the problems at hand and suggesting tangible solutions, has to be called out, and I will be doing just that in a future post with some energy and enthusiasm that I know will surprise and anger many with its ferocity and focus.

So be it!
My blog has never been interested in carrying the water for South Florida's elites or well-off.

#disrupt

But as it concerns today's theme of journalistic lack of effort in South Florida, it's hard to shake the notion that many of these civic groups ansd foundations, so dependent upon the South Florida news media for positive attention and charity dollars when they can get it, seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy denying self-evident problem in large part  because of whose oxen may well need to be gored. (Or is it a case of being afraid to bite the hand that feeds them?) 

The South Florida news media's.

To me and many of the people I regularly speak with and confide in here in South Florida and throughout the Sunshine State -even many reporters, editors, columnists and TV anchors whose names are known instantly to many of you- the gulf in South Florida between what is possible in local journalism because of advances in technology that make it easier than ever to report accurately and in real-time, has, unfortunately, never seemed so large as at it does at present.

This is made all the worse by what takes place everyday with the two largest South Florida-based daily newspapers, McClatchy's Miami Herald and the Tribune Company's South Florida Sun-Sentinel, both of whom are and have been going in the wrong direction from readers desires for far too many years.

Since the majority of my focus on this blog, despite my 1,001 other interests and passions, has always been what is happening in South Florida -for good or for bad and why- I write to day to share some much-needed wisdom from a trusted source I have long depended upon, even while never mentioning her previously: Margaret Sullivan, the departing New York Times Public Editor.
At the end of her term as the the Reader's Ombudsman, just as was true throughout when she never hesitated to challenge long-established Times icons and the Times' often counter-intuitive ways of thinking about the larger public interest, Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets.

As I have remarked here many times in the past with fact-filled blog post and copies of letters to the Miami Herald's management, the Herald never replaced their Ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, after he left for NPR. And they consciously ignored many of the common sense suggestions he made about journalists.
That includes his April 25, 2010 column, Reporter-columnists tread fine line with readers' trust about the need for journalists to publicly come out to readers as one one thing or the other, i.e. not being both reporter AND columnist, because of the damage that such dual roles can cause to perceived bias and credibility with readers.

The Herald ignored that advice when it came to dealing with both Beth Reinhard and later, Marc Caputo. If you want a copy of that column, just write me and ask for a copy.
It's not been available at the Herald's website for many years.

To see how indifferent the Herald's management was to reader perceptions of bias or unfairness, take a poke at my blog post from May 21 of 2012 titled, 

"What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there..." 

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/whats-going-on-at-miami-herald-more.html

See also, among many others to choose from:
11/12/10 - A day in the life of McClatchy's Miami Herald, as viewed by a reader who's largely given up on them fixing their problems, or surviving long-term
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/day-in-life-of-mcclatchys-miami-herald.html

12/21/11- 

For another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County, more lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza -Part 1

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/for-another-consistently-lousy-year-of.html

8/13/13 - Former Miami Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos -whose position at the Herald remains unfilled 27 months later by McClatchy execs- as NPR's Ombudsman, lays the wood into NPR's Laura Sullivan & Amy Walters for a 2011 investigation re foster care in South Dakota, which officials there took umbrage with, and for good reason it seems. “My finding is that the series was deeply flawed and should not have been aired as it was”

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/former-miami-herald-ombudsman-edward.html

I hasten to add that this was also during the McClatchy era when the Herald ran a multi-weeks old story about Donald Trump in the "Breaking News" section of the Herald's Broward homepage on Monday December 19th, 2011 at 11:21 p.m.
And there it stayed for days...
Really. :-(

Margaret Sullivan's final column from last Friday is a column of pure gold, for it has much that the South Florida press corps could and SHOULD learn from in the way of perceived reporter/editorial/institutional bias, attention to accuracy and willingness to publicly admit mistakes.

