Got this e-mail just now that the Broward County AFL-CIO will hold a rally tomorrow morning to show support for … Sheriff Ken Jenne. That’s right. S-U-P-P-O-R-T. To wit: June 6, 2006 To All Concerned: There will be a rally of support for Sheriff Ken Jenne on Thursday, June 8…
Okay, that header may be overstating things just a bit, but you read about Deerfield Beach City Manager Larry Deetjen’s racist airport blow-up here first. Let’s face it, Larry Deetjen brought down Larry Deetjen. The Sun-Sentinel’s Susannah Bryan tells us this morning of Deetjen’s six-month suspension which was hastened by…
Thanks to Chaz Stevens for pointing out the slogan of TransMedia, the firm hired by Mayor Al Capellini to combat bad press about his dubious dating and business habits: “What can we SPIN for you today?” Another TransMedia client is Walter Shaw, the famed jewel thief and cat burglar of…
People go to Florida to die. So where do Floridians go. Tennessee, the Sentinel’s Liz Doup reports. Doup describes the bucolic and paradisical rural Tennessee life like a funeral director selling a plush coffin. “I found a piece of heaven,” says the lede Florida expat. Yeah, literally. Living in a…
So I got an e-mail from a P.R. firm in Boca Raton called TransMedia Group. The subject line: “Mayor Al Capellini Speaks Out!” That’s right, Mayor Al has hired a P.R. firm to rebut negative press, including coverage of his use of a city supervisor to coerce a city lifeguard…
Ever heard of the Deerfield Observer? It’s a so-called “community newspaper” — you know, one of those local Chamber of Commerce rags. Some Deerfield locals have been cheering a pending personnel change at the newspaper that was announced on Friday: The resignation of long-time Managing Editor Judy Wilson. Why? Because…
Usually would save this for Monday, but today is a big day. Christian Zapata, one of fired deputy scapegoats in the BSO crime stats scandal, was acquitted. Between the two big dailies, the Sentinel’s Tonya Alanez had the superior coverage on the jury’s wise decision, highlighting defense attorney Alberto Milian’s…
The Palm Beach Post was dominated today by the wrong tense. On the front page is a huge headline, “Property Values Have Risen An Average Of 21 Percent … WHAT’S DRIVING THE SURGE?” The website headline: “PBC property values shoot up 21 percent.” Apparently they didn’t read their own story…
That’s Naugle’s Back With all due respect to Mike Mayo, all this hand-wringing over Mayor Jim Naugle’s quotes about affordable housing is pretty dull. Anybody who has been paying attention to Naugle for the past decade or two knows that he’s a right-wing provocateur. And the mayor’s quote about his…
The Sun-Sentinel played catch-up to the Miami Herald this morning on the Ken Jenne sweepstakes and did a decent job of explaining the mystery $20,000 loan. Almost as good as the Herald, which maintained its ownership of the story. Interesting newspaper horserace aside, I am amazed by Jenne’s cheap cunning…
Something is rotten in Deerfield. The City of Deerfield Beach is cracking open like a cantaloupe, one side led by Mayor Al Capellini and City Manager Larry Deetjen and the other by commissioners Steve Gonot and Martin Popelsky. City Hall meetings are marked by shouting and chaos. Armed guards have…
Get your tickets now for the next big-budget disaster movie: Carp! The widescreen epic will show how the world as we know it is threatened by fat, weed-bingeing, armor-clad freshwater fish in the Everglades. Picture it. Vast, wriggling fields of Cyprinus carpio, consuming anything that comes near, their mouths opening…
On Saturday night, my friend Kim suggested we venture to Fitzy’s Lounge in Delray Beach, a spot she frequents but that was new to me. She sold me on the place by saying it frequently had jazz bands, and tonight, a chill and funky vibe was just about right. See,…
Blessings for Nicole Let her be, let her be: I am so pleased to see that this child is not forced into submission but allowed to be who she wants to be (“See Dick Be Jane,” Julia Reischel, May 18). The great thing for her is that she is so…
On May 17, John P. Contini leaned across a table in Broward County Courtroom 343 and whispered in his client’s ear. Martin Diez, a 34-year-old Pembroke Pines man with brown eyes, brown hair, and a chubby face, looked up and smiled. He didn’t have much to smile about at the…
For all practical purposes, the excellent journalism done by the American Lawyer Media’s 39 publications — including the newsbreaking Daily Business Review in South Florida — is gone. Kaput. Swallowed. Absent. The opposite of “there.” However you want to put it, the vast majority of journalists around the country won’t…
The Miami Herald absolutely smoked the Sun-Sentinel in the Saturday stories on Sheriff Ken Jenne. When it comes to the federal investigation of the sheriff, the Herald story by Wanda DeMarzo and Jay Weaver gave us a look at some of the furniture in the room while the Sentinel left…
Some quick (and not so quick) takes on the morning papers: Wanda DeMarzo tells us of the outrageous ruling by Circuit Judge Michael Gates in the trial of former BSO deputy Christian Zapata, the first public hearing of the crime stats scandal. Gates — remember that name — ruled that…
The Palm Beach Post disgraced itself today. Check out the front page. Dwarfing excellent articles by Tony Doris (Liberti pleads guilty) and S.V. Date (about GOP and insurance companies — and sorry, S.V., I don’t know how to put the accent on that e), the newspaper ran a larger than…
On a spring Thursday, the parking lot at Gulfstream Race Park appears as vast and unbroken as a salt flat, inviting a high-speed, line-cutting swoop to the front of the clubhouse. The racetrack has stood here in Hallandale Beach since 1939, virtually the dawn of time in South Florida years,…
Early on a Sunday morning last month, an abandoned historic house that for decades has blocked development plans on valuable land in downtown Fort Lauderdale burst into flames. Whether it was arson, as investigators initially suggested, or just a stunningly convenient accident, the fire at the Clarke House at 700…
Tailpipe has seen them wandering the South Florida streets, ghostly figures with darting eyes. The Real Estate Agents. They were once sprightly lads and lasses, pressed and polished, riding their Beemers euphorically along the crest of the real estate boom. Now, they plod the avenues, haunted by falling sales, searching…
