Blogs

What to say about the Dontrelle Willis arrest? There's a lot of mundane thoughts and questions that come to mind. Why, someone could write an entire column on the issue of why a multimillionaire athlete didn't have a driver (oh, and they did).

But I don't want to get into too much speculative BS. What we know is that Willis is going to have this one to live down for the rest of his career. Not the DUI part so much as the urinating on the road thing. It's the imagery of it that will have resonance, especially among the fans of the opposition. I can hear it now:

We wanna a pitcher
Not a street pisser ...

Yes, that's right, it's going to be the bastards from Philly, NY, ATL, etc. that are going

... thanks to this article by Wanda J. DeMarzo and Diana Moskovitz in the Miami Herald this morning. A tipster says Molly Selby, the mother of hospitalized baby Patrick, might be in Miami right now, but I emphasize the "might," because it's just one lead and it's not substantiated.

You know, even if Molly is found and manages to get some help, she might never change her self-destructive ways. But it's going to ease the pain of her family just a bit to know where she is. The best thing for her right now is to be incarcerated so that she is at least off the streets. Then everybody can go from there.

After the jump: More Thoughts on Molly, The Bitch Has Resigned, And Bon Voyage, Julia

Laid up this morning with a cold from the bowels of mordor (yeah I'm a geek like that sometimes, and I didn't fail to see a little bit of the TNT hobbit-fest last weekend). Yesterday I was sneezing fistfuls of extremely watery snot all over the place. Last evening it moved stealthily from my sinus passages to my lungs, where it apparently turned into industrial-strength sandpaper. I mean this cough hurts. After a miserable night, had the lovely missus get me some medicine from Publix early this morn. Took a couple otc drugs and zonked until about 15 minutes ago.

Don't send your love, good Pulpers. If anything, send either cash or good Tennessee sour mash. It's Christmas. I need both.

Anyway, I have nothing to say today, which is why I'm grateful for Rebecca Wakefield (of Category305 fame). She interviewed Herald editor Tom Fiedler for her Miami SunPost column and got some pretty good stuff. For instance he told her that "pound for pound" the Herald is the best newspaper in America. (Florida, maybe. Maybe).

Wakefield and Fiedler butted heads

I got some clarification on what, exactly, can be done if disappeared mother Molly Selby is found. There are warrants on her in Washington state for violating her probation, so any local law enforcement agency can pick her up on those and hold her.

And that's exactly what her mother, Cathy Winters, would want. Jail might just save her life and give little Patrick -- who was born at about three and a half pounds on November 27 in a bathroom -- a chance at someday knowing his mother.

But the new grandmother is frustrated. She can't get much information from Memorial Hospital Pembroke and, even though she and other relatives are the closest thing to family the baby has, they are being shut out of Patrick's life. Why? Because the baby is now a ward of the state and, without the mother's permission, the granparents have no

It looks like Cathy Winters is in for a heartbreaking Christmas. Her new grandson, Patrick, is in a hospital in Pembroke Pines, fighting for his tiny life after being born two months premature in a transient camp restroom near the Everglades. And her drug-addicted daughter, Patrick's mother, has disappeared. Winters, who lives in Washington state, believes 23-year-old Molly Selby is somewhere on the streets of Broward County and she just wants to locate her daughter so the family and authorities might have a chance at saving her.

I found out about Winters' plight from, of all places, the Sun-Sentinel comments board. She posted a comment on Bill Hirschman's story about a memorial service that was held yesterday for the 98 homeless people who have died in the county in the past year. Cathy's plea began, simply, "Help":

I live in Washington state and now am dealing with a daughter whom is somewhere on your streets of Broward County..She is a drug addict 23 and just gave birth Nov.27,06 to a boy, in a transient camp bathroom, somewhere by the Everglades, most likely near Pembroke Pines, that is(( fighting)) for his life ... My precious grandson came 2 months too soon and tested positive for drugs. She was only in the hospital for 3 nights and walked away, the morning of November 30, 06, and has not returned.