I highly commend it to you and ask you to consider sharing it with others you know in South Florida and throughout the Sunshine State who think as I (we) do -that South Florida and the rest of the state would be much better off with a fully-engaged and curious press corps year-round, not the one we have had for years that habitually takes a Summer slumber or vacation come mid-June, never to be seen again until after Labor Day, no matter how important the story.

http://www.adweek.com/fishbowlny/most-people-dont-trust-the-media/372988

New study by "the American Press Institute - almost no one trusts the media. The report found that just six percent of Americans have a great amount of confidence in the press.  To put that into perspective, the API ‘s study showed that Americans trust only Congress less than the media. Other organizations that the public has more confidence in than journalists: banks, organized religion, the Supreme Court, and the military.  The number one reason people mistrust the media is that they found reports one-sided or biased. Following closely behind was that readers found something factually inaccurate. Interestingly, respondents to the API report said that how a media outlet responds to inaccurate reports is extremely important.  “Several focus group participants said they do not expect news sources to be perfect and how a source reacts to errors can actually build trust,” stated the report. “Several people said that owning up to mistakes and drawing attention to errors or mistakes can show consumers that a source is accountable and dedicated to getting it right in the long term.” 

Results at:
https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/lose-trust/

On the heels of this not-at-all surprising survey comes this great rear-view column from Sullivan, soon-to-be the Washington Post's new media columnist.

@Sulliview re Articles celebrating excesses of 1%, i.e. “four-pack” inc. #Miami winter condo - sadly, this attitude INFESTS #SoFL media. :-(

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) April 18, 2016

New York Times
The Public Editor's Journal - Margaret Sullivan  
Five Things I Won’t Miss at The Times — and Seven I Will  By Margaret Sullivan 
April 15, 2016 10:00 am 
April 15, 2016 10:00 am

While preparing to leave the public editor’s office and move to Washington, I’ve been getting together in recent weeks with some people I’ve met while living in New York. One was Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, who asked me over lunch what columns I planned to do before I left. I tossed it back to him, asking what he would like to read, and he suggested I take up “what I love and what I hate about The New York Times.”

This guy’s definitely got a future as an editor! I decided to tweak his idea, with a nod to Nora Ephron’s list from her book, “I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections.” (Of all the people I wish I had been able to meet in New York, she tops the list.)

Read the rest of her great post at:
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/five-things-i-wont-miss-at-the-times-and-seven-i-will/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=1

That's why he's Michael Barone and you're not: When Liberal Leaders Confront a Centrist Nation

I've been reading and following columnist and pundit
Michael Barone since even before I moved to D.C.
in 1988, or even before he was a regular on the original
McLaughlin Group, when that was the only
syndicated political chat show, and everyone I knew
watched it religiously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barone_%28pundit%29

It's still a LOT more popular in the Beltway area
than in the uninformed burbs of South Florida, plus,
now that I think about it, I rarely see a promo for it
on WPBT-Channel 2 -why is that anyhow?-
where it runs on Fridays at 8:30 p.m.
http://mclaughlin.com

(At various times while I lived in the greater D.C. area,
especially the Clinton years of the go-go Nineties,
I used to bank at the Riggs Bank, specifically, the
branch on 17th Street, N.W. & Eye St., three blocks
north of The White House and the OEOB.

This was the sort of place where on payday, Fridays,
you'd regularly see very well-heeled K Street D.C.
defense lawyer or lobbyists doing their weekly
transactions, like transferring money into their college
daughter's checking account so she can continue
living the McLean or Potomac lifestyle while they
were away from the financial Mother Ship.
No doubt while their daughter's roommate has to do
a 'Work Study' job like I did at IU.

Almost like it was a game, one of the persons who
always seemed to just beat me into the bank was
a highly-visible someone who always seemed to be
just 2-3 customers ahead of me in line: McLaughlin
Group regular Eleanor Clift of Newsweek magazine.)

In D.C, McLaughlin aired on the NBC affiliate,
WRC, and was part of my regular routine on
Saturday night before heading out for the night.

This essay was part of my daily email this from
Rasmussen Reports this morning.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com

The big news this morning there was that American
voters now give the GOP first-time lead on health
care.
That comes as no surprise to me given what we've
all seen the past few weeks, with so many uninformed
members of Congress unable to explain what
Obamacare would and would not entail, to voters
who have actually read the bill, or, explain away the
logic of so much secretiveness surrounding 1/6th
of the American economy.

For all the MSM talk in January and February of
David Axelrod's folks being so oh-so smart and
Chicago street-savvy, it's as if they never learned
the fundamental lessons of President Bush's failed
(irresponsible) immigration amnesty plan of two years
ago, which also featured no congressional hearings
that voters (and members of Congress and the
media) could watch or follow to become better
acquainted with the actual facts and provisions.

But when you insist on NOT having congressional
hearings where representatives of The White House
have to make their case publicly, and then have groups
opposed speaking against those policy ideas but for
others, you're asking for trouble.

