Local blogger sucks up to the Herald

Some guy named Tom Falco runs a blog called the Coconut Grove Grapevine.

It wasn't that long ago that Falco was accusing the Miami Herald of plagiarism.

He was so pissed at the Herald for "stealing" his stories that sicced his "lawyer" on them! At least that's what he says.

I chased the local daily newspaper off. Notice they no longer steal my stories and reprint them in their newspaper a few days later? This was going on for a long time and some stories were practically word-for-word, taken from here. My plagiarism lawyer is on top of that.

The next stolen story that appears may have me and the blog in the spotlight, since we will take it to court and the offending writer will probably not have a career in journalism ever again. Since I read them the riot act, the local daily has had no Grove human interest stories since they don't have the brains to go out and get their own and they are forbidden from stealing mine any more.

All this coming from a guy who peed his pants when Commissioner Mark Sarnoff's lawyer sent him a nasty letter a while back.

But that was then and this is now.

Today Falco breathlessly informed his readers that,

"Our stories will be appearing in The Miami Herald. Not all of them and not everywhere. As part of their Community News program, they run stories, with permission, from various news sources, mostly blogs. For instance their Key Biscayne news comes from the Key Biscayne Times as part of the partnership program.

We were approached to do the same thing. We will send them only what we would like them to publish and they have the right of refusal, but basically, they won't publish everything you see here in the Grapevine, just what we choose to send them. The stories will appear in the online edition of the Herald and possibly later on in print editions. The Herald is the number one newspaper website with one million hits a day. We will be right there on their home page next to the main news under "Community News." You can see how they do it here."

Congratulations Tom! But I'm not sure how to take this. Is your blog getting that much better; or has the Herald finally hit rock bottom?

Don't say anything; I already know the answer!