Shak On Lam, Back Story Here

All right I've been gone from here for a little while doing my day job (journalism) and I'm none too pleased. I had the damn Shak Dhanji fugitive scoop two days ago and got so caught up in another story I was working on and the Miami Herald layoffs that I let myself get beat. I really should have broken that since I exposed Shak while he was running for sheriff.

Oh well. Shit happens. Let's see, what else have I missed? 

For one, the St. Petersburg Times has rehired 31-year-old Shannon Colavecchio to work in the new Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau. Colavecchio had left journalism to work in ... drum roll please ... Gov. Charlie Crist's press office. Talk about a revolving door. From reporter to political flack back to reporter -- and all before her 32nd birthday. And she's going to be covering, among other things, her old boss. It's so incestuous that maybe her first story should be an expose on her own hiring.

Oh and speaking of the Miami Herald layoffs, there were a lot of comments on the post. As one commenter put it, some were valuable, others lamentable. One lamentable one basically called for the firing of Dave Barry (who isn't on the newspaper's payroll anymore) and his wife, Michelle Kaufman, and son, Rob Barry, who also work at the newspaper. Barry responded with a reasoned, high-road defense. But perhaps the best rationale for the Herald keeping Rob Barry came from the Scripps Howard Foundation. To wit:

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
Rob Barry, Jack Dolan and Matthew Haggman of The Miami Herald receive the $25,000 Ursula and Gilbert Farfel prize, given in cooperation with Ohio University's Scripps College of Communication and the Farfel endowment, for the series "Borrowers Betrayed," an investigation of the Florida mortgage crisis that led to changes in state laws, policies and personnel.  

Congratulations. Even on this terrible week, it's special.