But then you compound that fatal flaw by also insisting
on doing everything behind-the-scenes, even to the
point of refusing to publicly release the names of health
care leaders meeting with West Wing types, just as
was the case with Hillarycare in 1993, or groups
like La Raza working on the Kennedy bill at the
Bush White House, it's perfectly logical that people
would be very suspicious, especially middle-class
people who are usually apathetic -and proud of it-
about most aspects of American public policy.

People who find it easy to tune out discussions of the
legal ramifications of McCain-Feingold or redistricting
-see www.FairDistrictsFlorida.org- while they eagerly
wax philosophic, blog and Tweet about the particular
merits of one singer over another on a TV show I never
watch like American Idol.

(I used to see the last two minutes when they bleed
over to HOUSE's time-slot.)

Given that predicate, what's really surprising is that
The White House, DNC and Beltway press are so
surprised at the reaction of the American people.
It was entirely predictable.

Here's what I wrote on the Herald's webpage last
Thursday to the dreadful -what else is new?- Beth
Reinhard column about the town meetings on health
care.

Tempers flare in South Florida over healthcare overhaul

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/1173602.html

To me, this town hall/Obamacare issue has really
pinpointed the Herald's central identity problem,
in that they are now so short-staffed and so very
poorly edited -but still more smug and arrogant
than reality ought to allow- that they now cover
local South Florida stories like they're parachuted
out-of-town reporters who arrive with their misplaced
preconceptions, false stereotypes and condescending
know-it-all persona, who want to treat everything
down here in South Florida as either precious,
eccentric or unique, even if it isn't.
It's the Iowa Caucus Syndrome.

Like our crime and corruption isn't really crime and
corruption, with an emotional and physical toll on
victims, like other cities and regions, but rather just
a local lifestyle choice.

That's the same attitude and response I run into when
I try to explain just some of the many unethical and
shady things are going on at Hallandale Beach City Hall,
and they turn to me and say,
"That's just Hallandale Beach."

In the Herald's case, that has been made all the worse by
their increasingly wasting half their column space by writing
about how other reporters elsewhere have characterized
similar events, contaminating the local perspective, rather
than accurately reporting and illuminating what happened
right in front of them -HERE!

This is both insulting AND infuriating, besides being bad
journalism that doesn't serve local readers, that no matter
how much I want to give Herald Executive Editor
Anders Gyllenhaal the benefit of the doubt, at some point,
you can't help but wonder when is the bad dream going
to end?

When is the Herald finally going to shape-up?
Would it be better for the long-term if the Miami Herald
went kaput and something else emerged from the ashes
that was actually interested and able to cover local
stories properly? Or, to use a particularly apt sports
metaphor, addition-by-subtraction?

Just recruit some smart, savvy and enthusiastic grads
from Medill and Ernie Pyle and elsewhere and let 'em
loose on all the unsuspecting pols and crooks hereabouts.
People with smarts and skills who don't care who
lobbyists Ron Book is or who he knows or whom he
and his daughter bankroll with campaign contributions,
or even who rides home to South Florida on his plane
from Tallahassee.

I used to think no, but as I stated a few months ago
here on the blog, and even said in an email to Gyllenhaal
last year, that he responded to, the question of the
Herald's future is increasingly not a rooting matter for me,
but more an academic or sporting proposition.
When does it all fall apart for good?

HallandaleBeachBlog wrote on 08/07/2009 04:54:25 AM:

What do these Obamacare stories and the tea-bag stories have in common? The Herald being VERY late to the party in covering them, and reporting on something in their own area like they were tourists, sporting cliches we've all heard on TV for days already.

Not surprising given that the Herald NEVER wrote a single thing about the 4,000-plus turnout at the Orlando "tea party" on March 21st. No articles, no photos, no nothing.

That's really surprising since any time you get that many people in an apathetic FL city to do anything at one time, it's newsworthy.

Just NOT to the editors of the Miami Herald, apparently, a paper that never used the phrase until March 21st, weeks AFTER the topic had gained national currency.

What do the candidates seeking to succeed Meek think about Obamacare or 'cap and trade'?

Can't say, the Herald's reporters and the rest of SoFL media won't ask them.

Maybe I should just call them and put their answers on my blog, so people in SoFL will know their views, huh?