Is there anywhere I can post of picture of her, in case someone see's her, and I can be called? She was quite sick with Phnemonia when she left. ... We are a family whom loves Molly dearly and she is very sick, and we fear for her life..She has never been this far away. If anyone knows how I can post some pictures or help me, please as we no nobody in your state.

I e-mailed Cathy and she sent me some photos of Molly, which are reproduced here as well as I could (I'm hoping to make some better copies that I'll post later). The 52-year-old grandmother's reply to me began: "I am sitting here in tears. How can I ever ((((thank you))))) for helping me like this? You have so touched my heart and my families. My daughter is so very sick and that has to be obvious with what she has just done. We feel as her family that she just is not going to be alive much longer. My mother is not in good health and Molly dearly loves her me maw. Thats what Molly calls her ...".

You can feel the desperation and sadness -- and unmistakable hope -- in her words. Winters is suffering from a

Here's some true or false questions about soon-to-be Miami Herald editor Anders Gyllenhaal, who is leaving the Minneapolist Star Tribune to take the helm at SFla's most widely circulated daily in a couple of months:

1. He is uncle to movie star siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

2. During his first two years at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Monday-through-Friday readership among 18-to-24-year-olds fell by nearly half (from 35 percent to 19 percent).

3. Gyllenhaal recently oversaw a controversial redesign of the Star Tribune, transforming the newspaper's previously staid and substantive front page into a "hyperactive homepage-in-print, full of teasers, headlines, and other items styled to grab readers' attention." Why? Because Gyllenhaal and the other Strib suits determined that the newspaper needed to target people under 30, women, and "light readers." As part of that push, articles have become shorter and the newspaper is playing up fluff pieces more and pushing hard news deep into the newspaper.

4. The Star Tribune's national economics correspondent, Mike Meyers, publicly complained about Gyllenhaal's changes. "We now have two rock critics and no energy reporter. We have a how-to columnist whose job it is to tell you how to iron a shirt and fold a napkin. There's always a tension between style and substance, but news resources seem to be put in other areas."

5. Gyllenhaal has a "sense of humor so dry it's almost a mirage, and his compliments are regarded like water in the desert."

6. The Strib staff generally considered Gyllenhaal non-responsive to their concerns about the soft direction the newspaper was taking. Said Minneapolis city hall reporter Rochelle Olson, "There's a sense he's made up his mind or is never wrong, so it's not really up for discussion. What's frustrating is, we care deeply about the paper, as much if not more than he does, and he doesn't seem to believe that."

7. Gyllenhaal was raised in a tiny religious Pennsylvania town that was dominated a Protestant sect called Swedenborgianism, founded by a man named Swedenborg who believed he spoke with spirits. His family was made up of strict Swedenborgianists.

8. Gyllenhaal's father Hugh was the editor of the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper who later became a management consultant who organized conferences for President Lyndon B. Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He was also an alcholic who disappeared for a month after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

9. Gyllenhaal was trained in the cello but gave it up for the banjo and has played with numerous bluegrass bands.

10. He started reporting for the Miami Herald at 28 and eventually ran the Herald's Broward bureau. He left the paper at age 39 to become metro editor in Raleigh.

11. He met his wife Beverly at the Herald. She's now a cookbook writer who does a column called "Desperation Dinners."

After the jump: The Answers

The Palm Beach Post's front page today is dominated by a huge Ipod advertisement.

No, wait ... it's supposed to be an article.

Under the heading, "Christmas Gift Ideas," complete with a bow, was the giant headline "Accessorizing your Ipod." Then a story by reporter Stephen Pounds about all the nifty add-ons accompanied by four photographs of accessories, complete with prices and web addresses where you can purchase them.

It's like a catalogue. My question: Does Apple or the accessory makers really need help with marketing? Don't you think they're probably doing just fine? I probably wouldn't have had a problem with Pounds story had it been somewhere in the Accent or Business sections. Its placement on the front page, however, demeans the entire newspaper and only adds to the already deeply nauseating commercialization of the holidays. And why? The kids loves them some Ipods and newspapers are more and more about pandering to the young'uns, no matter how silly it makes them look.

