Naugle Sends Pulp A Parable

The following was sent to me via a third party from Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle. He apparently thinks it’s powerful enough to spur converts to the Republican Party. Father-Daughter Talk A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she…

H-wood Mayor Shuts Out Sentinel, Sort Of

Maybe the Sun-Sentinel, which is losing circulation like a crack whore loses teeth, has hope after all. In a story on page 2B of today’s edition, Ihosvani Rodriguez writes about Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti getting a whopping $22,250 from plumbers around the country associated with the United Association of Journeymen…

Putney Joining Investment Bank

This just in from the Miami Herald website: Channel 10’s Michael Putney has accepted a job as a media consultant for Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services, an investment bank. The kicker: He’s keeping his job at Channel 10 and op-ed column for the Herald while he works to promote Ladenburg Thalmann…

You Can’t Play In A Man’s Game?

Below is the YouTube of Alec Baldwin’s speech in Glengarry Glen Ross. The reason I posted the little homage yesterday is that if you listen to the phone message, it’s like he’s channeling this character. Little known fact about Glengarry Glen Ross: The Baldwin role and speech, probably the most…

Jim Moran, Tax Cheat

No, that headline isn’t fair, but it’s about as balanced as the front-page Sun-Sentinel obituary on the Deerfield Beach billionaire. The article almost completely avoided the darker side of Moran, who died Tuesday at the age of 88. It mentioned briefly that he pleaded guilty in 1984 to evading income…

Baldwin Sets The Pulp Straight

So, like so many others, I was feeling sorry for Alec Baldwin this morning. What, you can’t chew out your daughter without the whole world talking about it? So I contacted Baldwin’s agent, who arranged a two-minute interview. “Two minutes,” said the agent, who strangely wouldn’t provide me his name…

DBR Defends Quote

The Dade County Bar Association was outraged by a Daily Business Review story by Forrest Norman about insurance fraud cases. In the April 16 article, Norman quoted the general counsel of an insurance company was quoted as saying: “When we get cases in front of juries, we were like 80…

New Times, New Editor

About six weeks after New Times Broward*Palm Beach editor Tony Ortega was tapped to take over the Village Voice in New York, VVM has named his successor, Robert Meyerowitz, who comes to South Florida via the Anchorage Press. Here’s the announcement from VVM Executive Associate Editor Andy Van De Voorde:…

In Defense Of The Play

Corrie The following comes from a Miami playwright now living in New York in regards to My Name Is Rachel Corrie, the production that was shitcanned at the Mosaic Theatre after Jewish groups complained and its sponsor, American Heritage School (also in Plantation), cowardly pulled its support. I think it…

Beatty In Charge

Former Miami Herald general counsel is officially in charge as the new owner of the Broward Times. In the article announcing the change, Beatty, described by his newspaper as one of the “one of South Florida’s top legal minds,” tells us what led to the move. For the last six…

Over Kill

This Cho Seung-Hui had it all planned out. After he fired his guns on Virginia Tech classmates, he’d get his face and action-figure persona emblazoned in the consciousness of America via NBC News. Mission accomplished. When I first picked up the Sun-Sentinel this morning, I was confronted with three good-sized…

River of Greed

The Broward County School Board and the City of Weston are about to sell us all down the river of grass. District leaders are set to waste tens of millions of dollars on a bad land deal involving an extremely wealthy political contributor. The deal involves what appears to be…

Pulitzer Winner Leaving Miami Herald

Cenziper Just-announced Pulitzer winner Debbie Cenziper is leaving the newspaper in favor of the Washington Post, according to Post media writer Howard Kurtz. “Cenziper of the Miami Herald captured the local reporting prize for exposing the waste of millions of dollars for projects that were never built, which led to…

DeGroot: Sentinel Has Case of Pulitzer Envy

Enjoy the following from our favorite contributor John DeGroot, which includes a fact that slipped my mind: Pulitzer winner Debbie Cenziper used to work for the Sentinel. Call her the one that got away. There was a great gnashing of teeth and renting of garments on Las Olas Boulevard in…

Cenziper Wins Pulitzer

Debbie Cenziper won a much-deserved Pulitzer Prize in the local category yesterday for her series House of Lies. Behind the series, which detailed corruption and mismanagement in Miami-Dade public housing, was editor Mike Sallah, who also should be congratulated. The award gave the Miami Herald’s the edge over the Sun-Sentinel…

It Keeps Getting Worse

Now Brian Williams is interviewing Matt Lauer. Our national media is a complete joke. If Walter Cronkite was dead, he’d be rolling around in his coffin. Oh, and what do we get from our president? Well, Bush was “horrified,” we’ve been told over and over again. Great. Just what we…

Tragic News

Look, I might be wrong. In fact, this blog might better be titled “I Might Be Wrong, But …” In the case of the V. Tech killings, I’m seeing a dysfunctional police department. Why do I say this? Well, it’s more than just the time delay between the two shootings,…

Her Name Was Rachel Corrie

Wonder why Broward County is such a dead place when it comes to political debate and art? Obviously part of the reason is that the Sun-Sentinel is a dead newspaper. Case in point comes with the cancellation of a play about a young American peace activist who was crushed by…

Brogan Must Go

Been following the Florida Atlantic University scandal? You know, the one where FAU prez Frank Brogan gave fundraiser Lawrence Davenport almost $600,000 to walk away quietly from his job. Brogan should resign now; the incident proves he’s not to be trusted with our money. It’s outrageous especially considering that he…

DeGroot, Vonnegut, and The Sun-Sentinel

Gonna kick into the weekend with a small piece from the great John DeGroot, the former Sun-Sentinel writing coach. It is inspired the death of classic American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who was once DeGroot’s occasional dinner companion. It was written yesterday and, sure enough, the Vonnegut obit didn’t appear until…

Imus Kills New Jersey Governor!

Okay, that’s overstating things a bit, since he had nothing to do with the Corzine’s car crash, but then so is everything about this story. I did hear a TV report where they called Corzine, who is seriously banged up, another “casualty” of Imus. Ridiculous. The media overkill will ironically…

Better Late Than Never, Barely

Both the Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald finally mentioned the Sid Rosenberg connection to the Imus story this morning, albeit both, tellingly, at the very bottom of their respective articles. The Herald’s report, by Barry Jackson and Glenn Garvin, was superior in that it actually reported what Rosenberg said. The Sentinel…