And now, the feature presentation...
-------

When Liberal Leaders Confront a Centrist Nation

A Commentary
By Michael Barone

Augusts 13, 2009,

There are more conservatives than Republicans and more Democrats than liberals. That's one of the asymmetries between the parties that helps to explain the particular political spot we're in. The numbers are fairly clear. In the 2008 exit poll, 34 percent of voters described themselves as conservatives and 32 percent as Republicans; 39 percent described themselves as Democrats but only 22 percent as liberals.

Read the rest of the essay at: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_michael_barone/when_liberal_leaders_confront_a_centrist_nation

Michael Barone archives are at:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_michael_barone

A week ago today... the road not taken with the Miami Herald and some 411 about Beth Reinhard to consider

Below is an excerpted version of an email that I sent
last Tuesday.

to		"Abad, Eva - Miami"
cc		"Landsberg, David" "Gyllenhaal, Anders"

I believe this explains why I won't be attending tonight.

By the way, about the below: the un-named condescending
Herald reporter referenced is Beth Reinhard, and since
I originally wrote this, yet another story has run in the
Herald on Lauren Book without ever mentioning that
she's going to be a Broward School Board candidate.
Par for the course.

--------------
(This was originally sent to Rick of the South Florida
Daily Blog with bcc's to... well, people from coast-to-coast.
Never heard back from him, though.
C'est la vie.)

Friday March 26th, 2010
4:00 p.m.

Dear Rick:
Have been meaning to contact you about something since
this past Monday, and when I saw you broach the subject
Thursday in your discussion on your blog regarding the
Miami Herald soliciting material from local area bloggers,
I knew that I needed to write and share what I knew with
you and others in the area before I put it off any longer.

Herald Uses Local Blogger For Content
http://southfloridadailyblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/herald-uses-local-blogger-for-content.html
...Now the real reason I'm writing.

Did you receive one of these invites from the Herald?
Just so you know, I never actually contacted them about
this, either.

More from me about this after the story on the Gothamist
purchase.

from Vanaver, Elissa - Miami to "Abad, Eva - Miami" date Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 1:39 PM subject Community News Network

Thank you for contacting us about The Miami Herald's new Community News Network. Now that we're launched, we invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 6, to learn more about how you can post your news, photos and videos on our new community channels.

Date: Tuesday, April 6

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: The Miami Herald

1 Herald Plaza

Conference Room A

Please RSVP to Eva Abad

Elissa Vanaver

VP of Human Resources

Assistant to the Publisher

-------
Paid Content
By Rafat Ali March 22, 2010

Exclusive
Local Blog Network Gothamist Being Bought by Cablevision’s Rainbow Media

Gothamist, the local city blog network that is best known for its New York City edition, is being acquired by Cablevision-owned Rainbow Media, paidContent has learned. The price is between $5 million to $6 million, though we understand a good portion of that is a performance-based earnout.

Read the rest of the post at: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-local-blog-network-gothamist-being-bought-by-cablevisions-rainbow-media/

See also: http://outside.in/studies

Early last Friday night, I got an out-of-the-blue phone call
from someone at the Herald asking me if I'd received an
invitation to some event they were throwing having to do
with the launch of their "News Network."

After finally realizing that the phone call was legit, I laughed
and said that on the face of it, I thought that I was unlikely
to contribute material, photos or videos, given how often I
criticize the newspaper, whether due to its intellectually-shallow
editorials, poor editing and overall story selection, their Sunday
Op-Ed section being the worst of any paper in the country of its
size, plus, the all-too-obvious biases and limitations of certain of
its political reporters, whose complete and utter predictability
and conventional wisdom would've been embarrassing in 1989,
much less, the year 2010.

Where oh where are all the positive necessary changes
they should've made last year?

They have far too many genuinely unappealing blogs yet STILL
don't have an Education blog in the year 2010?
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/blogs/

They still have no Broward-oriented columnist that local
Broward County residents could read 2-3 times a week about
issues they're interested in, instead of having so many Cuba/
Sweetwater/ Calle Ocho-centric columns falling down upon us
everyday, as if Broward was terra incognita.

I'm a Blue Dog Democrat who'd like to see a smart and savvy
in-house Conservative columnist at the Herald opining on things
hereabouts, since this area is a target-rich environment of clearly
tired ideas and political and social personalities on life support
that need to be skewered and held-up to long overdue scrutiny,
but which never are.

So where-oh-where is that Conservative voice at the Herald
who'd strongly challenge the prevailing orthodoxy there at the
paper and in the community?
Sadly, it is yet another one of the things to come there that
never actually quite arrives.

