News

Drew is on his way, and his car better be done when he gets there. It’ll take him maybe 45 minutes to make it down from Boynton Beach to a dark, dingy bay in a warehouse lodged against I-95 where his 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass has been transformed into a playa’s…

On May 8, Betty Bowen of Pompano Beach, an 81-year-old white woman, made an illegal left turn into oncoming traffic on northbound State Road 7 in Tamarac and creamed a black man riding a motorcycle. Witnesses told police that other cars stopping short for Bowen’s bad move prevented Reginald Ervin,…

This is a story about two Fort Lauderdale golf courses. One is the Coral Ridge Country Club, a tidy, 52-year-old gem of a course where Sam Snead and Ben Hogan once dazzled fans as the city’s upper crust sipped martinis in the sedate privacy of a clubhouse, with delectable panoramas…

Bring in the Bow Ties Can Farrakhan help us get along? As an East Indian immigrant originally from Trinidad, I have lost the tremendous sympathy I once had for African-Americans. Not all, but too many have become blatant and often hostile incarnations of the same forms of narrow-minded intolerance that…

The day after my column about Riviera Beach political activist Fane Lozman hit the streets, the city sent him an eviction letter. Coincidence? Maybe, but whether it was tied to my report doesn’t change the fact that the City of Riviera Beach is engaging in a shameless game of retaliation…

Dumb Savage Former Coconut Creek cop Michael Dunsavage already pleaded guilty to stealing money from the migrant workers, reports Tonya Alanez in the Sun-Sentinel. I’d like to hear from the commentator named “Jim” (see the comments here), who insisted on this blog that Dunsavage was innocent of the charges and…

Don’t forget to watch war-mongering Robert Wexler and his young, idealistic, gay, Republican-dating staff tonight on the Sundance Channel tonight at 9 p.m. Here’s a run-down of tonight’s series opener: Fighting the Good Fight — With the 2004 national election fast approaching, Congressman Wexler and his staff pour their off-time…

No sense in wasting time to get to the heart of media news in South Florida today: The Sun-Sentinel had one of the worst front pages in modern recorded history. In its terribly regrettable three-story format — with assorted, miscellaneous garbage cluttering a third of the page — the editors…

Via Howard Sher This, for me, captures the feeling of an unwanted deadline better than anything I’ve ever seen…

Oh, the oh-so-responsible media types are up in arms. They’re peppering Romenesko lately, complaining about the excessive coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. The attention, complains Denver Post columnist Cindy Rodriguez put it, “won’t improve public schools, solve the illegal immigration crisis, bring down gas prices, improve our economy…

Via Stuck on the Palmetto Today, the Sun-Sentinel enlightens us on why Shawna Willey was so obsessed with having large, vicious dogs surrounding her all the time. Sallie James, Jennifer Gollan and Robert Nolin report on the front page that Willey had the Presa Canario that killed her in her…

New quiz from spam quotes sent to the Pulp. The quality of the quotes are getting better (though a bit more pedantic). Match them up: SAID 1. I only drink to make other people seem more interesting. 2. But I think that the most important thing was to really stop…

Wexler And His Refreshing Staff Get ready, because South Florida’s No. 1 media whore has finally done the inevitable. Robert Wexler is hitting the reality circuit this week. The Democratic Congressman from Boca Raton, who last month moronically told the world he enjoyed cocaine on The Colbert Report, is hitting…

Do You Believe This Guy? Okay, now the Sun-Sentinel is just being stubborn. Again, it didn’t put a story about the JonBenet Ramsey murder arrest on the front page. And again, most every other newspaper did, including the Post and Herald. You almost have to admire the Sentinel’s stick-to-itiveness. And…

Remember that great murder story in the Miami Herald yesterday? You know, the one about Covie Smith getting killed while he was on the cell phone with his girlfriend? The one where I said it was the best deadline reporting I’d seen in a while. The one with this passage:…

The Sun-Sentinel today took the extraordinary step of soliciting those directly connected to the national horror of the September 11 attacks. The bottom Digest item on today’s page 3B is headlined “Call us.” The text: Where were you on Sept 11, 2001? We are looking for local residents with a…

Or really, it’s her long-suffering family’s day. This second-grade teacher, John Mark Karr, has admitted to the killing, ending what has to be one of the most poorly handled murders — by both the press and police — in the history of the United States. The supermarket tabloids, in particular,…

On a recent Tuesday, the air around Pompano Beach City Hall smelled of evaporated rain. It was the calm after one storm and before another. By 6 o’clock, people had begun to pool under an eave at the west side of the building, news crews were unspooling cables from their…

If there is a driving force behind Riviera Beach’s $2.4 billion redevelopment project, if there is one person who is imprinted on the effort like a cattle brand, it is Michael Brown. The city’s “weak” mayor. Brown’s post is meant to be largely ceremonial — he doesn’t even have a…

A little girl’s birthday party was ruined a few Sundays ago by an ambulance treating a drowning man at John U. Lloyd State Park in Hollywood. Tailpipe had just emerged from the roiling riptides at the park, his rusty hide covered in sea lice bites, when he heard sirens and…

The Browning of the Ocean You want a permit? I’ll give you a permit. A permit to shut down: Thank you for picking up the Delray-Boynton pipe topic and running with it (“Reef Madness,” Wyatt Olson, August 10). I can understand the reluctance of the Delray Beach commissioners, who all…