After the jump: Fiedler Yanked Self From Game

Couple of thoughts about two of the day's biggest stories. First, hiking on a giant mountain in the middle of winter with the threat of blizzard, in terms of death risk, makes race car driving look like lacrosse. Why isn't anybody in the media pointing that out? Climb a mountain when there is a good chance of getting a blizzard? Though I really feel for what those three climbers must have gone through, the whole thing is absolutely insane to me. All the talk about God taking care of them was wearing thin, too. Does He get the blame now? "Well, Wolf, God must not have liked them much or been watching over them, that much is obvious."

Isiah Thomas is getting a bad rap for the fact that he warned Carmelo Anthony not to come into the paint at the end of Knicks-Denver game that ended in what people are calling the "Basket Brawl" (I don't know if it warrants a name, but it was a bad one). Man, Thomas played with in Detroit with Bill Laimbeer. His team was hard-fouling, sometimes brutal. They were called the Bad Boys. And they won two championships. There was nothing wrong with the hard foul -- Denver was blowing them out and keeping in their starters late in a blowout. It was perceived as running up the score, showing up the Knicks. Like it or not, turf is protected in pro sports, sometimes via the infliction of immense pain (take the baseball beaning as one of the the more extreme examples). The foul was wrong, but it fell well within the bounds of the unwritten codes of the game. The flailing about and sucker-punching didn't. I say suspend Anthony 20 games. Maybe fine Isaiah some token amount, $20,000, and give most of the rest of the participants between five and ten games.

When I read the stories about the botched death by lethal injection of Angel Nieves Diaz on Death Row, I can't help but recall the truly horrific state-sanctioned deaths that have occurred in Florida. You know, like the times that the electric chair, ghoulishly called 'Old Sparky,' set the heads of Jesse Tafero and Pedro Medina on, um, well, FIRE. Pretty cruel -- and it's not like it's ancient history (Martinez was executed in 1997).

Then there's Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis, a huge, ironically nicknamed man who bore an uncanny resemblence to Tor Johnson, the wrestler and star of Ed Wood films. Tiny is pictured above and I think it's worth a thousand words. It also helped coerce the Legislature to go to lethal injection in 2000.

After the jump: Buh-bye Judith

Florida Keys Community College President Bill Seeker must have really thought he was sticking it to the town's daily newspaper when he pulled all the school's advertising from its pages. He may have had dreams of finally putting the Citizen in its place, of heeling it to the will of the Chamber of Commerce, of turning it into the kind of lapdog rag Key West had lazily become accustomed to.

Seeker miscalculated. Horribly.

Instead of showing the Citizen who was boss, Seeker was brought belly-first to the ground. Instead of holding all the cards, he now faces an unpredictable lawsuit and folded his hand. He sent a letter late last week rescinding his first missive and saying that he wanted to "maintain a business relationship," that the college actually wasn't going to shut out the newspaper after all.

Why did Seeker do a 180? Well, he was knocked silly, that's why. The publisher/owner of the Citizen, John Kent Cooke Jr., bludgeoned Seeker with a

Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler just announced his retirement to the newsroom. Herald alum Anders Gyllenhaal, now editor and senior vice president of The Minneapolis Star Tribune, is replacing him at the end of February.

The Herald already has the story leading its web site. It quotes Fiedler: ''It has been an honor for me to have led The Miami Herald newsroom and to have been a journalist here. The contributions I have made are few in comparison to the friendships I have treasured and the lessons I have learned.''

A lot of people would agree with that. Between the Jim DeFede and Marti sagas, it's the close of one of the most tumultuous reigns of any editor imaginable. I wonder if Gyllenhaal really knows what he's getting into here (read Star-Tribune memo on his departure here).

And I thought this was going to be a slow day.

Off deadline and hopefully done with my battle with the Daily Business Review (a publication Pulp readers know I usually respect), so it's time to post something. I mean I don't believe that DBR should be suppressing its own stories, and I think Christensen's decade-old story is a good one, but who am I?

