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This email, unconfirmed, landed in my box today:

On Thursday, February 28, City Link Managing Editor Jake Cline made some staffing cuts. Those who got the ax were: Copy Editor Jana Bielecki, Senior Writer T.M. Shine, and Writer Bon Weinberg.

If this is true, then it is truly disturbing. Jana is an old friend who used to work at New Times and T.M. Shine, the humor columnist and reporter who eats lunch alone, is the heart of that publication. Bob Weinberg, too, is a stalwart. Look, City Link largely gave up the journalism ghost a long time ago when it became a cheap pop vehicle. But this is a sign (again, assuming it's true) that it's not trying at all anymore. It's not nails in the coffin (they were already there) but the dirt covering it up.

Filming is set to begin on "Marley and Me" in South Florida in two weeks, including scenes on location in the Sun-Sentinel newsroom. The movie is based on the best-selling book by former Sentinel columnist John Grogan about his rascally dog (Marley). It's going to star Jennifer Anniston and Owen Wilson and the Sentinel's call for extras begins: "Got Rollerblades? An '80s car? A hot beach body?" Oh boy. Wilson of course was suicidal of late and I have a feeling that watching this thing is going to have a similar effect on many of us.

Three people killed and one critically injured overnight when a speeding Jaguar plunged off a State Road 84 ramp onto I-95. Comments under the Miami Herald brief:

"hope the survivor wasnt the driver so there will be one less idot in traffic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"This phenomena is called Natural Selection." (From Criminals Die).

"Free falling!!!!!!!!!!!" (From Tom Petty)

"The driver deserved it" (From AmeRican)

"This whole incident is very unfortunate. A Jaguar is a really nice car." (From Get Real)

"Cull the herd." (From Paco)

You know what's scary is that, after living for a while in this madhouse of urban sprawl, you probably had the same gut reaction, even if you won't admit it.

(By the way, anybody want to go to Hawaii?)

So it goes like this. The NY Times does a story about a drug called paco. In it is this passage:

Paco is highly addictive because its high lasts just a few minutes—and is so intense that many users smoke 20 to 50 paco cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine, Argentine and Brazilian drug enforcement officials said.

Slate's Jack Shafer read it and thought it made a good "Stupidest Drug Story of the Week" candidate.

"The unsourced assertion that paco was highly addictive because its high is short-acting struck me as suspicious nonsense," Shaferwrites. "Plenty of drugs are short-acting without being highly addictive."

So Shafer did a quick search and found a 2006 story by Miami Herald reporter Alejandra Lebanca about paco that included this line:

Paco is highly addictive because its effect is so short -- a couple of minutes -- and so intense that many users resort to smoking 20 to 50 cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger.

So Shafer not only found the source of the "suspicious nonsense" -- but also an obvious plagiarism by the NYT.

How can you not love this business?

This bit on the Sun-Sentinel's new owner comes courtesy of Seattle Post-Intelligencer cartoonist David Horsey(via Romenesko):

Sam Zell bolstered the real estate market this morning when he went on CNBC and basically said we were at or near a bottom in prices and that the market will get moving next month.

I'm really starting to wonder about this guy.

Anyway, speaking of sharks, we all know an Austrian fellow was killed by one during a commercial feed-the-sharks outing with a company from Riviera Beach. Below, John DeGroot offers remembrances of sharks past along with some interesting data:

