The way we were...Flight 19 disappears, Dec. 5, 1945

68 years ago today: Flight 19 from NAS Ft. Lauderdale disappears.

Miami Daily News, Dec. 6, 1945.
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Sun-Sentinel: One of aviation's biggest mysteries endures after 68 years.

Mark Soyka is a 'dinosaur'

Mark Soyka tells John Dorschner how News Café came to be a 24-hour operation.

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John Dorschner retired from the Miami Herald earlier this year after 42 years at the paper.

But he didn't stay retired for long.

Lately, John's been out breaking news, interviewing people, shooting videos and writing stories for the Biscayne Times and others.

He's even started a blog. 

John has a story in this month's Biscayne Times: A fascinating interview with News Café owner Mark Soyka.

Dorschner writes, "Soyka is often hailed as a visionary for opening [News Café] on Ocean Drive well before the crowds came, and then, in 1999, for opening Soyka Restaurant at 55th and Biscayne, a move that many believe sparked the rejuvenation of the Boulevard."

Read the full interview here: Soyka at 70, News Café at 25.

John's not much for self-promotion...so I'll do it for him. Go on over to Facebook and "like" his page and follow him on Twitter.

I have a feeling John's going to be writing about things you won't see anywhere else.

Executive at failing newspaper chain offers Random Pixels some free advice

When last we heard from Anders Gyllenhaal in 2010, he was hightailing it out of town, leaving the Miami Herald where he had been the paper's executive editor for roughly three years.

In Oct. of 2010, the Herald's parent company, McClatchy, named Gyllenhaal vice president, news and Washington editor.

During his tenure at the Herald, Gyllenhaal oversaw massive staff cuts and one of the steepest circulation declines in Herald history - a decline that continues unabated under his successor.

In 2012, Miami New Times reported that Gyllenhaal was pulling down a salary of $375,000.

He went home with $56,000 in "incentive compensation" last year on top of his $375,000 salary, according to new filings obtained by Riptide. Along with stock awards and "other compensation," he nearly made $1.3 million last year.

So, we were more than a little surprised the other day, when the highly-paid, big-shot editor Anders Gyllenhaal took some time out of his busy schedule to fire off an email to us.

While he didn't come right out and say it, Gyllenhaal was apparently annoyed with my latest post that criticized Herald managing editor Rick Hirsch and executive editor Mindy Marques.

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Here's the email:

Bill,

I received your most recent email and would like to make a couple of points. I think you know from our years of discussing coverage issues in Miami, the editors at the Herald and the leaders of the company read and do our best to respond to criticism and complaints from everyone who writes. None of our newspapers is perfect, and we work through issues with readers and critics on a regular basis.

But I have to tell you, your emails and blog have become so vicious and personal in respect to the editors in Miami that they do not merit response. The posters, name-calling and ridicule have no place in media criticism. While the Herald and McClatchy are open to all kinds of questions about coverage and individual stories, we cannot respond to diatribes like these.

Bill, look around at what media blogs elsewhere are doing and how they approach their topics. There're plenty of issues, questions and concerns in coverage issues you can dig your teeth into without the kind of weird personal assaults you resort to.

Anders

Gyllenhaal is a prime example of why newspapers, like the Herald, are failing miserably. Gyllenhaal still doesn't realize that this is no longer 1985 and that newspapers no longer control the dialogue.

There are two lines in Gyllenhaal's email that prove how out of touch he is...and also prove that he wants it both ways.

"The posters, name-calling and ridicule have no place in media criticism," writes Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal apparently never got around to reading Herald Star Columnist Fabiola Santiago's attack on filmmaker Billy Corben last year. In her column she called Corben a "tweeting twit."

From Miami New Times:

[S]he uses her column for a full-out ad hominen attack on Corben. She makes a point of using his legal name, "William Corben," like she was an angry mother reprimanding her son. She calls him "condescending," and a "bad-boy" narcissist, and chides his "stupidity" and "runaway self-promotion." Never mind that Santiago herself comes off as condescending and slightly stupid.

And I'm pretty sure Gyllenhaal never saw Santiago's column last February where she bullied, ridiculed and name-called a teen girl struggling with dependency issues who happened to get on the wrong side of a hot-headed judge with issues of his own.

But my favorite line in Gyllenhaal's email is the one where he advises me to "look around at what media blogs elsewhere are doing and [see] how they approach their topics."

Imagine that...Anders Gyllenhaal, an executive for a failing newspaper chain, and the man who single-handedly drove some of the few remaining nails in the Miami Herald's coffin, offering me advice on how to do anything.

Thanks, but no thanks, Anders.  I think you have your hands full taking care of your own crumbling empire.

Your lunch hour time waster

What do border collies do on their day off?

The same thing you do. They screw off.

Random Pixels Guest Columnist: Michael Putney

Michael Putney.

Local 10's Michael Putney closed out his show Sunday morning with some thoughts on the recent reports of Miami Gardens police harassing and arresting the patrons and employees of a convenience store in the Gardens.

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Before we leave you this morning, my personal perspective on law and order, Miami Gardens-style. it is, in a word, ugly.

