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Sun-Sentinel Help Team columnist Steve Svekis warned us this weekend about ... killer candles. That's right. After expounding on the rampant dangers of pool drains and contact lenses, after telling us before the little storm Ernesto to get up on our roofs and remove the wind turbines, the Help Team is now tackling the scourge of wax.

The lede:

"Candle in the wind?

I don't think so.

If all the cylinders of wax and wicks were whisked away at once, everyone would be safer. I would be a happier guy."

Oh, okay, I get it. Svekis is certifiably insane. He cites a couple anecdotes about candle fires and some meaningless statistics before he talks about how he hopes to impart his hatred of candles to his 10-year-old daughter, who "loves lighting a candle and, as if hypnotized, watching the heat transform its solid matter to a liquid."

Here's an idea, Steve: Maybe you should take the matches away from your 10-year-old kid. (Uh-oh, now I'm seeing the next column -- "Kids Playing With Matches: The New Holocaust?").

He finishes the item thusly:

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I was a little late coming to the party on the Sun-Sentinel re-design. I didn't realize when it was done last year that it would relegate reporters and their stories to third-rate status behind giant graphics and stupid little blurbs. I didn't know that it would turn national news stories of profound importance into background music. In short, I didn't know it would be the ruination of the newspaper.

I thought I would try to find out the impetus behind the decline and what I found was this American Journalism Review article from last fall. In it, AJR "senior editor" and University of Maryland teacher Carl Sessions Stepp takes the most positive spin on the movement toward tiny stories on the nation's front pages imaginable (you have to check out the absolutely ridiculous little thing about acorns). Don't be fooled, Stepp is full of more crap than a Louisiana pig barn. He writes that tiny blurb/stories are often "clever" and "increasingly valued and rewarded with good play." He continues:

"While it remains true that newsroom accolades still attach more to mega-projects than mini-tales, short pieces can amass their own recognition and status."

Oh Lord, it's bad stuff -- and to think Stepp is out there teaching our young people how to be reporters. Scary. But guess who takes a front-and-center role in Stepp's slop-fest? Yes, indeed, our own Mr. Maucker. To wit:

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A Real Front Page

Okay, the newspapers had some 'splaining to do this morning for overhyping Ernesto -- and the Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald had exactly the same idea. Blame the science -- and don't even mention that the newspapers and TV stations and governments behaved like this was a monster Cat 5 rather than a struggling possible Cat 1 (if that) all along.

The Sentinel's front-page headline: "INEXACT SCIENCE." The Miami Herald's: "'NOT A PERFECT SCIENCE."

The Sentinel had a huge, difficult-to-read graphic with a silly chart and examples of different tracks for Ernesto. It looked a little like their absurd Lifestyle fronts, where, apparently in a misplaced desire to be youthful and hip, they make the thing so busy that it's

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As Tropical Storm Ernesto zeroes in on and takes aim at and draws a bead on South Florida, the Sun-Sentinel, showing true Help Team spirit, gave us two pages of instruction on the storm inside the Local section today. Among its indispensable orders:

"If you have a TV antenna or satellite dish, take it down. Unplug your set first, and be careful not to touch power lines with the antenna."

Yeah, um, no. This seems not only idiotic but unsafe -- and aren't we supposed to watch TV for information on the storm? I'm not seeing legions of DirectTV users taking this bit of advice -- why would we self-impose ourselves to such isolation? But if you do listen to the Sentinel, while you're up there don't forget to:

"Remove turbine vents on the roof and replace with metal caps."

Is this a Tropical Storm coming or the end of days? I'm lucky I got ice and gas. There's no way I'm up on the roof trying to figure out how to take down the turbines.

Some of the demands look as if they were written up by the Anal-Retentive Chef:

"Scrub your plastic water containers with household soap, swab with bleach, rinse thoroughly, let dry. Then fill containers with water."

And:

"To sterilize your bathtub, scrub with household soap, swab with bleach, rinse thoroughly, and let dry. Seal the drain with a silicone caulking that you can easily remove later. Fill the tub with water."

Look, man, I'm just not a swab-with-bleach kind of guy. I'll buy my water at Publix. But get a load how much the Sentinel is telling us to buy:

"Figure you will need a gallon per person per day for drinking and sanitation. Have a two-week supply on hand for each person."