JAWS PAYBACK

SHARKS 1 – AUSTRIANS 0

My Pulp Rants are often condemned as the bilious works of an aged hack (which I am).
Trouble is, I suffer from way too much time in my dotage – while convinced that the Golden Age of Print Journalism is deader than my 70-year-old libido.
And so I am too often moved to rant.
Like most media Cassandra’s, I’ve engaged in considerable teeth-gnashing over the rampant greed of Corporate Journalism that has sucked the life blood and marrow from today’s newspapers.
However…
What frightens me even more is the growing void of creativity and critical thought amid the pop people populating today’s newsrooms. And the thing of it is, South Florida is up to its ass in great enterprise stories.
Let’s take a simple thing like sharks, for example.
Certainly sharks are a story when the eat somebody – as in the case of today front page Herald story.
But having “covered” this rather interesting shark death, how many journalists will bother to wonder: “So what else is up with sharks?”
Of course, I spent many golden hours playing with sharks as a boy living in-near poverty in a trailer on Hollywood Beach after my father lost our entire family’s lifesaving’s on a sure fire system in one season at Gulfstream, Hialeah and Tropical.
However, my father’s infatuation with horses that led to our trading a sprawling Main Line Philadelphia estate staffed by servants for a 27-foot Alma trailer is a whole other story.
Which is how and why I had a great many adventures with sharks as a boy.
The best times were in the summer when the ocean was calm and the sharks fed close to shore.
Which is how and why we loved to feed them.
Being kids, we would beg junk fish from the fishing boats at the end of day – usually Bonita, grunts and so on – which we would take back to the trailer park in gunny sacks.
Now back then, they’d built jetties running maybe a hundred feet into the ocean in an early attempt to prevent beach erosion.
Anyhow, we would carry our junk fish out to the end of a jetty at the south end of the trailer park. Once there, we would run a rope through their gulls, gut them so they would bleed and then toss them into the water – with the lucky one of us holding the fishless end of the rope.
Most times, it took less than 10 minutes for the sharks to come circling around the foot of the jetty – and then another 20 minutes for the Hollywood police to respond to a frantic

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-- Two questions: Is this really a newspaper story? And how could it possibly have taken two bylines?

-- The opening installment of the Sun-Sentinel's series on foreclosures contains a startling fact:

In 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 42 percent of mortgages originated in Broward were subprime, according to thousands of home loan transactions the South Florida Sun-Sentinel examined using data supplied by lenders under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

That's just scary. With real estate prices only having started their drop, the Pulp's tea leaves say that most of those homes are going to foreclose. Credit John Maines, the Sun-Sentinel's numbers guru and one of the best journos in South Florida, for the figure. As for the overall series, good topic and good info, but it seems rushed. There's no storytelling in it (so far) that makes you feel the crisis or understand it in a more meaningful way. It reads like glorified daily stories. What could have been absolutely excellent is just solid. Not blaming the reporters, Paul Owers and Georgia East, here. A good editor should have just gotten more.

-- It's about time the Oscars had a truly worthy best picture in No Country For Old Men, but the Academy couldn't miss this time. I believe 2007 was the best year for filmdom since ... I don't know, the 70s anyway. There were at least two other pictures that were historically top-notch (There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton). Last night's run-down of winners reminded me of how lame a lot of movies on that list really are. The years 1994 to 1998 were particularly unworthy: Forrest Gump. Braveheart. The English Patient. Titanic. Shakespeare In Love.

Pwew. More recently you have Chicago, Crash, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind. I'm not saying they are all absolute shit, just that they don't stand up as credible winners. Hope '07 was a sign of good things to come.

From Greg Cote's column in the Miami Herald on Wayne Huizenga's selling of half the Dolphins:

Bottom line, though, nobody mattered more in making South Florida major-league in sports.

Say what you will about Wayne Huizenga, but you might consider starting with, ``Thank you.''

Yes, thank you Wayne.

Thanks for bringing us baseball so could bleed it dry. After starting the Marlins, you hired a dream team of lobbyists to persuade the Legislature to give you $60 million to help make your football stadium baseball-friendly. Spread out over 30 years, you'll be getting $2 million a year on that deal until 2023. The beauty of it: You don't even have to show how you spent the money and you convinced the politicians you lavished with campaign contributions (remember Jailbird Jenne?) to alter the law so you could spend it on football. Brilliant, sir, absolutely brilliant.

Thanks for making a mockery of America's Pastime and disgracing all of us in the process. When your 1997 Marlins team was winning the World Series, you were screaming and yelling that you were losing $34 million. That was all selective economics, though, since you actually made $13 million (including the fat stadium revenues). There was a method to your whining: You wanted to pressure the public to build you a nice big baseball stadium. When it became clear we weren't going to finance your empire, you dismantled the championship team in a fit, putting an historic blight on baseball. Then you sold the team for a fat profit.

Thanks for gouging the Marlins at your stadium after you sold them, sticking them with one of the worst leases in the history of baseball.

Thank you for hoodwinking Broward County into building you a $185 million hockey stadium on the edge of the Everglades. In return for the gift, you promised to share your profits with us. But you were smarter than the commissioners you lavished with campaign contributions. You stipulated that the stadium would get the first $14 million in profits before we saw a dime. And guess what? The stadium has pulled in tens of millions of profits while the taxpayers who paid for it have seen less a few hundred thousand dollars.

