Broward Palm Beach News Blog

Too bad for the Sun-Sentinel that they didn't have content sharing when the Post was putting all those county commissioners in jail!

In my many years in the business, that was a beat-down of epic proportions.

Why don't they share management too? I don't see why Philip Ward's spinelessness should only be endured by the S-S newsroom: that seems selfish. Why can't he advise both the Post and Herald managers to wear beige, be quiet and sit in the back of the room.
Or Earl's little homilies -- trips across the bridge, the river, whatever. It just seems too greedy to deny other newsrooms that wisdom.

AFDI - AS EASY AS HIGGS BOSON*
(*Another Think Piece from Your Chief Innovations Officer Himself)

Doesn't matter if you're talking beats or beets.
Either way, we gotta make the kind of tasty soup that people will pay good money to eat.
So let's put the toys away boys and girls because I'm here to tell you that if Sam is God and Randy’s Jesus, then I’m the Holy Ghost.
Which is how come I gotta cover all the bases – from radio, to television, to newspapers ALL AT ONCE to increase EVERYONE’S understanding of what needs to be understood as the demographics of the New Millennium Mainstream where everyone is hooked up and part of.
In other words, we can’t get stuck with a new vision of the same old crap by reinventing ourselves incrementally with last week’s STALE gumbo when a Hard Time Hurricane is blowing our way.
Or as my hero Marshall McLuhan once nailed it, “We look at the future through a rearview mirror.”
So NEW has to be JOB ONE!
Or, boiling it all down to the basics: The Creative’s conceived to reinvigorate our brand, amp our relevance, unify across initiatives and stimulate new trial.
Being rigid only works with a really hot woman.
While revolutions are all about “WE.”
And AFDI!
Which means you are either WITH the Revolution or AGAINST it. There is no middle ground. You will either embrace the Company and WIN, or the Company will BEAT you into the ground.
It’s all about Connection and Connectivity beyond utility and Utilization.
So if you are IN – cool – Bear down for Battle.
If you are OUT – cool – and good luck feeding your family at a soup kitchen.
FACT:
We need to make Imagineering an ACTION priority and not just talk.
It's like I keep telling the print people: We can't put new wine into an old wineskin.
Doesn't matter.
Newspapers are the worst when it comes to resisting the NEW as JOB ONE.
Probably because print people are rigid enough to put Viagra in Chapter 11.
Even though I keep telling them how in my Father’s house there are many mansions which is why we are news/information/entertainment/content company and not just a newspaper company.
So he who has eyes should see, and he who has ears should listen.
Because I am the way and truth, while you would know what to do with a doobie.
Evan worse, much of what many DO see with their eyes and hear with their ears are negative things that are NOT truly in the loop on the bigger forward looking, multi-platform picture playbook-wise.
The problem, of course, is that newspaper people are trapped in the 19th century. They’re THAT far away from the New Mainstream.
Like the entire newspaper culture is obsessed with its readers – instead of its audience.
But then print is TOTALLY left brain, which is why circulation is hurtling down the crapper.
How bad is it culture-wise with most newspapers?
Last week I met a reporter in Florida who acted like I was pissing on his leg when I told him a First Amendment and Free Press will never get some poor schmuck to shell out 75 cents for his paper.
So then I tried to explain how print people are gonna be walking dead men on the way to a soup kitchen until the learn how to AMPLIFY their outdated platform with MORE NOTICABILITY by promoting today’s COOL instead of yesterday’s HOT.
But the problem is that most of these print people fail to GROCK how the whole concept is TOTALLY immediate and non-linear like it has to be commitment-wise and McLuhan-wise.
And that we all need to go for the Cool by pushing the Hot Bottom to create environments that will maximize our multi-platform brands LIKE THAT BIG S that reaches out and touches … while we all keep on keeping on by pushing and pushing… against a sing-along choir of good old Ozzie Osbourne’s, “If you want to be a hero, well just follow me.”
Otherwise, as Our Father Sam who art in Chicago has said, “Fuck you!”

Abe LeRams
pass the crack pipe

Oh, Abe,that was so dead on, Abrams might actually appropriate it word for word, since he can't spell plagiarism and is too lazy to look it up. And GROCK, There's a generational divide. I love it!

That was a parody? It read like the garbage he sends out every week.

Being slightly slow on the uptake, I was actually unsure whether this was a parody or the real thing for a while. That's how well it was done.

The sexual references and obscenity cleared it up, but even then ...

Former Floridian - while I may not read 3 versions of game coverage, I do look for at least three reviews of performances; the outcome of a game is objective: you can report who won and who lost.

But art is subjective; there is no single interpretation of it. One critic's feast is another's famine. If you peruse some of the reviews I've collated at the South Florida Theatre Scene, you'll find that often three different reviews of the same play get you three completely different opinions.

If all you see is filling the pages for the next issue, then you're missing the larger picture. It's not always about simply getting the story: it's getting the best or most complete or most compelling version of the story. And that demands competition.

You don't win the race by dropping out. If the three dailies don't start competing with each other for stories, they will all three fail. And they will deserve to.

"Remember when the Sentinel actually beat the PB Post in its own backyard, regularly breaking south county stories?"

No, because it happened so rarely. I used to work in that office, and what I remember is the editors reading the Post in the morning and typically asking, "How can we come back at this story?"

And in the case of one editor, the modus operandi was to ignore the scoop if possible -- or at least call it a "non story."

Of course, Long Gone and Former Floridian, this wouldn't have happened if you hadn't had your asses kicked on so many stories. The editors were having to clean up after your lazy-ass ways.

@Former editor: Meh. Most of the editors I met there were former reporters caught up in the drip-drip-drip of daily stories, the exact sort of stuff that ONE reporter can easily do for three papers. (Looks like they're finally wising up; Bob Lamendola's piece on Weston food poisoning ran in both the SS and Herald)

re: ass kicking: That depended on the editor. Some editors were fine to take a hit on a meaningless daily if you were working on a bigger take for the weekend. These are the kinds of stories "Post in the 90s" is mentioning.

re: clean up: Yikes. I'd say it was usually the other way around. Most of the editors I met there were nice folks and good reporters with excellent sources. They had a great sense of what was happening on their former beats. Good institutional memory. At best, they were mediocre writers. Some were comically bad.

I had a good relationship with the copy desk in FTL and always called them directly for readbacks on stories I cared about. On a few occasions, I ended up driving down to FTL on Friday night and buying copy deskers drinks for last-minute fixes to butchered copy.