That means a family of four then should have 56 gallons of water today. No wonder the groceries run out so quick -- the daily newspaper is telling people to hoard. Clearly, the newspaper can't distinguish between a tropical storm and a cat 5. But it doesn't stop there. It gets all micro on our asses. For instance:

"Replace worn windshield wipers."

You can see it now: the storm is bearing down on the Jones family when Dick looks at Jane with a mixture of shame and terror in his eyes.

"Good God no," he mutters. "The windshield wipers. We forgot to replace the windshield wipers!"

"No, Dick, don't say that!" Jane screams in a sudden panic. "Don't even say that. Not the windshield wipers!"

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues.

Oh and there's this:

"Obey all curfews."

Yes, and name names if you must.

Finally, it ends with this bit of frank, Zen-like advice:

"The hours of living hell during a hurricane are over. Months of working like hell may be about to begin. Take your time. Do not overexert yourself. People need you."

There you go. If you didn't think the Sentinel meant all this stuff, then I think the gratuituous use of hell -- perhaps a first for the Sentinel editorial voice -- showed otherwise. Now replace those wipers, get up on the roof, and, for the love of all that is holy, swab like you mean it.

Pulp Reader Alert
The Sun-Sentinel has its latest Help Team special today: A giant front-page package on ... what to do when an airline loses your bags. This follows yesterday's hard-hitting front-pager on the ever-controversial subject of contact lens care. Diane Lade's article, titled WHERE'S YOUR LUGGAGE, and is just as exciting, life-changing, and full of relevent information as you would expect from such enticing subject matter. It's everything you've come to expect from the Sentinel and the Help Team, whose only goal is helping you, and more.

Onto The Democratic Debate You can read about the scuffle between Jim Davis and Rod Smith here, here, or here. But first, a few observations from the Pulp:

This is the strongest pair of Democrats fielded since at least 1990 (yeah I know that's not saying all that much considering Bill McBride and Buddy MacKay are the main competition). Both of these guys know the issues and will have a good chance against Republican frontrunner Charlie Crist. The Democratic debate was ten-fold better than Tuesday night's GOP affair, loaded with real issues instead of grotesque political rhetoric about who loves guns and babies more.

Not suprisingly, Smith whooped Davis's ass in terms of rhetoric. He talks better and has a familiar Florida cracker manner about him. Davis was wooden and looked strangely uncomfortable during much of the debate, laughing at odd times and mispronouncing words. He's not an exceedingly bright man. But once they began fighting, Davis held his own and more. He went after Smith as the Big Sugar candidate while Smith attacked Davis as a deadbeat Washington insider. They beat each other up pretty good, too.

Smith, as his Swift Boat-like relationship (a point Davis raised) to Big Sugar indicates, is a slippier politician. He seemed prone to misrepresenting the facts, especially when he tried to defend his support of a bill sponsored by our own Skip Campbell that led to a telephone rate increase. And his repetitive attack on Davis's attendance record was slimy, since he hasn't missed any votes of import and the only reason the record is bad is because he's been running for governor. And it seemed overdone; Smith made the cardinal political sin of coming off as a bit mean. But it might yet be effective. Think of the attack on U.S. Senator Dee Huddleston of Kentucky that ended with famous ads with dogs hunting a suited likeness of Huddleston running frantically through a field. Those ads are credited with giving victory to one Mitch McConnell, who remains one of the slimiest politicians in America.

Tom Fiedler was on the panel. He brought up recent gun violence and asked if they thought gun laws were to blame. Ugh. Such an early-90s question. Then he asked what the candidates would do to make the colleges better. Not too bad, but he forgot that the biggest problem most families have is accessing those universities, in part because of huge increases in college tuition. But his counterpart from the Palm Beach Post, Elise Cramer, asked the most useless question: What the candidates thought of the wet foot-dry foot immigration policy. Problem with that question is that it's a damn federal policy that the governor won't have any power over anyway.

Pulp prediction: All things staying relatively the same before the Sept. 5 primary vote, I think Davis wins in a squeaker. He comes across as the more decent candidate, even if he's not a fancy talker. Smith just doesn't seem genuinue and his cozy relationship with Big Sugar is going to hurt him mortally with Democrats, I think.

COMING LATER: A RUNDOWN OF SUNDANCE'S "THE HILL."