And thank you for running the Dolphins into the ground Cote buys your line that you're doing this because, at 70, it's time to move on. Sure. The guy you sold to, Stephen M. Ross, is only 67, after all, a mere child. Cote says you gave up your ego to do this, but we know it was your ego that made you sell. Your Dolphins turned in one of the worst seasons in the history of football, after all. And the 1-15 year came right after you renovated the stadium and jacked up ticket costs for your poor sucker fans. Plus, now you can focus more on forcing working-class people out of their homes in Riviera Beach so you can build a luxury yacht club for your filthy rich peers.

And thanks Wayne, most of all, for taking a big step toward ending your involvement in South Florida sports. You've got your money -- now maybe we can start getting our soul back.

Well, that didn't take long. Former Palm Beach Post political scribe S.V. Date, who resigned from the newspaper last month over a perceived conflict of interest, has made his return to journalism as a contributor to The New Republic.

And he's writing rather glowingly about the man who caused all the consternation at the Post: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.

You'll recall that Date's wife obtained a job in the governor's administration last year, prompting Post management to ban Date from writing about the guv. Date felt that it was unfair and when his editors learned he was still writing about Crist on his personal blog, the ensuing conflict led to Date's resignation.

In Date's recent piece for New Republic on Crist, he gives the governor credit for McCain's victory in Florida (I agree with that, actually) and basically touts Crist as a vice presidential nominee.

It's premature to talk about potential vice presidents now, but not unreasonable, given the circumstances. Crist has now proven he can deliver Florida for McCain. Surely he could do it again come November. And McCain didn't bring Crist along to campaign with him earlier this week in Arizona, California, and New Jersey just because they're buddies.

Crist has been asked about his potential vice presidency dozens of times in recent months. I asked again this weekend, and Crist was smoothly evasive. He is flattered, he says, but is concentrating on being governor of Florida.

In fact, the word has gone out across Crist's domain that VP talk is verboten. Not only is it unseemly, it's not helpful in the bigger picture. But there are slip-ups. When I asked a top Florida Republican what Crist could offer McCain's campaign in, say, Trenton, New Jersey, he replied, "What Charlie brings to the ticket ... ". He then caught himself. "What I meant was ... ".

A commenter on the TNR chimed in:

How come New Republic or the author did not disclose that S.V. Date's wife currently works for Governor Charlie Crist? Certainly your readers deserve to know that there is the potential for a conflict of interest with this author.

Date then defended himself on the website:

My wife works in the Office of Policy and Budget within the governor's office, which is analogous to the federal Office of Management and Budget. She works in the health and human services policy group and is the analyst assigned to the Department of Veterans Affairs budget. There are approximately six layers of bureaucracy between her and Gov. Crist. She doesn't tell me what to write in my articles. I don't tell her how to put together her portion of the HHS budget. Thank you. svd

Then a commenter named Rick Caird chimed in:

SV Date is being disingenuous, as usual, when he claims no need to disclose his wife's position. The Palm Beach Post has relieved him of the opportunity to write on the governor. They thought it was a conflict. Maybe it is fitting that he is now writing for the home of Scott Beauchamp. Still, having said that, I find Date's whole argument to be weak.

I'm falling on the side of disclosure here, especially since Date's points are so obviously pro-Crist. I'm surprised that TNR didn't demand it.

The Sun-Sentinel is trying to make idiots of us all. As I write this, the lead story on the newspaper's website is about American Idol. But let's give the newspaper a break. Presidential election, recession, war, Simon Cowell ... the Sentinel had a tough choice for its top story of the day.

There are, however, a few recent local news that I feel compelled to discuss here:

1. Scott Travis informs us of big cuts at Florida Atlantic University that could mean 2,000 students won't get a college education. In another impressive display of news judgment, that story is placed on 4B while a Help Team special with little to no news about the flu makes it to the front page. Hey, why inform people when you can just scare them instead?

2. Scott Wyman wrote about the plan to build a new courthouse yesterday, saying the project was still "alive." What he didn't say was that it was on artificial life support on its death bed. Why? There is no money. We are heading into a recession and there's no way in hell taxpayers are going to volunteer to pay for new digs for our dubious judges when they can't pay for their own homes (or their kids' college tuitions).

