Showing posts with label Paramore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paramore. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

And not for the first time... a Miami Herald reader reveals more insight in their comments about the news than the Herald reporter does in their reporting of a news story; re Miami-Dade lobbying fees


And not for the first time... a Miami Herald reader reveals more insight in their comments about the news than the Herald reporter does in their reporting of a news story; Miami-Dade's lobbying fees

A well-informed and observant Miami Herald reader states what radio industry icon Paul Harvey used to famously call "the rest of the story" in his syndicated show, via the comments section of Monday's article about Miami-Dade's tortured handling of its lobbying fees. 
Again.

The reader states factual connections with devastating aplomb: " Becker & Poliakoff also employs Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, Carlos Gimenez Jr, and George Burgess."
As someone has no doubt said a few times before, though never in my family, "Eureka!"

Which is to say, 
a.) Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, the former Miami-Dade County Commissioner and current FL State Senator for District 36, who replaced one brother, Alex, currently a lawyer/lobbyist and former State Senate Majority Leader, and another brother, Renier, who's currently on the Miami-Dade School Board.
b.) Carlos Gimenez Jr., the son of Miami-Dade County's current Mayor, and, 
c.) George Burgess, the former Miami-Dade County Manager who resigned in March, after his job was overwhelmingly eliminated "with prejudice" by county voters in August of 2010, presaging the delicious and much-deserved recall of County Mayor Carlos Alvarez earlier this year.

It's helpful context alright, especially for those of us who have followed how the M-D lobbying process/charade has been abused over the years so that commissioners could make sure that their pals kept getting their cut of the American Dream, Miami-style (crony capitalism), which to cite but one example, where Comm. Sally Heyman kept Carrie Meek on the reservation regardless of her actual use, or the fact that her team was not one of the lowest bidders, but useful context of the sort that for the past few years has routinely NOT appeared in Herald articles, and Laura Brannigan's article is no exception.

(No serious follower of Miami-Dade politics and government that I know ever asks what a particular decision, vote or legislative bait-and-switch means on its face without first mentally scrolling thru his head the family trees of the county commission -and their assorted unofficial "families"- and then thinking about which members of la familia works for which one of the companies, firms or parties involved. 
Yes, just like in a banana republic, that's just the fundamental default question you have to ask.)

Just like the Herald NEVER mentioned in the days and weeks leading up to this decision that the subject would be taking place, much less, when the vote would be taking place.
Just keep the readers in the dark:THAT'S the Herald's local coverage policy -always after the fact.
And sometimes, NOT even then.

As it happens, the Miami-Dade County vote described took place last Monday, Dec. 19th.

Correct, it has taken the Herald exactly one week to report upon this vote in Miami, not in Timbuktu, in Mali, where a past housemate of mine in Arlington county served in the Peace Corps, and explained to me many times how difficult it was to communicate with the outside world from the village that she lived in.

Should a professionally-run news organization, esp. one that still claims to have a degree of relevancy and currency in the South Florida market have the same problem reporting from Miami in the last days of the year 2011?
I don't think so. 

For more on this point, see my post of November 27, 2010 about the use of technology, wherein I draw a comparison between the ability of a great song performed at a Paramore concert last year in Stockholm -at the bottom of this post- to be uploaded to YouTube and be seen by me thousands of miles away within hours, and the Miami Herald's myopic Pony Express-style of news reporting, where they constantly miss what's current because of their conscious decisions made by editors and management, leaving readers who want fresh news in the lurch.
How a video of Paramore in Stockholm and Razorlight at the Cuckoo Club, London proves the Miami Herald is moving too damn slow in its news coverage., Iceberg dead ahead!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-video-of-paramore-in-stockholm.html

That the powers-that-be at One Herald Plaza chose to print this story about lobbying and the commission vote that decided it -at least temporarily- so long after-the-fact, and on the day after Christmas, instead of in Sunday's paper, their largest circulation day, well, to me, that's a very curious conscious choice indeed.
Yes, more Pony Express-style news coverage from the Miami Herald, but it doesn't end there.

Also as it happens, Monday marked 13 days since the Broward County Commission voted on redistricting and approved new district maps, and the Herald has STILL NOT printed anything in the newspaper or posted anything online about it.
Even though it directly affects roughly 40-45% of their readers.