I could write something today about the new police shooting story or the fact that a grand jury didn't charge Dorsey Miller with corruption for his dealings at the North Broward Hospital District, but frankly I don't really feel like it. Maybe it's getting too close to holidays for me to want to write about serious stuff. If you want an interesting take on a local issue, check out this Doomed Generation post on Miami Police Chief John Timoney's son's drug conviction.

I don't know, but all I want to talk about right now is sports. And Iverson is still on my mind. And if you don't want to hear about it, if you're one of the many Pulp readers who wonder why the hell I spend so much time on athletics, I have another option for you: The Sun-Sentinel's Sarah Talalay's well-done and interesting story on pro athletes and finances. Yes, it's a sports story but I promise you don't have to like sports to like it.

Onto Iverson. I heard on ESPN that Miami Herald sports columnist Dan Le Batard

Allen Iverson to the Miami Heat? The idea is ridiculous, but leave it to Pat Riley -- the king of supposed quick fixes -- to slobber all over the idea, damn near literally. According to Israel Guttierez in today's Miami Herald, the Heat coach and president said:

''I would be delinquent in my responsibilities if I wasn't interested in Allen Iverson. That's all I'm going to say. Just like when Shaquile [O'Neal] came out there, I was frothing at the mouth. So my level of interest can be gauged on that comment.''

Naturally, Dave Hyde is all over this idea, loving it, writing this morning that Riley "should be pressing whatever buttons available and should be working every angle to land such electricity on his team." We can expect such unthinking, knee-jerk drivel from Hyde, but Riley? Well, he's obviously desperate and addled from the pressure. He can't stand losing and, after a terrible start to the season, he's dreaming up a new savior to wash away all the Heat's troubles.

But Iverson? Look, I love the way The Answer plays as well anybody. He's phenomenal. But all he would do if he came to the Heat is

Strange developments at the blog for the Justice Advocacy Association of Broward. Apparently the group of defense attorneys asked the Daily Business Review for permission to post a 1996 profile on Chief Judge Dale Ross. The newspaper obliged -- and then suddenly rescinded, forcing the blog to take down the article.

Written by Dan Christensen, who is now with the Miami Herald, the profile isn't real flattering to Ross, whose obsession with weightlifting, political connections, penchant for running things by "fiat and fear," and felony arrest at the age of 21 are highlighted.

Bill Gelin, founding member of JAAB, wonders if politics might be coming into play, especially with DBR's designation as the court house "paper of record." He writes:

"The DBR called me and told me permission was withdrawn, but would not tell me why or whether any influence had been exerted or displeasure expressed from the powers that be regarding the posting of this fascinating profile of Judge Ross. Let's hope it's just a coincidence that permission to run an article that shows Judge Ross to be more than a little human has been withdrawn, particularly in light of Administrative Order I-88-A-2 designating the DBR (then called the Daily Review) as the record newspaper for Courthouse publications."

I don't know, but I'll try to get to the bottom of it. (I'm hearing there was no influence exerted, that it was just a DBR management decision). As a public service, the entire text of the Christensen article is available for perusal after the jump.

[ADDENDUM: Boy does DBR not like the Christensen article. As I commented below, DBR has asked me to remove the article. Under the law, I suppose I have to comply, at least somewhat. So I've only excerpted the article below].
[ADDENDUM II: What follows now, to adhere to the good law of the land, is a "critical analysis" of Christensen's Jan. 5, 1996 piece, with excerpts.]
[ADDENDUM III: DBR is actually starting to piss me off. Their lawyers are still complaining, which is making my bosses nervous. So now I have to shear it down some more. Never have I seen a publication more frightened of its own work being shown. It's pathetic].
[ADDENDUM IV: I asked Harris Meyer, the Daily Business Review Law Editor and New Times alum, what the hell was going on with this story. He sent me this e-mail: "No influence was exerted [to take the article down from the JAAB blog]. The original decision to give free reprint rights was made by marketing. The decision to rescind the approval came solely from publisher Chris Mobley, with no contact from Ross or the court. I personally agreed with Mobley's decision. I thought the article, which was 10 years old, was full of cheap shots."]