2. Sun-Sentinel reporter Linda Trischitta, who is growing on the Pulp, reports on prayers at Deerfield's city hall, quoting Mayor Al Capellini: "This commission needs whatever divine inspiration it can get." True. Capellini should be praying every day that State Attorney Michael Satz doesn't charge his ass with a slew of felonies. Other than that, who needs prayer at commission meetings? Doesn't God have enough problems without being dragged into Broward's pit of petty politics?

4. Take the Michael Mayo ethics test, which for me was a trip down memory lane.

5. Oh yeah, on that note, Keith Wasserstrom was sentenced to 60 days in jail last week. I actually wrote on this blog after his conviction that 60 days would be just about right. Now I think I should have doubled it.

6. We're loving us some basketball Canes this morning. Miami beat Duke last night, proving to us all that we can prevail against evildoers everywhere.

The latest Tribune Co. cut at the Sun-Sentinel may be the most depressing of all: The company has killed the newspaper's softball league.

The news came out yesterday about the cost-saving move and this one hurts me personally since I've been playing in the league for several years (thanks to my lovely reporter wife). And I was set to have a killer season, too. I just know it.

The good news is that employees are trying to save the league by ponying up the money themselves. I'll pay my share, but I want to appeal to the big guy himself, Bob Gremillion, the former Sentinel publisher who is now Tribune's grand poobah for the high eastern properties (okay, technically, he's executive VP over publishing). Gremillion was on one of the first teams I played on and he's one of the most gracious fellows you could ever meet.

Save the softball, Bob!

Seriously, the financial picture at the Tribune and other newspaper is dire, so I'm not going to prattle on about how this is about screwing the little guy or a sign of corporate greed. The truth is that it's probably going to save some jobs -- and losing jobs makes losing softball seem like nothing at all. But that doesn't change the fact that it really, really sucks.

If you didn't think Miami Herald crime reporter Wanda Demarzo's week could get any worse, think again. She and her husband, Richard, were robbed at gunpoint and carjacked outside a convenience store early this morning, according a report in her newspaper.

Broward Sheriff's Office deputies are investigating the carjacking and robbery of a Miami Herald reporter and her husband early Thursday.

According to a police report, Wanda DeMarzo, 54, a Herald crime reporter, and her husband, Richard, 51, were approached by two men, one armed with a pistol, outside a convenience store at 3774 NE Third Ave. in Deerfield Beach around 3:50 a.m.

One man threatened the pair with the gun, demanding the keys to the couple's silver 2006 Kia Sorento before driving off, the report says.

Thursday evening, BSO detectives were questioning two men in Hollywood after they were spotted abandoning a Kia that fit the description of the stolen vehicle.

This after news broke two days ago that the Herald is investigating an allegation of plagiarism against Demarzo made by the Sun-Sentinel. Assumedly she's okay, but who says lightning can't strike twice?

Timing is everything in journalism. I come out with a story about new Tribune Co. Sam Zell's newsroom tour, part of which was wondering, "When will the ax fall."

Well it fell yesterday. At least part of it. Zell announced he was cutting up to 500 people nationwide.

In more shake-up news, longtime Orlando Sentinel publisher Kathy Waltz announced her resignation, with Sun-Sentinel publisher Howard Greenberg filling in. The Orlando Sentinel story is quite vague about her reason for leaving: "Waltz said that she left after discussing ways to manage Tribune's T-6 newspapers, the name the company uses to denote its six smaller market papers, which include the two Florida publications and four others in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast."

Miami Herald staffer Wanda Demarzo broke story after story about the Broward Sheriff's Office that, along with other strong press work, helped to bring Sheriff Ken Jenne down from office and into prison.

Now a small story about a sheriff's award ceremony is threatening her hard-won reputation as a top-notch crime reporter.

The Miami Herald is reviewing an allegation that Demarzo plagiarized a Sun-Sentinel story about a Feb. 5 awards ceremony honoring deputies, including three slain in the past year and Maury Hernandez, who survived a gunshot wound to the head.

Sun-Sentinel reporter Andrew Tran reported on the awards ceremony, quoting civilian honoree John Clark and and new Sheriff Al Lamberti at the podium. Demarzo followed with a story of her own, with a quote from Clark (which has been excised from the onling story) and two identical quotes from Lamberti:

"Maury shows that miracles can happen. Although we mourn the loss of our heroes and colleagues, it's a privilege to present these awards to their families."