Seriously, is it really asking too much of a local daily newspaper to actually report news within 24 or 48 hours?

For more on los hermanos Diaz de la Portilla, see also: http://www.ccfj.net/CCFJDeLaPortilla.htm

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Miami Herald 
Miami-Dade Commission aims to cut lobbying tab, ends up paying $50,000 more 
By Martha Brannigan
Posted December 25, 2011

Facing a tight budget, Miami-Dade commissioners launched plans this fall to ink new contracts with Tallahassee lobbying firms. Their goal: to slash spending. 

The two firms that had the business offered to reduce their prices, but the county rebuffed them.It was a costly decision. When commissioners doled out four lobbying agreements last week totaling $450,000, they wound up spending $50,000 more than the reduced price offered by the two incumbents.

After 90 minutes of debate and five failed motions, the vote was 10-3 — with Commission Chairman Joe Martinez voting against an initiative that he had spearheaded.

Also voting “no’’ on Dec. 19 were Commissioners Lynda Bell and Xavier Suarez, who argued for reduced spending.

“Nobody wants to cut out one of their friends,’’ Martinez said wearily from the dais. “Why doesn’t someone make a motion to defer and put us out of our misery?’’ 

In an interview afterward, Martinez added: “It was my item, but it didn’t turn out the way I expected. That’s why I voted against it.’’

Under the deal, sponsored by Commissioner Barbara Jordan, a team of lobbyists led by the two incumbent firms — Ron L. Book P.A. and Rutledge, Ecenia & Purnell P.A. — were kept on, but were scaled back each to $170,000 a year from $225,000. Erased, too, was $50,000 for special projects, or “work orders.’’ 

Two additional firms — Akerman Senterfitt & Eidson and Ballard Partners Inc. — also were awarded contracts for $55,000 a year each. Akerman already does federal lobbying for the county. Book subcontracts with the Pittman Law Group. Rutledge subcontracts with Becker & Poliakoff, Dutko Worldwide LLC, and Gomez Barker Associates Inc. The one-year contracts come with annual options to renew for three years.

Besides the lobbying team, the county has its own government affairs staff and assistant county attorney Jess McCarty doing work in the state capital.

Brian Ballard said his firm won’t be doing work for the county on the casino issue. Ballard represents Genting Group, the Malaysian gambling giant that is pushing for legislation to permit destination resort casino gambling in the county, a pivotal issue now before the legislature. 

Akerman partner Mike Abrams said in an email that his firm has represented a Genting affiliate, Bayfront 2011 Property, “in several real estate matters,’’ but has “not been contacted or engaged to lobby on behalf of Genting or any of its affiliates with the state government at any level, including the legislature.’’

The commission’s money-saving effort began a week into the county’s new lean budget for fiscal 2011-12. “The ominous specter of layoffs threatens employee morale and the county’s ability to deliver services to our residents,’’ Martinez said in an Oct. 7 letter to Mayor Carlos Gimenez, adding that to “drastically reduce’’ costs it would be necessary to advertise for lobbying firms through a competitive selection process. 

In a bid to hang onto the lucrative and prestigious county work and to head off a competitive search, honchos at Ron L. Book P.A. and Rutledge, Ecenia & Purnell offered on Oct. 24 to cut their annual contracts to $200,000 each, from $225,000. The firms took reductions in 2009 and 2010 as well. 

But commissioners brushed aside the offer, pushing forward with a selection process and giving themselves the broadest latitude in handpicking the new team. “I thought we could get it down to $350,000 or $300,000 [in total],’’ Martinez said. 

The commission named the selection committee members, and rather than have the committee rank firms with numerical scores, asked simply for a list of firms meeting the basic qualifications. 

At the commission meeting, Bell recommended spending a total of $300,000 for three firms. But the measure died for lack of support, as did four other ideas.

Some commissioners fretted that changing lobbyists with the legislative session set to begin next month was ill-timed. Others said cutting spending at a time when Tallahassee is facing its own severe budget constraints was ill-advised. 

“This is a very tough year in Tallahassee,’’ said Commissioner Jose “Pepe’’ Diaz. “It’s a chaotic situation, plus there is redistricting,’’ he added, referring to the drawing of new political boundaries. 

Finally, Jordan successfully proposed the $450,000 deal, divided among all four firms that had applied. 

