Blogs

Okay, somebody calling themselves "Sentinel Chicken" has asked that I look into Mike Clary's front-page Sun-Sentinel story (in today's Palm Beach County edition) on the closing of a shelter in Belle Glade. Seems Palm Beach County and Red Cross officials are up in arms about it, saying it's a crock, etc etc etc. Here's the lede:

"Belle Glade � A decision by the Red Cross to shut down emergency shelters early Wednesday forced more than 1,000 people to leave Lake Shore Middle School just as the center of Tropical Storm Ernesto blew in, generating hours of heavy downpours and gusty winds that often topped 25 mph."

Oooooh. 25 mph wind gusts.

Doesn't seem like that big a deal right off the top, hardly worthy of the front page. Then you get the passages from two people who

More

I didn't even think twice about it. But then someone told me they were pretty much stunned that I had used the word "wetback" in a joke on the Pulp yesterday.

"Do you even know how many Hispanic journalists read your blog?" this person said. "I cringed for you."

This person said the use of that word was completely inappropriate, no matter what context. I might as well have used the n-word in jest while I was at it, they said.

I laughed it off at first. Hell, such a reaction was more indicative of racist tendencies than

More

I was a little late coming to the party on the Sun-Sentinel re-design. I didn't realize when it was done last year that it would relegate reporters and their stories to third-rate status behind giant graphics and stupid little blurbs. I didn't know that it would turn national news stories of profound importance into background music. In short, I didn't know it would be the ruination of the newspaper.

I thought I would try to find out the impetus behind the decline and what I found was this American Journalism Review article from last fall. In it, AJR "senior editor" and University of Maryland teacher Carl Sessions Stepp takes the most positive spin on the movement toward tiny stories on the nation's front pages imaginable (you have to check out the absolutely ridiculous little thing about acorns). Don't be fooled, Stepp is full of more crap than a Louisiana pig barn. He writes that tiny blurb/stories are often "clever" and "increasingly valued and rewarded with good play." He continues:

"While it remains true that newsroom accolades still attach more to mega-projects than mini-tales, short pieces can amass their own recognition and status."

Oh Lord, it's bad stuff -- and to think Stepp is out there teaching our young people how to be reporters. Scary. But guess who takes a front-and-center role in Stepp's slop-fest? Yes, indeed, our own Mr. Maucker. To wit:

More

A Real Front Page

Okay, the newspapers had some 'splaining to do this morning for overhyping Ernesto -- and the Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald had exactly the same idea. Blame the science -- and don't even mention that the newspapers and TV stations and governments behaved like this was a monster Cat 5 rather than a struggling possible Cat 1 (if that) all along.

The Sentinel's front-page headline: "INEXACT SCIENCE." The Miami Herald's: "'NOT A PERFECT SCIENCE."

The Sentinel had a huge, difficult-to-read graphic with a silly chart and examples of different tracks for Ernesto. It looked a little like their absurd Lifestyle fronts, where, apparently in a misplaced desire to be youthful and hip, they make the thing so busy that it's

More

First alligators, now dogs. Evan S. Benn and Breanne Gilpatrick report on a fatal attack on a 56-year-old man by a boxer in southwest Miami-Dade. A boxer. Those are great dogs. I gotta think the dog had been mistreated or cooped up in some awful way. The dog killed the guy, who might have been drunk, in a pen in the back of three-acre farm where the guy lived in a shed. You can bet one thing: This won't get a tenth of the coverage of the mauling of Shawna Willey in Coral Springs. For one, the guy lived in a shed, not a million-dollar house in a residential neighborhood. For two, the guy's not a pretty, relatively young ex-stripper. For three, it's not the first time a dog killed somebody in South Florida, it's the second time. And four, the guy's not a pretty, relatively young ex-stripper.

Robinson

The big media story today of course is the controversy over the hype of Ernesto in the media. On the NBC 6 morning show South Florida Today, the big, black and beautiful Trina Robinson seemed on the verge of a breakdown. She talked about getting an e-mail that morning from a viewer who said he'd always liked her before but after the Ernesto coverage would never like her one bit. Robinson was shrill and defensive the entire show, as was cohort Lonnie Quinn, one of the prettiest TV personalities in Florida. He held a bunch of e-mails from irate viewers and, to NBC's credit, read some of them. At one point, Robinson became so upset that Quinn, a former soap opera actor, put his hand on her shoulder to console her, saying something to the effect of, "They're mad at the station, not any individual." Only the old vet, Hank Tester, kept his cool.