No sense in wasting time to get to the heart of media news in South Florida today: The Sun-Sentinel had one of the worst front pages in modern recorded history.

In its terribly regrettable three-story format -- with assorted, miscellaneous garbage cluttering a third of the page -- the editors made the heinous choice to include a story headlined: "How well do you care for your contact lenses?"

Then reporter Bob Lamendola did a yeoman's job of trying to make this dull, dull subject (and I'm one of the 15 percent or so that actually wear the damn things) seem pertinent, citing "new" studies and a small "outbreak" of eye fungus among wearers and such. This wasn't LaMendola's fault; it was yet another "Help Team" fiasco, right up there with breaking front-page report about killer pool drains.

The story that led the page may have been even worse. It was another one of those "Your Doom Is Still Imminent" stories about the hurricane season. Headlined "Don't lower your guard," Josh Frank's story was absolutely news-free. The lede:

"Don't be deceived.

This year's hurricane season may seem slow, but it's decidedly average."

Do tell! Nothing like an average weather story to anchor an entire newspaper. How absolutely pathetic -- and again, it's not the reporter's fault. Frank was clearly doing what he was told. I have worked at newspapers for many years and have yet to hear a reporter pitch a weather story.

Then there was David Fleshler's story about the hopes of cleaning up a tire reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale. It's an interesting tale of stupidity and a good read. Thousands of boaters threw tires into the water back in the 1970s with hopes of building a fishing paradise. Instead, well, they built a tire dump on the ocean floor. The things moved with the surf and tore up whatever vegetation was already there. Now we're talking about a massive and costly effort to remove those tires.

It's good stuff. But it was supposed to be there to break up harder, more pressing news. You know, like maybe an article about the start of the involuntary call-up of Marines for active duty in Iraq (Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post) or something on the Crist-Gallagher debate (Post). Instead Fleshler's story was the hardest thing on the page.

-- Speaking of the Crist-Gallagher debate, the coverage from the Big Three was pretty much the same. The lede on the Miami Herald story, however, was suspect:

"TAMPA - If name-dropping determined who won Tuesday's debate between the Republican candidates for governor, Tom Gallagher and Charlie Crist battled to a draw."

Okay, so both candidates were dropping names? No. Crist dropped names like Connie Mack, Ronald Reagan, and Mel Martinez. Gallagher called names like "liberal." I see what reporters Beth Reinhard and Gary Fineout were going for, but it's just not right. Editors shouldn't have let it get through. They could have easily changed it to something like, "In a battle of name-calling versus name-dropping, Tom Gallagher and Charlie Crist fought to a draw in the Repubican debate for governor last night."

Okay, that's not so great, but neither is the original. And the original is fatally flawed.

What struck me about last night's debate wasn't so much what was said -- that was predictable. It was Gallagher's face. At times, he would smile nervously and, as God as my witness, he turned into The Joker. He's got that big loose mouth that turns up at the edges and it can just be eerie. I looked for a photograph on the Web that illustrated it and the photo above was the closest thing I could find. Doesn't do it justice though.

In terms of the Sun-Sentinel's Help Team, there's good news and bad news. First the good news: The "Sun-Sentinel Watch" charticle (a mix between an article and chart that is all the rave at newspapers these days) was bumped off the Local front and onto 3B this morning. Apparently the editors have realized that in their zeal to pander to readers' every whim they may have gone too far. Today's version is about a damaged fence in Sunrise, though it's not quite as exciting as it sounds. It doesn't exactly demand prime real estate. Pushing those things deeper in the newspaper makes them a little more palatable.

But for that step forward, the newspaper took three or four steps back. The front page today is dominated by a Help Team special about the danger of pool drains. In, oh, something like 50-point type on the top of the front is the headline, "A Hidden Danger." Next to that is a giant graphic explaining the mechanics of pool drains.

This is reminiscent of the worst brand of TV tabloid journalism. You can hear the anchor, "Swimming pools ... founts of fun or watery dens of death? Answer at 10." The only possible way this story is worthy of such hysterical front-page treatment is if there's been a spate of local deaths tied to pool drains. Uh, no. The writer, Diane C. Lade (who didn't do a bad job on the story), reports that their have been 25 deaths. Nationwide. Since 1990.