“If this was really about saving money, when you add it up, it cost $50,000 more than the two firms agreed to reduce their fees to,’’ said Commissioner Sally Heyman, who voted for the measure but was unhappy with it. She said by being on the prevailing side she is in a position to bring the issue up for reconsideration. 

“I question whether we need lobbyists in Tallahassee at all,’’ Suarez said afterward.

The commission plans to take up the issue of reducing payments to the county’s Washington lobbyists next year.


MIAMI-DADE LOBBYING 
Incumbent lobbyists in Tallahassee: Ron L. Book P.A. and Rutledge, Ecenia & Purnell P.A. Book subcontracts with Pittman Law Group. Rutledge subcontracts with Becker & Poliakoff; Dutko Worldwide LLC; and Gomez Barker Associates. Additional firms receiving state lobbying contracts: Akerman Senterfitt & Eidson and Ballard Partners Inc.
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Paramore - Misguided Ghosts - (Acoustic) LIVE at Fryshuset, Stockholm, Sweden, November 30, 2009, http://youtu.be/O9OuNtlXiGA

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Wow! Sofia in Umeå -a.k.a. Hia80- has four must-see home videos of Robyn performing at Skellefteå 2011 last Friday

Robyn - With every heartbeat - LIVE at Skellefteå 2011, July 1, 2011


Robyn, Sveriges popdrottning! (Robyn, Sweden's pop queen!)
Now THAT'S charisma!

Judging by the evidence, Sofia from up in Umeå looks to have not only scored some very good seats for Robyn's show last Friday in Stieg Larsson's neck of the woods in Skellefteå -near the front of the stage, no less- but she also kindly thought of all the Robyn fans out there in the blogosphere who craved a new video fix of this energetic dynamo, and Sofia has delivered big time.
All the customary moves we've come to expect from Robyn were there, too: the windmill arms, the shadow-boxing, the moon walking...

Sofia has very good audio and video quality, especially considering that she was clearly standing in an enthusiastic crowd of people going nuts.

Sofia's video reminds me of the amazing videos of the crowds at the Paramore concerts in STKHM that I alluded to last October here on the blog, when I compared and contrasted music lovers' lightning-like ability to use technology and share information/video thru YouTube, while the Miami Herald continued insulting their readers by playing second-rate Pony Express, and was NOT even able to get the score or game story for the first game of the 2010 World Series in the Broward edition of the paper the day after the game.
This, even though The New York Times that was printed in Fort Lauderdale and sold at the same places in Broward as the Herald had two pages of games coverage, plus photos.


That November 27th, 2010 post of mine was titled, How a video of Paramore in Stockholm and Razorlight at the Cuckoo Club, London -Friday night- proves the Miami Herald is too damn slow. Iceberg dead ahead!

My previous six posts on Robyn the past year are right here in chronological order:

Obviously, what she shot is slightly different than the film quality that you all got used to in my very popular post a few weeks back on Robyn, here, with SVT's amazing video of Robyn's concert in Copenhagen last year and the fascinating and amusing behind-the-scenes documentary at her concert in Stockholm, but it's still damn impressive nonetheless.

Now if only everyone did as good a job as Sofia of not only keeping their cool in the heat of the moment at a Robyn concert and keeping the focus on her -and largely avoiding everyone's hands up in the air!- and NOT blurting out things that get captured on film and distract from what's going on.

Great job, Sofia!
Two big thumbs up from South Florida! :-)

By the way, Sofia is also the very same person who three years ago uploaded the video of Frida Öhrn on SVT's Så ska det låta singing her version of the Dolly Parton classic "Jolene" that just knocked me out. http://youtu.be/aPYBGa_PsLo
Until Friday night when I was preparing this post, I'd completely forgotten that she was the one whose quick thinking was appreciated by so many, including yours truly, SO many miles away.


