The Columbia Journalism Review has a story this month morning about the “morning letdown” felt by countless newspaper readers. Guess which newspaper it chose as the exemplar of disappointment? That’s right, it’s our own Miami Herald. Here’s how Mitchell Stephens begins his piece: Call it the morning letdown. Your muffin…

The Miami Herald had a nice scoop today about the NFL offering local politicians Super Bowl tickets at their $600 or $700 face value. A lot of them — including Broward County Commissioners Sue Gunzburger, Stacy Ritter, John Rodstrom, and Diana Wasserman-Rubin — took advantage of the offer. Josephus Eggelletion,…

The private investigator on the line was coy. “I got a tape for you,” he said, “but I don’t want my name anywhere near it.” “Who are you?” I asked. “Trouble,” he replied. “Pestilence. Apocalypse. Diarrhea. A Nagging Case of Bursitis. You name it.” “Why did you call me?” “H…

A special thanks goes out to Miami Herald sportswriter Armando Salguerro, who brought up the burning question that I’ve been asking about the search for the new Dolphins coach: What about Urban Meyer? Unfortunately the answer came under a subhed titled “Who’s Out.” “University of Florida coach Urban Meyer just…

For those of you not up on your Romenesko, here’s a link to the City Pages story by Britt Robson about the reaction of Star-Tribune reporters to the newspaper’s sale by McClatchy, which owns the Miami Herald. The reporters are raging against Gary Pruitt and Anders Gyllenhaal, who left the…

Look the Pulp isn’t infallible. Everybody who reads this thing knows a good deal of it is done on the fly. Like the intrigue of deadline writing, it sometimes produces gold and sometimes all that comes up is dust. The post directly below isn’t really either, but it could have…

The Sun-Sentinel just keeps pandering. If you get the print version of the newspaper, you’ve probably noticed the new emphasis on “community” news. For the uninitiated, community news is pretty much a scheme to build readership by going ultra-local and getting more readers’ names in the newspapers. While it may…

I should have caught this myself, being a former cops reporter and all, but I had to rely on my editor and a certain gun-loving and God-fearing mayor for the heads-up: The .22-caliber pistol that killed 13-year-old Oles Tromper almost surely wasn’t an automatic, as reported by the Sun-Sentinel. It…

About the “Chompians” thing below, here’s some photographic evidence. The copy at the NT office does say Chompians while mine says Champions. I wonder if the word play wasn’t unwittingly corrected during the printing process. I think the reason I don’t like the chomp play is because it’s way too…

The Sun-Sentinel went with the bland: “Champions.” The Miami Herald chose the rather obnoxious: “Gator Nation.” And the winner of the big fat snappy headline for the University of Florida’s win last night to take the national championship comes from the Palm Beach Post: “Gator Raid.” Clever, especially seeing how…

Tromper Today’s newspaper proves that the Sun-Sentinel is afraid to tell the truth. You certainly can’t find it in Marlene Naanes’ story about the shooting death of a 13-year-old boy, anyway. And it’s not Naanes’ fault — the reporting was 0bviously done and the editors decided not to tell the…

This Sight Still Makes Me Cringe Yeah, I never thought I’d write those words, but I’m feeling it right now for Monday’s matchup against Ohio State. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the Gator haters that David Fleshler wrote about in the Sun-Sentinel this morning (which includes some great…

Miami Herald Ammons, Hooks, Daugherty I can’t say that I don’t agree with the Broward State Attorney’s Office just-announced decision not to seek the death penalty for the teens involved in the killing of the homeless man last year (see Nikki Waller’s story in the Miami Herald here). It’s not…

Those touchy-feely sports writers. Some of them write about games their entire careers and never grow up, trapped in a kiddie-land — with free buffets and sandwiches at stadiums stretching across the great expanse of America — forever. That’s the only way I can explain their disillusionment at the Nick…

I thought the Miami Herald was a little quiet on the death of Michael Browning, a writer who was central to the newspaper’s identity for a couple of (its finest) decades. No tribute, no guestbook, just a repackaged obit written by Palm Beach Post reporter Scott Eyman. I encouraged the…

It’s an “Only In South Florida” day, folks. The second professional coach has stepped down in the space of, oh, four hours. Pat Riley, who is one of the worst losers of all time (meaning that he’s very bad at losing), couldn’t take it anymore. He announced today that he’s…

This just in, a copy of a public records request filed by the inimitable Elgin Jones of Broward Times fame. Looks like Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Carlton Moore has stepped in it one more time: —————————————————————— City Clerk and Commissioners, There reportedly was an incident that took place at the Himmarshee…

The Sun-Sentinel’s Alex Marvez is the first to report definitively that Nick “So Long” Saban is — surprise, surprise — leaving the Dolphins for the Crimson Tide. After lying about it for weeks, Saban’s final insult was standing up team owner H. Wayne Huizenga, who he was supposed to meet…

I know it’s 2007, but it’s starting to feel a lot like 1994. It’s all those bullets flying I guess. News of babies and retirees being shot takes you back to the crime wave of the early 90s that started towards the end of another Bush’s stay in the White…

Browning: 1948-2006 I can’t go another minute without a word about Michael Browning, a South Florida journalism giant — both literally and figuratively — who died on December 30 of liver failure at the age of 58. I enjoyed reading Browning, who was a stalwart of the Miami Herald’s Golden…

Yeah, he’s boring but … Eight work days with no Pulp. Came back to 1,200 spam messages. Spent the week with family, eating, drinking, trying to be merry, watching football, and dealing with the deaths of Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein (ah, to be truthful, neither one had much affect…

A local website has become ground zero for hate in South Florida. It’s loaded, on an almost daily basis, with racist stereotypes, slurs, and sentimental references to slavery and lynchings. You can see it at this address: www.sun-sentinel.com. That’s right, our oh-so-proper daily newspaper of record, the politically correct Tribune…