The Herald's current notions of diversity, all too often,
consists of people of many creeds and colors all speaking
in unison, which is not really a voice so much as it is a chorus.

I'm really tired of seeing them run Miami news on the Broward
homepage of the website -like that perennial, flooding on
Miami Beach!-the sorts of stories which are already on their
website at the top anyway.

Those are the ones I've recorded with a lot of screen-shots over
the past year or so, but which I've never run and posted about
because it's so damn depressing, especially after the fact.

While it's nice that they are FINALLY running 6-8 more pieces
a day on their Naked Politics blog compared to their former
pitiful output, the fact remains that they have no video component
to that blog in the way of a YouTube page, like the Sun-Sentinel's
Broward Politics blog, http://www.youtube.com/BrowardPolitics
and too many items are run in Naked Politics that ought to be
running elsewhere, but the Herald has no other place to put them.

The perfect recent example of this is their post last week on cute-
but-completely-inexperienced Lauren Book-Lim, super-lobbyist
Ron Book's daughter, that in a normal newspaper, ought to have
been on the Education blog, since it's pretty clear she's running
for an open Broward School Board seat, which could necessarily
preclude her father from lobbying there

http://www.browardbeat.com/waiting-for-the-800-pound-gorilla/

http://www.browardbeat.com/index.php?s=%22Lauren+Book%22

which would make that a big story among those of us who care
about public policy in Broward.

See also http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2010/03/a-survivors-walk.html and http://www.facebook.com/people/Lauren-Book-Lim/10617635

But since they don't have an Education blog...

In any case, the Herald's Patricia Mazzei NEVER even
mentions her possible School Board candidacy in the most
recent post.
It's so damn maddening!

Thank God for the St. Pete Times political reporters that they
now run, otherwise...

As it happens, the Herald went ahead without ever telling me
and listed my blog on their South Florida blogs page when it was
first introduced last year.
http://yourblogs.miamiherald.com/

I only discovered I was on their Communities page when
someone I know in Miami mentioned that they'd seen it linked
there.
And that was a few weeks after they'd been running it.

That struck me as a very odd way of doing business
or creating relationships.

As to that invite above that I received on Monday, I'm going to assume
that if they are calling me and asking me to listen to their marketing pitch,
that given how many more people read your blog, you must've already
received something like this quite some time ago.

I'm not inclined to participate when the sad reality is that I'm much more
likely to get a quicker and more professional response to an email of mine
from Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal than I do from 99.9%
of their reporters, columnists or editors, esp. their largely invisible Broward
editors.

Gyllenhaal has actually written me a few times in the past 18 months
after I had bcc'd him about some troubling things I'd seen in the paper,
and I genuinely believe that he wants the newspaper and its product to
be much better, as do a handful of reporters there that I genuinely trust
and wish would be given more latitude in what they write about, so that
everyone benefits.

I'm just not that convinced that a majority of the people down at the
Herald necessarily want meaningful positive change readers are
clamoring for, including me.

Even after everything that's gone on there with the layoffs, there's an
awful lot of contrived and mediocre notions afloat there about what the
paper ought to be that to my mind, and many of the reporters there,
are gumming-up the works.

I hear somewhat regularly from reporters there about actions that
show more people than you think are still very resistant to some positive,
meaningful change that would benefit everyone.

Let me share a recent Herald anecdote that involves me:
Two weeks ago, a well-known Herald reporter called a local Broward
politician I know about something that I'd written about with 100%
certainty, and asked the pol what they thought of what I'd written.

What the reporter on the phone didn't know was that I was actually
in the room at the time standing next to this person when her phone
call came thru, and heard the entire conversation on speakerphone,
including the condescending reference to a short pithy email of mine
as "crazy mail" and me as "that blogger guy in Hallandale."

Like she couldn't bear to actually say my name or the
name of my blog, even though I had the story and the
Herald didn't.

To me, that attitude of hers explains a lot about why the Herald
is in the very sad shape it's in, despite having some very talented
people who could make it much better.

I guess I hardly need mention, do I, that this particular reporter
was NOT someone I'd even originally sent that particular email to,
since I have such a low regard for her, but someone else at the
newspaper whom I did send it to, clearly forwarded it to her since
it was so obvious that there was a story there on a silver platter
about govt. cronyism and no-bid contracts and HB Mayor Joy
Cooper

It was yet another local Broward govt. news story this particular
reporter knew nothing about, but typically, she never thought
to actually contact me about it, she called others who didn't know
anything about it until I told them via email and my subsequent
blog posting.