Robyn - Hang with me - Live at Skellefteå 2011, July 1, 2011

http://youtu.be/jAkgHY7Qcso


Robyn - Indestructible - Live at Skellefteå 2011, July 1, 2011


Robyn - Call your girlfriend - Live at Skellefteå 2011, July 1, 2011


Robyn's official website: http://www.robyn.com/

Sofia's YouTubeChannel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/Hia80
Check it out and subscribe!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Paramore performing "My Hero" by The Foo Fighters at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait; "Playing God"; on VH1 next Sunday



Paramore
- "My Hero" at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NwZu8NnYeQ


Speaking of Paramore as I just was in my last post, on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving Day, the band played for U.S. troops stationed in Kuwait.
http://www.paramore.net/blog/my-hero-in-kuwait/

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-arifjan.htm

http://wikimapia.org/6165083/Camp-Arifjan-U-S-Military-Base-Kuwait

Their cover of My Hero by The Foo Fighters is slated to air on VH1's "ON TV" Sunday December 5th.
Their newest hit, Playing God, already has close to 2.1 million hits on YouTube as of midnight Friday night.
This band is further proof that there's no substitute for talent, enthusiasm and hard work.



Paramore - Playing God

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDy2wCQYSrU

More
Paramore interviews and goodies at
http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/paramore/artist.jhtml

Paramore's
official website:
http://www.paramore.net/

How a video of Paramore in Stockholm & Razorlight in London proves the Miami Herald is too damn slow. Iceberg dead ahead!



Paramore -Misguided Ghosts, LIVE in Stockholm, acoustic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9OuNtlXiGA

How a video of Paramore in Stockholm and Razorlight at the Cuckoo Club, London proves the Miami Herald is moving too damn slow in its news coverage.
Iceberg dead ahead!


A number of months ago -I want to say it was mid-April-
when I wanted to prove a few Linkpoints about how poorly the Miami Herald was serving their increasingly smaller number of subscribers and readers -esp. the Sports Dept., led by their editor, Jorge Rojas- part of my grand plan was to run photos of what they ran in the newspaper on Saturday and compare that to what other East Coast newspapers ran that same day, since it's the same time zone.

The point, obviously, was to skewer the Herald once again
thru some easily-understood and
rather self-evident anecdotal evidence to demonstrate that their conscious decision to send copies of
the newspaper to next door Broward County where I live -in my case, right next to Aventura, only 14 miles due north of the newspaper's HQ on Biscayne Bay in Miami- which contained old news, lots of Wire stories and less local locally-written stories with important context, was only making their well-known problems MUCH WORSE

This is most easily demonstrated when you don't see complete sports
stories and scores the next day -or timely election result updates on the website.

Some examples of this from this past year:

Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Miami Herald's dismal Pony Express-style coverage of The World Series -compared to the New York Times- is a bad omen for readers
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/miami-heralds-dismal-pony-express-style.html

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Breaking: Miami Herald & sports editor Jorge Rojas already in mid-season form as they ignore BigTenNetwork's televised ballgames

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/breaking-miami-herald-sports-editor.html

Saturday, August 28, 2010
Miami Herald is channeling Pony Express in its reporting on Broward School Board elections from four days ago. But it's the year 2010!

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/miami-herald-is-channeling-pony-express.html


Saturday, April 24, 2010
UCLA edges Sooners to win 2010 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championship at Gainesville; Coverage of Women's Sports in the Miami Herald

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/ucla-edges-sooners-to-win-2010-ncaa.html


Monday, January 4, 2010

A TV program we can use more of over here: "Jag ska bli stjärna"; Girls sports in South Florida and the abysmal media coverage of it

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/tv-program-we-can-use-more-of-over-here.html

As you can see from above, in the interim, I've run a few pieces here and there demonstrating that central uncontested fact about the Herald's declining quality to a fair-thee-well, using both the coverage of the second NCAA D1 Womens Basketball Semifinal game, and Game Two of the 2010 World Series, Texas Rangers at San Francisco Giants, the latter of which started before 8:30 p.m. Eastern.

At the time, the other part of my plan was to show that despite all
the technological innovations of the past 15 years that allow legacy media companies like McClatchy's Miami Herald, as well as bloggers like myself, to share and post information quickly, the Herald was "moving kinda slow" -like Uncle Joe in front of the Shady Rest Hotel in Petticoat Junction- to the absolute detriment of everyone concerned, most notably, news consumers.

One of the ways that I was going to do that was to post a great video
of Paramore performing in Stockholm late on a Friday night/early Saturday morning, that had been recorded and posted to YouTube, and which later in the early A.M., was sent to me by a friend in Stockholm who'd been at the concert, and was so wired that she literally couldn't immediately fall asleep.

Naturally, like millions of other people, unable to fall asleep, she promptly started checking her email and surfing the Web.


