City of Lake Worth

Mulvehill was not happy about the "riff-raff."

​Poor Lake Worth. The hippie, quirky, crunchy little stepchild of Palm Beach got a brief shout-out in the New York Times "Frugal Traveler" blog this week, but the fifteen minutes of fame only angered a city official.

In a story about how to tour the town of Palm Beach on less than $200 a day -- a bargain, perhaps, if you live on the Upper West Side-- reporter Seth Kugel deigned to acknowledge Lake Worth. He called it "a nice enough town, though it lacks the elitist Palm Beach feel you came for. Admittedly, the decadent raspberry stuffed granola French toast for under $10 at Benny's on the Beach makes the temporary exposure to the riff-raff tolerable."

To be fair, Kugel did not specifically mention the homeless men who gather in the downtown plaza every morning, or the unwashed dudes who strum guitars on the corner of Lake Avenue and L Street. He may even have been kidding about the "riff-raff," since he was focused on high-brow Palm Beach.
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More journalists will be out of work.

​The Palm Beach Post laid off "more than" 20 people today, adding to the more than 300 jobs the newspaper cut three years ago.

With papers across the country shrinking, shifting, and shutting down, Post Publisher Tim Burke blamed the economic downtown for the latest cutbacks.

Insiders say four of the employees worked in editorial. We'll update if/when more details become available.

UPDATE: Read Burke's memo to employees after the jump:
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​Last week, we told you about the Florida Society of Pain Management Providers, the largest pain-clinic-supported lobbying organization in the state, harshly criticizing the Palm Beach Post over the paper's coverage of pain clinic legislation. Paul Sloan, president of the Pain Society, called Post writer Michael LaForgia's work "simply reprehensible."

In the comments field of that original post, Mr. Sloan weighed in again (eight times, actually), clarifying his group's complaints further. Eventually we heard from LaForgia as well, who wrote in to clarify a bit himself.

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Facebook.com

411-PAIN escaped scutiny by the dailies.

​A month after New Times published an exposé on 1-800-411-PAIN, a local referral service that seeks clients who have been in car accidents, South Florida's daily newspapers have woken up to the problem of personal injury protection (PIP) fraud.
 
Under Florida's "no fault" insurance law, every driver is required to carry PIP insurance, which can provide up to $10,000 in medical benefits and lost wages if you're in an accident. This weekend, the Sun-Sentinel and the Miami Herald devoted tremendous ink to the unscrupulous doctors, lawyers, and consumers who scam the system to collect those benefits.

The Herald focused on people who stage fake accidents. The Sentinel discussed the thousands of dollars in fees that lawyers can earn when fighting insurance companies over small PIP claims.But neither paper paid much attention to the most visible symptom of the PIP bonanza -- a barrage of billboards and TV commercials luring car accident victims to certain networks of doctors and lawyers.
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Facebook.com

411-PAIN escaped scutiny by the dailies.

​A month after New Times published an exposé on 1-800-411-PAIN, a local referral service that seeks clients who have been in car accidents, South Florida's daily newspapers have woken up to the problem of personal injury protection (PIP) fraud.
 
Under Florida's "no fault" insurance law, every driver is required to carry PIP insurance, which can provide up to $10,000 in medical benefits and lost wages if you're in an accident. This weekend, the Sun-Sentinel and the Miami Herald devoted tremendous ink to the unscrupulous doctors, lawyers, and consumers who scam the system to collect those benefits.

The Herald focused on people who stage fake accidents. The Sentinel discussed the thousands of dollars in fees that lawyers can earn when fighting insurance companies over small PIP claims.But neither paper paid much attention to the most visible symptom of the PIP bonanza -- a barrage of billboards and TV commercials luring car accident victims to certain networks of doctors and lawyers.
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Sky magazine

You might need a shower after reading this.

​Palm Beach County, we hardly knew ye. Mesmerized by the hundreds of empty condos, parade of jail-bird politicians, foreclosure crisis, and pill mills, we've overlooked your many charms.

Thankfully, Delta's Sky magazine dedicated 32 glorious pages to extolling your virtues in this month's issue.

The article trumpets the area's "coveted colleges and universities" -- screw you, U.S News & World Report rankings! -- and "connections to potential capital at every turn" -- gracias, Mr. Madoff.

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​Updated with arrest photo after the jump.

Around 2,000 copies of the FAU student newspaper, the University Press, turned up in recycling bins around the Boca Raton campus last Wednesday. According to Managing Editor Gideon Grudo, 31 of 39 distribution boxes around campus were raided and their contents thrown away ("At least they recycled," he muses). The Sun-Sentinel picked up the story, and campus police are currently pursuing leads. Grudo says the paper can't speculate at this time as to who the culprit is.

The cover story on the tossed issues details the resignation of Clevis Headley, chair of the school's philosophy department. The article followed up on a story published last month about a lawsuit filed against the dean of the College of Arts and Letters, accusing the dean "of anti-Semitism, ageism and fraud." Headley's wife works as an assistant to the dean.
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Flickr user: inju

​Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor who oversaw three years of massive layoffs and buyouts at the Miami Herald, is leaving town thanks to a promotion. He's been tapped by the paper's corporate owner, McClatchy Newspapers, to become Washington, D.C., editor and vice president of news for the chain.

Managing Editor Aminda "Mindy'' Marques Gonzalez will replace him as top editor at the Herald.

It's a step up for Gyllenhaal, who shepherded the paper through grueling economic times and championed the new way of doing business at dailies -- such as sharing stories with former rivals the Sun-Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post.

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Abrams is done writing memos.

​After two years of writing long, rambling memos that made newspaper staffers from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale cringe, the missives became Lee Abrams' downfall.More >>

courtesy Bradley Springer

​

The Miami Herald issued an incredibly lame correction this afternoon on a story that appeared on the front page of their sports section earlier this week. The brief, ambiguous note seems to be an admission that one of the paper's most celebrated sports reporters was completely and utterly duped, Borat-style, by an FAU student and his buddy.

Bradley Springer, a freshman at FAU, and Jonathan Taylor dressed up like Russian basketball fans -- replete with face paint and fake accents -- and attended the Heat's scrimmage against CSKA Moscow. When Herald reporter Linda Robertson interviewed them for more than 15 minutes, they shared tales of fake Russian rappers who love "LeeBron" and talked about how much Russians love basketball.

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