To put that incredibly paltry number in perspective, more people were killed in that time by mobile woodchippers -- not to mention thousands of grotesque mutilations. Hmmm ... Killer Woodchippers. The Help Team could do a five-part series on something so meaty.

Some weekend coverage highlights:

-- Paul Lomartie and Pat Beall pick apart Riviera Beach in the Palm Beach Post. Interesting carpet bombing of the issues, though nothing groundbreaking. Tiptoes admirably around the most blaring problem: The apparent inability of the black community in Riviera Beach to help itself.

-- Ana Menendez on hate mail, a topic the Pulp knows something about. I think Ana's great, but sometimes what she describes as the syllable-rich deftness of academia can invade her copy. I only went to a state school, so can somebody tell me what this means: "With time, however, I came to appreciate hate mail for what it is: a nascent art form just waiting for its own school of criticism, marking not only its maturity but its eventual ossification and decline."

-- Douglas Hanks III delves into the inherent corruption of travel writing. Nice piece of reporting from the opening scene throughout. He let Poynter Institute ethics instructor Kelly McBride provide the real nut graph: ''I hate to be a cynic about this ... [but] I assume the work is tainted when it comes to travel journalism. . . . I assume the judgment of the writer has been compromised by getting free meals or free plane rides.''

-- Speaking of ethics, did anybody catch Michael Putney on Channel 10 Sunday? He was talking about some oxymoron or another and to educate his viewers about what an oxymoron is, he said it was sort of like "journalistic ethics." I generally think Putney is a decent commentator, but that little line lived up to his nickname of Putzney (okay, I just made that up). He meant it lightly, maybe even in jest, but there's enough hate and hysteria being worked up against journalists right now, especially with the Bush Administration's disgusting, politically driven campaign against the New York Times (and, by extension, the Bill of Rights). And the fact is that the journalism trade, the vast majority of it anyway, is long on ethics. Matter of fact, I'm not sure there's another profession so consumed by ethics as the newspaper trade -- certainly not law, business, politics, insurance, real estate, etc.

-- Not from the weekend per se, but been meaning to post this Daily Business Review story from Julie Kay about petty crimes catching up with people in the computer age. Interestingly, the story zeroes in on none other than Westlaw -- the new exclusive Internet content provider for DBR and other American Lawyer Media publications -- as one of the culprits.

-- Oh and I just wanted to post this icky little story about blogging in the Florida Times-Union. Next week the Times-Union is set to explore the popular new slang term "props."

The Miami Herald absolutely smoked the Sun-Sentinel in the Saturday stories on Sheriff Ken Jenne. When it comes to the federal investigation of the sheriff, the Herald story by Wanda DeMarzo and Jay Weaver gave us a look at some of the furniture in the room while the Sentinel left us groping and stumbling around.

Jenne's greatest violation of the public trust came in the hiring of lawyer/lobbyist/crony Tom Panza to "investigate" the crime-stats scandal. The sheriff diverted more than $1 million to Panza and other big-time political players for a total whitewash. The rest of the stuff is plenty dirty and should be pursued, but is penny ante next to the Panza payout. Wonder where Jenne is gonna find work after he gets out of jail?

Speaking of good news stories, check out this Palm Beach Post ditty on the only grocery store in Pahokee . Reporter Sonja Isger shows us great reporting and smart writing in a powerful story. What's more outrageous than an entire town having to pay nearly five bucks for milk?

Help Scheme

The Help Team struck again -- and again -- over the weekend. A Help Team center package dominated the front page of the Metro section. There's an emotional shot of an elderly man at cemetery over a black-and-white wedding photo from the 50s. The headline: 'Everybody deserves respect and dignity.'

You're thinking some awful mishap took place at the cemetery. And then you read the lead. All of this anguish and emotion is over ... weeds and an overgrown bush at Menorah Gardens. The guy is distraught over some poor landscaping.

Then the local front Monday was bottom-heavy with a package on ... a leaning utility pole.

Weeds, bushes, missing signs. Detritus. That's all you get. For all those ads of reporters' earnest faces, you get is detritus. This isn't about journalism, it's about public relations. It's obviously the dream of a P.R. man who doesn't give two shits about covering the news. It's about the Sentinel pandering to the readers, trying to make it seem personal, like they really care about you. Bull. They care about the idea that if it seems like they're caring about you, you'll buy their stinking newspaper, even it is about weeds, bushes, missing signs, leaning utility poles, and other detritus.