Quinn

Look, here's my take on this: OF COURSE IT WAS OVERHYPED. TV and newspapers (especially the Sun-Sentinel) have been overhyping these things for decades. It goes with the job. The truth is that the God-like Max Mayfield and his National Weather Service were wrong. The thing didn't intensify in the Gulf between Cuba and Florida. It didn't become a hurricane, as expected. Do I think TV does this to grab ratings and air time? To a degree, sure, but I also think that the people that run the stations legitimately believe it's their duty to keep people up to speed on what's happening. And the fact that this is the first scare since Wilma slammed us only made it worse. If you're going to live in Florida, you need to get up to speed on these things yourself and make your own decisions about preparation based on the hard information that's there. Blaming the media for buying 20 gallons of gas, spending four hours to put up shutters, and buying half the water at the supermarket is a fool's game.

Third-Place Finisher

Here's the thing with the Big Three newspapers this morning: After all the hype of Ernesto, they had to come up with a giant front-page headline about how nothing really happened. And that's all that was really important, since the stories, well, they were all just filler crap, pages and pages of filler crap, some of it with triple bylines. Writing such headlines can be a challenge, especially since they can't get edgy or politically incorrect (which put, say, "Ernesto Just Another Wetback" out of the running). The best, though, was easily the Sun-Sentinel's banner:

"Ernesto's All Wet."

Not bad at all, a bit of of a double entendre that says it all. The Miami Herald comes in a distant second with:

"What A Relief!"

Not good. It's not only too generic, but it also has an annoying and unnecessary exclamation point. And not everybody is feeling relief. Meteorologists, for instance, are still pissed that almost everything they said for 48 solid hours turned out to be pure B.S. Would-be gougers everywhere are in veritable mourning. Hundreds of homeowners who failed to cash in on Wilma are gonna have to wait a little longer for that new roof. But the Herald's dud headline was a classic next to the Palm Beach Post's:

"Wet, wobbly puzzle."

Wet, wobbly puzzle? What lazy ass team of editors signed off on that one? Puzzles aren't wet and wobbly and if ever they should be, we would throw them in the garbage and quickly forget about them. It's almost like the editors were trying to cover their ass. "I know we kept saying that Ernesto was "targeting" and "zeroing in on" you during the past three days, but hey, this meteorological stuff is really complicated," they might explain. "It was virtually a wet, wobbly puzzle."

It's a good soak anyway. Forty hours of solid pre-storm coverage and Channel 10 was off the air just about ten minutes after the storm began affecting Lauderdale, in time for Wheel of Fucking Fortune. The TV guys just looked at each other and started stammering. One on Channel 6 -- I don't know most of their names -- said, "This is just weird." A meteorologist on Channel 10 was flat disappointed. "This just isn't doing what we expected," he said. "You have to call a spade a spade."

Where's the death and destruction? Well, some guy in a white Mercedes got killed while driving. It was perhaps the most overplayed road fatality in South Florida history. One TV guy said solemnly, "It's a tragedy." Yeah, one that happens every single goddamn day.

To people who know Florida, this is called "business as usual." For 13 years after Andrew, this was basically the way most every storm went. But hey, this thing was our first brush with M.N. after Wilma gave us a thorough reeming. It's okay that everybody went batshit after that. Let's just be happy there weren't any gas rage incidents that led to a tire iron beating, decapitation, or some other type of grotesque death.

The one guy I think who must want another go at it -- Ben Graber. The Broward County Mayor started yesterday as a quivering mass of flesh, but his delivery got better as the day went on. He's got to be ready to show his shit during a real tragedy now. Problem is he's got an election next week.

The birds know it's coming. About two dozen of them were burrowing in the ground in front of my house before my four-year-old daughter knocked on the window and scattered on them. You can see it now. The winds are starting, the clouds are there, the clockwise rotation already visible in the sky, though extremely slow at this early moment.

It's gonna be a big mess, but probably not much more than that. Flooding is the biggest concern. Hopefully I personally won't need any more than the 9.5 gallons I have stored for my generator. If we lose power, the fam will probably sleep in the garage, where there's a wall-unit A/C. Good luck to everybody in the path.

Anyway, to get your mind off the storm, I've got another special report from John DeGroot, the playwright, "recovering journalist," former writing coach at the Sun-Sentinel, and all-around bon vivant. He recently dropped me off a t-shirt he'd made with the Sun-Sentinel logo and the words: "We're Journalism Lite -- And Usually Right." Hey, the man has some time on his hands. Here's his latest report from the wilderness, where he takes Earl Maucker to task:

Storytelling: Sun-Sentinel Style

The Sun-Sentinel's Editor Earl Maucker is one of the most artfully non-controversial and downright pleasant newsroom managers that I've known in my four decades as a journalism.

