The Boca News Flatters The Palm Beach Post

The Boca Raton News followed Stephanie Slater’s article about Delray Beach police officer Vincent Balestrieri, who allegedly lied about going back to Iraq so he could collect some department dough. And there were a few, um, similarities between the story Boca News city editor Dale M. King wrote and Slater’s…

Ugh! Newspaper Prints Idiotic Headline

Worst Headline of the Day goes to the Miami Herald for its topper on a story about an enterprising Hollywood fellow named Darin Satter who set up a pirate radio station at his trailer that overlaid rap music on KISS County-FM: “Argh! Pirate radio station cut into country airtime.” I…

North Broward Hospital District Admits Shell Game

Levine: A man of the people (so far) It was on the front page, but I don’t think the Sun-Sentinel even knows how significant the news that’s coming from the North Broward Hospital District today really is. Buddy Nevins reports that new CEO Alan Levine, who I am starting to…

De La Cruz Empowering Cheapskates Everywhere

Lifestyles columnist Ralph de la Cruz asks us in a headline today, “‘Are we tightwads for wanting our ‘loose change’?” The answer, before we go any further, is a resounding “hells yes.” But here’s the key passage, which comes after he tells the story of his family getting overbilled one…

Local SPJ ‘Endorses’ Herald Firings

Writing rather shrilly that they are “profoundly disturbed” by reports of payments to reporters accepting money from Radio and TV Marti, the officers of the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists backed the Miami Herald’s firings of three El Nuevo Herald reporters. The crux: “Journalists in South Florida,…

Net Hate in Neverland

When Mickey Ben-Tovim drives by Peter Pan Gifts, a small seashell shop in Delray Beach, he slows his Ferarri and squints through the windows cluttered with conchs and cowries, searching for a man he wants dead. “He’s truly one of the more vile individuals you’ll ever come across,” says Ben-Tovim,…

Straight to TV Hell

Maybe there’s some truth to that “fair and balanced” slogan after all. Last week, the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) held its national convention in Miami Beach, and the 600 or so attendees owed their fun in the sun partially to Fox News, which donated $10,000 to the…

Dwarf Storm

“Fuck Ernesto! Come get dirty at the Dwarf, where I’ll be singing in the rain!” said my favorite singer/songwriter, Keith Michaud, text-messaging me on the night the midget storm blew into town. It was good timing: The weather had put me in the mood to get more polluted than the…

Letters for September 21-27, 2006

What Would JP2 Do? About that big-hearted Egyptian humanitarian Hosni Mubarak: What would former Pope John Paul II think? I agree with Dr. Thompson Debord, who wrote a letter (September 7) chastising the Rev. O’Neal Dozier’s letter indicating that “Islam is a very dangerous, evil religious cult” and emphasizing Dozier’s…

Editor, Interrupted

It has all the elements of a morality play — adultery, love, betrayal, and, finally, breakdown — and right now, it looks like the final act may take place in the Broward County Courthouse. The protagonists in the tale are two well-known players in the City of Hollywood: Alan Koslow,…

Nielsen on the Herald

Veteran local journalist (and former MNT writer) Kirk Nielsen has a rollicking good story about the McClatchy purchase of The Miami Herald in the latest edition of LRM Magazine and the Pulp just got a copy. Nothing earth-shattering, but it’s tied together by excellent reporting culled from good sources at…

Critical (In) Miami

Thought I’d point you toward this debate/rant session about the new Miami New Times’ blog on Critical Miami. Interestingly, both MNT Editor Chuck Strouse and The Bitch have chimed in, so there’s a bit of back and forth. After reading it I was left with a feeling of emptiness, really,…

Bad Government, Bad

Had to comment on this column in The Miami Herald by Sam Terilli, a professor at the University of Miami’s School of Communication and a former general counsel at the newspaper. He expounds on the Marti Ten and ultimately blames … the government: [A] fair degree of the responsibility for…

Mayor Mara: American Hero

Well, Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti is at it again, proving that she’s a superior American and that those who oppose her are little more than small, rather disgusting, burrowing rodentia. It started with a complaining e-mail from Angela Jackson, an activist who was arrested a while back in Hollywood during…

Spread the Mayo

Where would the Sun-Sentinel be without Mike Mayo? Today he finally gives the newspaper a whiff of credibility with his column about Ken Jenne’s hiring of John Hanlon. Before, he was nailing the Hard Rock for stiffing the guy who won the $260,000 jackpot when the regular staff seemed suspiciously…

Prostitutes and Reporters

Bill Ingram/PB Post Most of you have probably already seen the Paul Lomartire’s feature story in the Palm Beach Post about one of the more storied prostitutes in PBC. Good on Lomartire to get the story of Maggie Williams (or “Scaggie Maggie” as they call her on the streets) –…

Free Willie

This tells you there is something desperately wrong with America right now. It’s like the 60s on rohypnol. This is the Dead Age, the time of fears and troubles, of when the worst in human nature trumps any will to the good or care for justice. Well, either that or…

Repurposing

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/09/14/publiceye/entry2010928.shtml…

Notes from the Weekend

— This little ditty by the Palm Beach Post’s Andrew Marra may be the worst news City Place has had. Not because a woman hanged herself out in the open. But because nobody even noticed until the afternoon. After the jump: McDonald’s fighting obesity, Reinhard, Bigoney, Venezuelan ant-Semitism, abortion debacle,…

Forget It, Ana, It’s Little Havana

Robert Birnbaum Miami Herald Publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. wrote about the Marti Ten story in a column on Sunday. There are a couple of interesting passages, though there’s nothing earth-shattering in it (if you want a breakdown on it from the hardcore exile point of view, check out Manuel A…

Scams and Goons At FAU

Koretzky Is Readying His Goon Squad Okay, it’s one of those credit things. On September 7, University Press staffer Jason Parsley broke a story about a Barnes and Noble giveaway at Florida Atlantic University that went awry. Basically, nobody knows what happened to thousands of dollars in gift cards that…

A Touch of the News

— Nice job by the Herald’s Cammy Clark on the diver in the Keys who was killed by a Grouper he’d just illegally speared. Both of them died together, actually, which is sort of beautiful in a macabre way. — Great work by Sun-Sentinel free-lancer Dale Koppel, who exposes the…