Well, that was more than ten days ago and the story has never
seen the light of day in the Herald or any of its myriad blogs.
Nowhere but my humble blog.
It's really dumbfounding.

Patricia Andrews, the Herald's former Broward bureau chief
was someone who had covered Hollywood and Hallandale Beach
back when I was living-up in the Washington, D.C. area, so I quite
naturally thought that she'd be especially receptive to hearing
about some very troubling things going on in the area that I and
many others were eyewitnesses to.
She was not.
She NEVER responded to a single email of mine,

She also never responded to occasional emails from about a dozen
or so other concerned HB residents, asking why she and the paper
were ignoring all the self-evident corruption and non-compliance
with the state's Sunshine Laws at HB City Hall.

Even now, the Herald has never written about the mayor suing
HB civic activist and blogger Michael Butler, a trusted friend of
mine, or even more troubling, the current HB Police Chief having
tried to frame and prosecute two innocent people -cops, no less-
in order to ingratiate himself with HB City Manager Mike Good
and Mayor Joy Cooper -and that TWO separate Broward
County juries ruled against him and the city by returning
verdicts against the city in less than 15 minutes.

Verdicts that resulted in HB taxpayers paying hundreds
of thousands of dollars in damages.

Yet the status and future of this corrupt Police Chief has NEVER
been discussed in a HB City Commission meeting, for obvious reasons,
even though in most parts of the country, that conduct would've
resulted in an immediate firing -and him being in prison now.

Another stellar example of Broward SAO Mike Satz doing
nothing!

None of what I've just mentioned has ever appeared in the Herald,
yet now they want my assistance?
I don't think that's going to happen.

For the record, the Herald has sent exactly one reporter to a HB City
Commission since June of 2008.

Before I forget, go to this animated video on paidcontent.org's site
titled Stop the Presses: How to Save Newspapers by Ted Rall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7qd8v8v2qk

Adios!

Dave

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Abad, Eva - Miami
Date: Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:17 PM
Subject: REMINDER: Community News meeting AT THE MIAMI HERALD
To:

If you haven't RSVP's please contact me as soon as you can.

Thanks!!!

Eva Abad
HR/Community Affairs Specialist

Executive Assistant

The Miami Herald

-----Original Message-----

From: Abad, Eva - Miami
On Behalf Of Vanaver, Elissa - Miami

Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 1:39 PM

To: Abad, Eva - Miami

Subject: Community News Network

Thank you for contacting us about The Miami Herald's new Community News Network. Now that we're launched, we invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 6, to learn more about how you can post your news, photos and videos on our new community channels.

Date: Tuesday, April 6

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: The Miami Herald

1 Herald Plaza

Conference Room A

Please RSVP to Eva Abad

Elissa Vanaver

VP of Human Resources

Assistant to the Publisher

How Jennifer Carroll proves the political history of Florida isn't quite what it used to be -and neither are the news media's memories, either

To the blog readers who were kind enough to email me and ask -perhaps tongue in cheek- if I noticed that "Correction" in the Miami Herald on Friday, I did.
Actually, I noticed the mistake in the original article on Thursday, below.

-----
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/02/1803901/scotts-likely-no-2-navy-vet.html

Miami Herald
Rick Scott's likely No. 2: Navy vet
A Republican victory in November in the governor's race could produce Florida's first black lieutenant governor. Jennifer Carroll is likely to be Rick Scott's running mate

By Steve Bousquet, Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

September 2, 2010

Rick Scott's running mate on the Republican ticket for governor is expected to be state Rep. Jennifer Carroll, a U.S. Navy veteran and mother of three who, if elected, would be Florida's first black lieutenant governor.

Scott will unveil his pick Thursday in a campaign fly-around beginning in Jacksonville, a major hub of Republican voters near Carroll's home in Fleming Island.

In choosing Carroll, Scott, himself a Navy veteran, would get a woman with a distinctive personal story who could neutralize the gender appeal of his Democratic opponent, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink:

• In a state where one in every seven voters is black -- and nearly all are Democrats -- Carroll is a black Republican.

• As a native of Trinidad, Carroll is an immigrant who could help soften Scott's hard-line image on an issue that cuts both ways in a state with a large immigrant population.