Truth be told, I'm sure anyone who ever worked with or for Earl would agree he embodies the go-along-to-get-along style of management.

In short and in my book, Earl Maucker is a really nice guy.

Which is why, I'm too often embarrassed by Earl's sublime ability to hoist himself on his own petard in his attempts to tell-it-like-is with the Sun-Sentinel's brand of journalism.

More

In the battle of the hurricane blogs, I have to give the edge to Bob King. The Palm Beach Post storm-meister informs us in his most recent post that the National Hurricane Center gave big props to Fidel:

"SPECIAL THANKS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF CUBA FOR PERMITTING THE RECON AIRCRAFT FLY RIGHT UP TO THEIR COASTLINE TO GATHER THIS CRITICAL WEATHER DATA."

My only problem with King, who has always been a fine reporter in my book, is that, in the mugshot on the blog header, he looks like he's taking a dump. A pretty severe dump at that.

The Sun-Sentinel's hurricane blog, a group effort, has more postings and isn't terrible -- there just isn't much interesting on it.

One of the Sentinel bloggers is reporters Josh Frank, who penned the average weather story last week. In it I wrote that I'd never heard of a reporter pitching a weather story. It's usually some old codger of an editor with nothing better to do that comes up with those ideas. But Frank may be an exception -- he's a meteorologist himself, as he explained in his introductory post.

As Tropical Storm Ernesto zeroes in on and takes aim at and draws a bead on South Florida, the Sun-Sentinel, showing true Help Team spirit, gave us two pages of instruction on the storm inside the Local section today. Among its indispensable orders:

"If you have a TV antenna or satellite dish, take it down. Unplug your set first, and be careful not to touch power lines with the antenna."

Yeah, um, no. This seems not only idiotic but unsafe -- and aren't we supposed to watch TV for information on the storm? I'm not seeing legions of DirectTV users taking this bit of advice -- why would we self-impose ourselves to such isolation? But if you do listen to the Sentinel, while you're up there don't forget to:

"Remove turbine vents on the roof and replace with metal caps."

Is this a Tropical Storm coming or the end of days? I'm lucky I got ice and gas. There's no way I'm up on the roof trying to figure out how to take down the turbines.

Some of the demands look as if they were written up by the Anal-Retentive Chef:

"Scrub your plastic water containers with household soap, swab with bleach, rinse thoroughly, let dry. Then fill containers with water."

And:

"To sterilize your bathtub, scrub with household soap, swab with bleach, rinse thoroughly, and let dry. Seal the drain with a silicone caulking that you can easily remove later. Fill the tub with water."

Look, man, I'm just not a swab-with-bleach kind of guy. I'll buy my water at Publix. But get a load how much the Sentinel is telling us to buy:

"Figure you will need a gallon per person per day for drinking and sanitation. Have a two-week supply on hand for each person."

That means a family of four then should have 56 gallons of water today. No wonder the groceries run out so quick -- the daily newspaper is telling people to hoard. Clearly, the newspaper can't distinguish between a tropical storm and a cat 5. But it doesn't stop there. It gets all micro on our asses. For instance:

"Replace worn windshield wipers."

You can see it now: the storm is bearing down on the Jones family when Dick looks at Jane with a mixture of shame and terror in his eyes.

"Good God no," he mutters. "The windshield wipers. We forgot to replace the windshield wipers!"

"No, Dick, don't say that!" Jane screams in a sudden panic. "Don't even say that. Not the windshield wipers!"

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues.

Oh and there's this:

"Obey all curfews."

Yes, and name names if you must.

Finally, it ends with this bit of frank, Zen-like advice:

"The hours of living hell during a hurricane are over. Months of working like hell may be about to begin. Take your time. Do not overexert yourself. People need you."

There you go. If you didn't think the Sentinel meant all this stuff, then I think the gratuituous use of hell -- perhaps a first for the Sentinel editorial voice -- showed otherwise. Now replace those wipers, get up on the roof, and, for the love of all that is holy, swab like you mean it.

Y'all may not know about South of the Suwannee. It's a blog done by an anonymous character who lives in north Broward. He also goes by Gator and has frequently commented on the Pulp in the past. Gator has reasonable intelligence, but he's definitely compromised in some way. You can tell because he gets all hot and bothered when someone goes after local politicians he likes. In general, he's a huge apologist for Democrats in his neck of the woods (Pompano Beach seems to be his base).

Now the little weasel is on the Jim Waldman bandwagon and wrote an attack on me this morning. Seems someone is sending copies of my stories about Waldman to voters in District 95. You can read them here and here.

