You’ve probably read about the vote to choose Hilton over Marriott to build the 1000-room hotel next to the Broward Convention Center. But you didn’t get the whole story. The vote, in some ways, was a referendum on the power of Judy Stern, who is the lobbyist du jour in…
Last week we had the Boynton Beach Police Department asking reporters to shave their heads for a cause, now we have the Palm Beach School District offering journos a chance to “portray themselves” in a movie. School board spokesman Nat Harrington tells reporters of a school safety video that is…
It gives the Pulp no joy to bring you this news from Editor and Publisher. Circulation keeps declining — and we’re starting to grow wary of the “third-party paper” excuse, which has been used for other steep losses. Here’s the key graph, local-wise: “E&P has learned that several major papers…
Illegally Undocumented It’s not about immigration: Great story (“Keep out,” Amy Guthrie, October 25)! In a market where local radio content is almost unheard of, Joyce Kaufman is a breath of fresh air, and hers is the only show that’s worthwhile on WFTL. Get rid of bigots like Bill O’Reilly,…
Miami, literary Shangri-la? A mecca for the bookish? It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But for more than 20 years, autumn has brought a kind of inverse solar eclipse, sending some of us scurrying from the beaches, out of the malls, off the interstate, and into the comforting, ancient…
Detectives squinted at the abandoned station wagon they found in a remote patch of the Everglades. It had been shot up from both inside and out. Blood was splattered all over the doors. But there was no body as evidence — not so much as a bone or a dismembered…
It’s not like my friend Kyle and I aren’t open to new things. In fact, on the way to the grand opening of Pazzo’s Cucina Italiana and Lounge, a chain restaurant imported from Chicago, we were discussing that very thing — how our flexibility had let us, in his words,…
When the man in the City of Hollywood golf shirt walked into Harrison’s Wine Bar late last year, the place already had some experience with sexual peccadilloes. That August, a group of swingers got a little out of hand during a private birthday party at the downtown bar. Hollywood detectives…
In South Florida, it’s hard to keep up with all the astoundingly cockamamie development schemes that come down the pipe. Like, how do you compete with a plan floated a few years ago to build two Eiffel Tower replicas on the beach in Pompano Beach? And there was that International…
Why am I publishing the Broward County lobbyist registration list? Because I can. And it should be online anyway, so I’m just doing a service. It includes all the lobbyists registered to work at the Broward County Commission, their phone numbers, email addresses, and all their clients. It also proves…
John DeGroot gives us the background facts on the University of Miami’s purchase of Cedar’s Medical Center. In short, he suggests, based on the numbers, that UM is buying itself a right big boondoggle. And this time he tees off on another newspaper instead of the old punching bag down…
We’ve now gotten two comments regarding an alleged State Attorney’s Office investigation into JAABlog’s posting of the Levenson-Reidy transcript in which the name of the 16-year-old sex crime victim appeared. In Florida, it’s a second-degree misdemeanor to publish the name of the victim of a sex offense (I include the…
Remember that Gulfstream II jet that left Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport and wound up crashed in Mexico with four tons of cocaine aboard? Remember that the jet was previously associated with the federal government and runs to Guantanamo? Remember it had allegedly been recently purchased by a mysterious local airman…
The Miami Herald’s Joan Fleischman reports that there’s a low-budget by University of Miami students (Sam Rega and Josh Miller) in the works. Below is the rather kick-ass trailer, which includes snippets with journalists Jim DeFede and Francisco Alvarado. (Via Stuck on the Palmetto)…
JAABlog, the popular and trenchant courthouse blog spearheaded by attorney Bill Gelin, is out of order. It’s been nearly a week since there’s been a new post. The troubles appear to have begun when the “moderators” of the blog changed a post written by Gelin about the inappropriate — and,…
As a bit of a Halloween experiment, the Miami Herald published a “ghost story” written by music writer Michael Hamersly that is now occupying prime real estate on the newspaper’s webpage. It’s a fictional story about a murderous — and quite insane — mother which includes this memorable paragraph: “Ve-ron-i-ca-a-a-a,…
Clients of Broward County lobbyist Judy Stern, who might be the most influential of all influence peddlers working at county hall, have gotten a strange letter in the mail during the past couple of days, according to sources. The letter appears to be from Stern — it even includes what…
I love the way Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti turns otherwise normal citizens into rabid activists. It may be the only benefit of the woman’s shameful career in public service. Take David Mach. He’s a member of the family that owns commercial property in downtown Hollywood that Giulianti tried to seize…
This is an email that just came across my transom from Nadine McCrea, president of the Washington Park Homeowners Association, to Hollywood Commissioner Peter Bober demanding that he remove her photo from his campaign website (the offending photo, I presume, is the Xmas shot). I’d like to say that there…
Click here at the WPLG site to see video of the arrest (and an accompanying blurb wherein the reporter’s own station misspells his name “Weisnier”). It’s several minutes long and quite interesting. Weinsier clearly knew he was going to be arrested. wanted it on tape, and refused to obey what…
To expound further on John DeGroot’s take on the yacht trade, I give you Martha Brannigan’s piece in the Miami Herald on megayachts. Basically, it backs up DeGroot’s finding that while the boat industry isn’t doing all that well as a whole, the megayacht business is going swimmingly. And yes,…
No Besa Culo Clasky just has strong opinions about sludge haulers: Harvey Slavin’s angry letter calling Ron Clasky “one more Hollywood suck-around” due to his defense of Keith Wasserstrom is way off-base (“The Kiss-Ass Gambit,” Letters, October 18). Clasky has tirelessly fought an endless battle to prevent developers from turning…