• She packs a celebrity punch: Her son, Nolan II, is a rookie cornerback and kick returner for the Miami Dolphins, drafted out of the University of Maryland.

"She's an immigrant and she worked her way up and she did everything through hard work. That's very similar to Rick's background. There's a lot of similarities between the two of them,'' said Jen Baker, Scott's campaign spokesman.

Carroll, 51, made Gov. Charlie Crist's short list of possible running mates in 2006, and she was among those listed as possible successors to Mel Martinez, who resigned his U.S. Senate seat last year.

Scott's camp is aggressive in challenging what it considers off-base speculation on political blogs. When blogs named Carroll as his pick Wednesday, the campaign raised no objection.

Lieutenant governors in Florida share one common trait: obscurity. The office did not exist before 1968 and it is unique in that no job description for it exists in state law.

Strategists agree that the selection of a running mate is largely a media fixation that matters little to rank-and-file voters, unless the choice backfires.

"The first rule of a lieutenant governor candidate is to not get in trouble,'' said GOP strategist and lobbyist J.M. ``Mac'' Stipanovich. "As a candidate for governor your choice of a lieutenant governor does little for you, but this one is intriguing.''

'A GREAT MESH'

Leslie Dougher, county GOP chairwoman in Carroll's home of Clay County, praised the choice as "far-reaching.''

"It would be a great mesh,'' Dougher said. "Mr. Scott is from South Florida and Jennifer is from North Florida.''

Sink's running mate is Rod Smith, 60, a former state senator and elected state attorney from Alachua County who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006.

"I don't have time to speculate, really,'' Sink said in Miami Wednesday. ``I'm just waiting to see what his announcement is.''

BACKGROUND

Carroll moved to Florida in 1986. She and her husband, Nolan, have three children.

She became the first black Republican woman elected to the Legislature in a special election in 2003.

She retired after 20 years in the Navy, where she rose to the rank of lieutenant commander aviation maintenance officer.

She has a bachelor's degree from the University of New Mexico and a master's degree in business administration from St. Leo University in Pasco County.

Her official legislative biography notes that she is a life member of both the NAACP and the National Rifle Association.

Her record is not free of blemishes, however.

Six years ago, after news reports that she listed a degree from an online ``diploma mill,'' Kensington University in California, she dropped the reference from her official resume.

"This causes me great concern,'' Carroll told the Florida Times-Union in 2004. ``It's a lot of time, effort and money poured into a university I thought was a viable program.''

Last spring, Carroll filed a bill regulating certain electronic sweepstakes games. The Times-Union reported that Carroll confirmed that her public relations firm, 3 N. and J.C. Corp., represented Allied Veterans of the World Inc., a veterans' group that sought to legalize the slot-like machines.

Carroll quickly withdrew the bill (HB 1185) and said a staff member filed the legislation without her approval.

Carroll does not have a distinguished record as a lawmaker, but has compiled a solidly pro-business voting record and was unchallenged in a bid for a fourth term this fall.

At a campaign stop in Jacksonville on Tuesday, Scott told WOKV radio he had ``pretty much'' made up his mind but would not stoke speculation about his choice.

"This person's going to do a wonderful job,'' Scott said. ``Whoever it's going to be, you guys will all be proud of.''

Carroll would not be the first black woman to run for the state's No. 2 post.

In 1978, Claude Kirk, a former Republican governor seeking a comeback as a Democrat, chose Mary Singleton as his running mate, but the Kirk-Singleton ticket fared poorly.

Times/Herald staff writer John Frank and Miami Herald staff writer Beth Reinhard contributed to this report.

-----

The case of the missing adjective.

excerpted from:
Miami Herald
Corrections

September 3, 2010

In a story Thursday on Page 1B about Republican Rick Scott's selection of Jennifer Carroll as his running mate, it incorrectly noted that she was the first black female elected to the state Legislature.
Gwen Sawyer Cherry, a Democrat from Miami, was the first African American woman ever to serve in the Legislature. She was elected in 1970.

-----

Carroll is the first Black female Republican elected to the State House, which is why I highlighted Republican in red in the original since it wasn't there, but added online after the edition went to print.

Hmm-m-m... Gwen Cherry was also the first Black woman to practice law in Dade County, a not insignificant fact. See: http://www.gscbwla.org/cherry.htm

Obviously, I'm long past believing that all the employee cuts at the Herald are starting to have their logical negative results for their dwindling number of readers, in that they have lost people who actually know which facts are important and which are not, and can say something
when words in an article are flat-out wrong -or missing.