Before you read those, read Gator's critique:

The articles are the usual Bob Norman smear-job: heavy on insinuations and suppositions but no proof. Much like Karl Rove,

More

Broward County Mayor Ben Graber just led a press conference from the emergency management building in Plantation. It was startling, not because of the blah-blah-blah that was uttered, but Graber's tremorous, almost breathless delivery. Graber was clearly nervous -- and that does nothing to instill confidence in the populous. It almost made you wish for Commissioner Ilene Lieberman, the dragon lady whose emotionless Big Nurse-style delivery was effective in times of crisis. Other highlights: School Board Chairman Ben Williams useless introduction of Superintendent Frank Till. Shameless politics people. And then there was Ken Jenne, who hasn't been in the public eye much for some strange reason. It looks like the sheriff has a lost lot of weight. Guess that's the upside of a federal investigation. If you followed it, the man got steadily fatter the more corrupt he became, so the probe couldn't have come at a better time, health-wise.

I've got bad vibes about Ernesto. I call him Che -- and if the guerilla revolutionary has revenge on his mind, there's only one place to go: Miami. And it's not just for the Cuban exile community that reviles him, but former CIA spook Felix Rodriquez, who tracked him down in Bolivia and was there when he was summarily executed in the jungle. Rumors abound that Rodriguez has Che's hands, which were cut off during the ordeal, in a jar in his Miami house. Who knows if it's true, but that alone might bring Ernesto around to take a look.

Okay, you may find that a ridiculous notion, but it's not all that far from the way reporters write about hurricanes. Look at the Palm Beach Post front page today: "Ernesto targets Florida." See, the hurricane has goals and aspirations. It's called anthropomorphism -- the Pulp's 20-dollar word of the day -- and

More

DJs Santos and Ferrero

El Nuevo Herald arts writer Jose Antonia Evora tendered his resignation to Miami Herald Media Company President Jesus Diaz, Jr. today -- just days before his 10th anniversary with the company -- saying that the newspaper "left him out in the cold" and that a recent article in the newspaper had shown him there was an "unsurmountable gap between my points of view and those of El Nuevo Herald's editors."

Evora explained that he was leaving the newspaper because it had published an interview with Spanish radio DJs Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero on Wednesday. Those same two DJs, he explained in detail, had tormented him after he wrote a story that appeared in the newspaper about obscenity on their radio show last year.

The DJs, according to Evora, sang songs ("His article, I cleaned my ass with it/ the Herald is a yesterday's newspaper") on their show demeaning Evora and recorded a show at the Herald building after which they left a signed photo with the words, "Fuck you, Evora" with the newspaper's security guard. They also urged listeners to pester him, the writer alleges.

"During several days my voicemail at the newsroom was overflowed with messages, most of them insulting, and some threatening my life," Evora wrote in the English version of his resignation letter. "In two of the messages -- I have the tapes -- two male voices say: "You better be careful out there'' and

More

Gotta check out this story in the Palm Beach Post by Stephanie Slater and Dianna Smith about a deadly war going on between two Haitian gangs. It all stems, apparently, from a small-time music label called Top 6 Records. The B-Town Boys, one of the groups involved in Top 6, are breaking out -- and they're going out with a lot of gunfire. The Post reports that there have been two dozen recent shootings, with three dead gang members and a slain landscaper who was unlucky enough to have been caught in the fire.

-- Interesting story from Marc Caputo and Beth Reinhard on a political attack on Democratic governor hopeful Jim Davis concerning Freddie Lee and Wilbert Pitts -- two wrongfully convicted black men who were rescued from Death Row by the late, legendary Miami Herald journo Gene Miller some 30 years ago. In 1990, Davis voted against compensating the two men financially for being wronged by the state. The issue is raised by U.S. Sugar -- the hench-company for Davis's opponent, Rod Smith. Yes, Big Sugar, always the champion of the oppressed and falsely accused, is standing up for the little guys again, God love 'em. It's just more Rove-ian politics from Smith and his supporters. But the bad news for Davis is that it might be effective. Let's face it, the vote doesn't reflect well upon him and it could sway a few ever-important black votes in what is looking to be a tight primary.

-- Not that such trifles matter -- especially since votes don't count in Florida anyway. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration (hey, what else are blogs for?), but Herald reporter Ashley Fantz does show us that the early voting has started out with a screw-up. How reassuring.

-- Just got off Barry Epstein's 10 a.m. radio show on AM-1470 and we talked about Big Sugar's impact on the Democratic primary. Epstein, a long-time political consultant, says he thinks it's going to back-fire on Smith. As for Smith's attack on Davis's recent attendance record in Congress, Epstein gave the Davis campaign a free line:

"I had to come back to Florida to save the state from you and Big Sugar."