"If this morning doesn't inspire you, I don't know what else to say. All the stories you hear this morning inspire pride with service and integrity. There are more of these stories that need to be told, that are yet to be told."

The problem is that Demarzo, according to sources, wasn't at the awards ceremony. I contacted sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal, who said that Demarzo contacted him after the ceremony and asked for the script. He provided it to her, but it didn't include Lamberti's quotes.

It's not known if Demarzo tried to confirm the quotes in other ways, including the possibility of going to the Miami Herald's TV news partner, WFOR-Channel 4, which was also present at the event. Leljedal says there was more press at the event than usual because BSO was also giving out citations to the media.

"I didn't know that she wasn't there," the spokesman told me. "We had more media than normal because we had media presentations. We had nine television stations there, three or four newpspapers, radio. It was a huge press corps."

In addition to obtaining the script, Demarzo clearly did some of her own reporting on the story. At the very least, she also talked to Hernandez's mother, who wasn't mentioned in Tran's story. To wit:

Hernandez walked slowly but proudly across the stage to receive his medal. The audience of about 1,500 gave him a standing ovation.

His mother, Rosa Hernandez, smiled with pride.

''I am so thankful to see him walk across that stage,'' she said. ``And I'm so grateful he can receive the award. He is here today because of all the prayers from the community, family and friends. I am so grateful.''

While it doesn't look good, especially the quoting of Clark, it's no time to jump to conclusions, either. From what I know of Demarzo's work, this is completely out of character. But it seems pretty clear that Demarzo should have either cited the Sun-Sentinel or foregone the quotes. And the Herald, of course, is right to investigate and serious disciplinary action may be in order. I just hope management doesn't go too far. Demarzo is too good a reporter to be hurt too bad by one mishandled puff piece on a very public event, so long as it is confined to one incident. Her own hypercompetitiveness clearly had a role in this embarrassing and stupid misstep.

Even Leljedal, a solid pro with whom Demarzo has jousted with over the years, says he's never seen Demarzo do anything unethical before.

"We've had our differences but she is hard-working and has talent," he said. "On a professional basis, we've never gotten along better."

[I removed an update and a couple of comments about it because of its speculative nature. There's enough speculation. Let's wait for the facts.]

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Today, erstwhile Pulp correspondent John DeGroot is appealing directly to Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell for more trenchant and interesting coverage in the Sun-Sentinel. In so doing, he breaks news on the rising rates of out-of-wedlock births and abortions in South Florida and the rest of the state. Specifically, he reports that those two categories now account for more than half of all pregnancies.

And we learn that DeGroot believes Zell is a "really cool motherfucker."

Enjoy:

Dear Sam Zell: By now, you’ve probably read enough of your diverse newspapers to discover that some are being run by editors and writers who have trouble understanding the difference between what is interesting and what is not. Why?

My theory is that most of these well-meaning souls are the bland by-product of a the newspaper industry’s corporate culture which rewards Good Doobies for ALWAYS coloring inside the lines and playing well with others.

In other words, they have serious trouble thinking for themselves – which leaves them creatively challenged.

I shit you not.

For example, last year – as an experiment -- I emailed a diverse collection of data to a key editor at the Sun-Sentinel. Basically, I was curious to see how she would react to some of the numbers which (a) I found interesting as hell and (b) could be easily sourced.

So what happened? Nada.

Here’s an example of some of the data I gathered an which the Sun-Sentinel found less than interesting:

Basically, what the data suggest is:

Abortion is a major growth industry in Florida.

Well over half of Florida’s expectant mother’s are opting to either have their babies out of wedlock or terminate their pregnancy with an abortion.

There were 332,752 pregnancies reported by Florida’s Department of Health, in 2006. Of these:

- 29% of the pregnancies were aborted (95,586).
- 32% of the babies were born to an unwed mother (105,770).
- 39% were born to married parents (131,396).

In other words, yesterday’s traditional family isn’t anymore. Nor is the idea “family values” – which has become a political cliché on the campaign trail.

Anyhow, Sam, in classic Zellspeak, I think most people would find this shit is really fucking interesting (Unlike the Sentinel editor).

Oh yes.

You can expect more interesting shit from me via the Pulp because (as one nasty old fart to another) I think you’re a really cool motherfucker.

But for now, the following are the numbers I emailed to the Sun-Sentinel after gathering them from the State Health Department web site:

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