It will come as no surprise to most of you readers who come here often that in my opinion, the reporters in this community who don't know anything about the political history of this area or why things are the way they are, greatly out-number the ones who do.

This Thursday article is a preview of the future of South Florida media, something I notice nearly every time Miami TV reporters show up at Hollywood City Commission meetings and seem to know nothing -or next-to-nothing- about what is on the meeting agenda and what its implications might be.
So many are strangely incurious.

I don't expect them to be experts, but... well, let's just say that the amount of time some of them need to be talked to by the city's official spokesperson Raelin Story -who is always professional and accommodating- seems to be increasing, based on what I observe.
I'm sure she notices who does their homework and is prepared, and who doesn't and isn't.
I know I do.


Jennifer Carroll's web page at the Florida House of Representatives website:
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/SEctions/Representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=4331&SessionId=42

Campaign website: http://www.scottcarrollforflorida.com/

For more on her talented son...

Miami Herald

DOLPHINS
CB Carroll embraces discipline

By David J. Neal

May 5, 2010

Here's how you know Dolphins rookie cornerback Nolan Carroll didn't grow up acting foolish, or at least didn't do so twice: he's the son of a former Navy lieutenant commander who retired after 20 years with some medals, including an "expert pistol medal."

And that was Mom, state Rep. Jennifer Carroll, the first female black Republican state representative. Dad, Nolan Carroll Sr., was an Air Force senior master sergeant.

"Ever since I came out of my mom, it was, 'yes, sir,' 'no, sir,' 'yes, ma'am,' be on time, do this, do that when I say so," said Carroll, a fifth-round draft pick. "Up to now, and I'm 23 years old, I still say, 'yes, sir,' 'no, sir.' They expect me to say it. There was very strict discipline in my house. They were also cool. They weren't always telling me what to do. They treated me like I was a grown man, as well.'

Now, Carroll is a grown man out of the Jacksonville area with an exemplary off-the-field makeup. If not for the broken leg that aborted Carroll's senior season at Maryland after two games, NFL coaches wouldn't have been in favor of drafting him, but rather adopting him.

"When you talk with the young man, he's just an impressive guy; he really is," Dolphins coach Tony Sparano said. "The first time I ever met him, I was really impressed with the way he came off. Never mind how he presented himself from a football standpoint, but he had all the other things that are important to us, too."

Such as a willingness to do exactly what he is told.

"The coaches are like my parents," Carroll said. "Same thing. I do what they tell me to do. I don't back talk."

And if he disagrees with a coaching decree?

"I look down and think, 'They know what's best for me, so I'm just going to listen to what they tell me to do,' " he said.

That's one reason Carroll tries to avoid even minor violations such as breaking curfew -- he figures rules were made for a reason. Also, he's used to being in situations where any bad behavior can reflect on others.

"If my friends wanted to go and do something and I thought it was bad, I wouldn't do it," he said. "I'd stay in the house just to make sure. I didn't want to give [his mother] a bad name.

"Same with this," he continued, looking past reporters to the Dolphins' logo facing the Davie practice fields. "I treat this like a family. I treat the Miami Dolphins like it's my mom, it's my family. I don't ever want to give them a bad name."

Now, if he can play nickel cornerback without embarrassing them on the field, he might have a job.

The Dolphins believe they have found their future outside cornerbacks in 2009 rookies Sean Smith and Vontae Davis. Will Allen, who turns 32 in August with nine seasons of mileage, will be back in that competition for starting spots this year after recovering from a season-ending knee injury. But for how long? Also, the Dolphins released last year's nickel cornerback, Nate Jones.

With three-wide receiver sets becoming the norm, it's a position defenses want settled.

"One of the things that I think I want to try to do with Nolan right away is to just get him in a position where he's going to be able to get himself settled down and play because he has missed so much time," Sparano said. "I think that we are going to kind of let him get his feet set at corner right now and then take a look at some of the players that we have in there and then worry about whether we get him inside."

Carroll, who ran a 4.42-second 40-yard dash at Maryland's pro day, played against slot receivers during his sophomore season in 2007. That was his first at cornerback after spending his freshman year as a wide receiver.

"[The Dolphins] like that I'm tough and aggressive," Carroll said "I need to work just getting used to the position some more. I've only been playing it a year and a half if you don't count my senior year that I missed."