But don't take my word for it, let's go to the video. It shows Miami Gardens police officers harrassing customers and employees at a convenience store, the 207 Quick Stop. Most of the cops are white, nearly all of the customers are black. Naturally, you're wondering, why are the cops acting this way? Well, the answer apparently is that the owner of this store, Alex Saleh, signed on to the police department's zero-tolerance against law-breaking about two years ago, then watched the cops use that policy to roust, harrass and abuse many of his customers and one of his workers. Saleh withdrew his support for "zero tolerance" and that's when the cops stepped up their harassment.

After the Herald broke this story, Local10 and other TV stations ran with it, showing the disturbing video and getting reaction.  But the reaction from the Miami Gardens mayor was not what you'd expect. Instead of condemning this obvious police misbehavior, Mayor Oliver Gilbert basically defended it, and criticized the store owner. When more incriminating videos were released, the mayor finally conceded something might be amiss.

Then late Wednesday, Miami Gardens city manager, Cameron Benson, weighed in saying he was, "deeply bothered by these allegations" of misconduct. Wow, that's reassuring. Just "deeply bothered" when white cops are manhandling black residents?

How about saying you're outraged [or we're] going to put an end to it while we conduct an investigation?

Well, the city manager says there will be an investigation and he's asking the state attorney to review it. FDLE, too. A better idea would be to ask the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to conduct the investigation. Otherwise, I smell a whitewash coming.

The Miami Herald's Rick Hirsch and Mindy Marqués fiddle while Rome burns

Question: Why are these people laughing?
Answer: Because their mission to destroy
what's left of the Miami Herald is nearly complete. 

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"Anything worth doing, is worth doing right." -Hunter S. Thompson


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It's been a little over a year since the Miami Herald announced it would start charging readers to access the paper's website.

In an email to staffers, Herald publisher David Landsberg outlined the reasoning behind the paywall:

Why are we doing this? The world of news and information keeps changing. Technological advances provide us with the convenience of mobile phones, tablets and social media channels. We have transformed our business to become 24/7 information specialists, with the ability to deliver breaking news through a variety of digital platforms in addition to our print newspapers. These changes have resulted in a new business model, whereby the cost of producing our news coverage is spread across the various channels we provide.

When I first read Landsberg's line about the Herald delivering breaking news on a 24/7 basis, I actually believed him. (Anyone want to sell me a bridge in Brooklyn?)

The Herald's paywall went up on Dec. 18, 2012.

I'm no mathematical genius, but by my calculations, it's been almost a year since the Herald started charging to access the website.

So how's that plan to deliver "Breaking News 24/7" working out?

Answer: It's not.

Sometime Saturday night, 4 women were shot in Liberty City.  Two of the women died from their wounds.

The Herald's 24/7 Information Specialists finally got around to posting something on the shooting at 10:57 this morning.

And the story? A four sentence copy-and-paste job from CBS4 that fails to mention that two of the women died.

You don't need to follow the news all that closely to know that these kinds of violent crimes are occurring all too often in Miami-Dade.

Here's an incomplete list of last month's crime-related headlines:

Suspect Charged With First-Degree Murder With a Firearm in Miami-Dade Nail Salon Shooting of Aaron Vu.

Child Shot in Miami Gardens, in City's 10th Shooting in 11 Days.

Boy, 9, Shot in Face While Sleeping in Liberty City Home.

Elderly woman shot while sitting inside home.

And just yesterday, in a story the Herald hasn't yet copied and pasted from CBS4, a man and two teen boys, carjacked a Miami Gardens man at gun point.

Most of those stories received scant, or minimal coverage on the Herald's website, and if they made it into the paper, more often than not, they were buried deep inside the local section.

Crime has reached epidemic proportions in Miami-Dade. But you wouldn't know it from reading the Herald.

What stories are more important than crime to those in charge at the Herald?

An art museum.

Miami Herald, Dec. 1, 2013.

Abortion in Haiti. (A two-parter than ran on page 1A both days.)

Miami Herald, Nov. 24, 2013.

When will the Herald start covering crime the way it should be covered?

Probably when it starts affecting the paper's two top managers.

As far as Herald managing editor Rick Hirsch is concerned, there is no crime problem. At least not in his neighborhood. He lives in a half-million dollar condominium on Belle Isle in Miami Beach.

 And the Herald's current executive (absentee) editor - and former People Magazine Miami bureau chief - Mindy Marqués, doesn't even live in Miami-Dade. She lives in Broward County.

Today I'm offering Rick Hirsch and Mindy Marqués this challenge: For the next year - starting Jan. 1 - how about covering crime in Miami-Dade as if it were occurring in your cloistered neighborhoods of Belle Isle and Davie?

In other words, cover crime as if it were affecting you the same way it affects people in Liberty City, Overtown, Opa-Locka and Miami Gardens every goddamned day of the year.

Cover and analyze every violent crime that occurs in Miami-Dade for a year.

Explore how violent crime impacts young children. How does it affect them developmentally?

Try to explain how high-powered weapons end up in the hands of young thugs.

Try to learn why 15 and 20 year-old men seemingly have no moral compasses. Report all that and explain it to your readers.

Stop chasing that Pulitzer in Haiti that you'll never win, and start covering things in Miami-Dade that actually impact the lives of your readers. In case you've forgotten, your readers are the people who buy your paper, patronize your advertisers and pay your salaries.

Are you up to it?

We shall see.