In her
version of the story, after reading my humble blog here for the first time in a few days, and sending me a note about some things she liked and some constructive suggestions, intent on going to sleep but wanting to check one last time, she typed in Paramore on YouTube, assuming that it was unlikely that anyone at the concert had uploaded something yet.

But she was wrong.
Somebody had!

At the top of this blog post is a better quality version of the original video that I saw, but you still get the point nonetheless.
Technology and social media allow news, ideas and information to flow freely from all sorts of places.
So why is the Herald so laggard at doing the basics, like timely reporting?


Why are they consciously turning their back on covering local government in South Florida and losing what precious remaining credibility they maintain?

When I woke up that Saturday morning in April, the newspaper lacked what I and many other news junkies or sports fans would consider some basic information, yet my email inbox was ALREADY full of interesting news, including that hours-old video that was still PIPING FRESH!

Since I didn't post that back then when I was of a mind to, I'll do it now,
and further buttress my point by posting here yet another video that proves the point.

Blogger extraordinaire Josefina Boston of AbsolutBoston blog fame,
and Escada's London HQ,
http://absolutboston.se/ shot some interesting video when she and her beautiful model pal Tess Montgomery went over to the Cuckoo Club in Mayfair.
That is, they did so after they and two other fashion-forward friends hit the opening
of the new Dior store on Bond Street, where the champagne was really flowing.
http://absolutboston.se/dior-opening-party/

While there for the Cuckoo Club's second anniversary, Josefina filmed this performance by Razorlight from very close-up.



Razorlight playing LIVE at The Cuckoo Club, Mayfair, London

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCCWY_xL33w

Josefina blogs for the very popular Spotlife blogging platform, http://spotlife.se/ as does the lovely Tess Montgomery, who, in my opinion, looks like a taller, sexier Julie Delpy.
Linkhttp://www.motmodel.com/models/detail.asp?model_id=3991

Not that there's anything wrong with the regular-sized one!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000365/

Tess
blogs from
http://tessm.se/, where she has even more photos of Razorlight performing at http://tessm.se/cuckoo-club-2-ar/
as well as some photos of the Dior event at http://tessm.se/dior-event-pa-bond-street/
Bon Chic, Bon Genre!

Tess
even has some good sound advice that's especially practical at this time of the year when she says at one point in her post, "
Jag har nämligen som regel att aldrig blanda shopping och alkohol."
Which is to say that she's developed a rule about never mixing shopping with alcohol.

That's clearly a lesson that's yet to take hold of many area women, since I often see them over at the Aventura Mall around 6:30 p.m.or so, as they go straight from drinking with their gal pals to shopping, usually over at Nordstrom's.
http://about.nordstrom.com/MapPoint/MapResults.aspx?bizid=774

I can't help but think that
Tess probably has a good story behind that rule, too, just like Jethro Gibbs of longtime Hallandale Beach Blog fave NCIS has for his rules.
http://ncis.wikia.com/wiki/Leroy_Jethro_Gibbs/Rules

So, getting back to the Herald, I know when I look at the Saturday newspaper tomorrow and it's ponderous website that is both too-busy and yet NOT full enough of legitimate news stories,
I will see so-called "news" that's largely been pre-chewed or eaten with all the turkey leftovers on Friday, on what is traditionally one of the worst weekends for news stories because the varsity news team is away on vacation.

When specifically is
Miami Herald publisher David Landsberg finally going to publicly share with
Herald readers what his actual plan is to rescue the newspaper, and make it relevant to readers and news consumers, which it increasingly is NOT by any stretch of the imagination?

It's getting kind of late in the voyage with Landsberg at the helm, and while I'm
no expert on icebergs, I can see with my own eyes that the known and unknown icebergs keep getting closer and closer to the Herald's bow as it steers into unchartered waters without a compass or, seemingly, a legitimate plan to get to its destination.

And like you all, I know with absolute certainty that most of an iceberg is unseen
-and below the surface.
Just like the Herald's myriad problems.
But some problems are too big to hide.

-----


Paramore: Sweden Photoshoot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbKIFZY3q9M



Paramore - Decode, Ulalume Festival
http://www.mtv.com/videos/?id=1623823

More Paramore interviews and goodies at
http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/paramore/artist.jhtml

Paramore's official website: http://www.paramore.net/


See also: http://stureplan.se/bloggar