Before looking at the weekend highlights from the morning papers, let's quickly address the Help Team/Sun-Sentinel Watch. You know, where the so-called Help Team tries to fix little neighborhood problems like dim streetlights, debris, and, today, missing signs on Pompano "roundabouts." What, is Prince Charles doing a fucking guest editor's stint? In America -- GOD DAMMIT -- they're called traffic circles, not roundabouts. I've been sitting on the sidelines through this Help Team experiment, thinking it might not be so bad. Sure it looked bad from the beginning, but I've been withholding judgment. Here it is: The Help Team is heinous. From the grotesque double-truck ads of the grinning reporters to the pandering nature of the entire project, it's an affront to decent journalism that only saps the energy from the important things the Sentinel is supposed to be doing. I can't go on about this today, but there will be more. First bit of advice: Take the "Sun-Sentinel Watch" off the metro front and put it on the inside. This schlock about signs and lamps should not be taking up such valuable real estate in the newspaper.

Onto some points about the weekend papers:

The Hairy Grim Fairy Reaper

1. The Sun-Sentinel's Saturday edition was like looking in the mirror. On the front page was a story by my lovely wife highlighting Mayor Jim Naugle's wild remarks about affordable housing. The Pulp did that a month ago. (Okay, I admit she did a whole lot better and more professional job of it, but still). I think the Sentinel is starting to learn that the mayor is the gift that doesn't stop giving. And then, who was pictured on the front of the Metro section but Asa Boynton, aka the Hairy Fairy, in all his strange and slightly disturbing glory. This time he called himself the Grim Reaper (and a festive-looking one at that). Boynton is a Pulp fixture who won the first and only prize package ever given away by the Pulp. I heartily extend my congrats to Asa for the success of his political stunt. Not that it was cheap. As reporter Ihosvani Rodriguez rightly point out: "The issue that brought Boyton out in costume is a serious one." Namely overpopulation on the barrier island driven by the greed of folks like Alan Koslow, Steve Geller, and Mayor Mara.

2. The Palm Beach Post's Eve Samples had a very interesting story about a down-on-his-luck real estate flipper Sunday. The Post has done some great stuff all the way through, anchored by the strong and thorough work of Jeff Ostrowski. Check it out here. And if this list of people who have profited the most from the Save Our Homes tax break doesn't convince you that something is wrong (a few of the names you might recognize: Limbaugh, Kozlowski, Fanjul (X4), DuPont, Buffett (as in Jimmy), and Nicklaus), then you might, just might, could possibly be Jim Naugle.

3. The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg busted a big scoop about chaos at Guantanamo. It's amazing how creative those rascally Jihadists got with their own bodily refuse. From the story:

"When the guards charged inside shouting orders, they encountered excrement, urine and soapy water spread across the floor. Two guards wielding riot shields and batons went down. Guards behind them let loose with pepper spray, five shotgun rounds of rubber bullets that unleashed 90 marble-sized pellets and something called a sponge round.

''We had two guards down,'' Bumgarner said. "We were losing the fight at that point.''

If they can fell two heavily armed guards with just a bit of well-placed shit, we might be in more trouble than I thought.

4. And there was more gatormania at the Herald and the Sentinel. Carl Hiaasen's take was predictably on target. He knows about these things, after all, having grown up in the wilds of Plantation, back when University Drive was a dirt road on the edge of the Everglades. Little known fact (which I learned several years back while researching a story about former Plantation mayor Frank Veltri): Hiaasen's attorney father was the right-hand man of shoe company scion and mega-developer Fred Peters. Peters, of course, is the man who carved up Hiaasen's beloved boyhood Plantation for bulldozing and paving. And his brother-in-law is Scott Cowan, the corrupt and hugely pro-development former Broward County commissioner who was thrown out of office and into the clink for campaign law violations. Gives you an idea of the conflicted depths from which one of the greatest Florida novelists (and anti-development writers) of all time has come.

Hiaasen's right, we can't just start killing all the gators. They've been here longer than us. Hell, we've already stolen their habitat and killed countless of their numbers over generations. Fortunately we have an historic precedent for just this type of situation. We must give them complete tax-exempt status, let them sell cigarettes in road-side kiosks, and allow them build gaudy casinos. It's the American way.