Headline Surfer attacked in Daytona Beach News-Journal story

News-Journal story critical of internet newspaper / Headline SurferAt left is a screeenshot showing the Daytona Beach News-Journal's story on Headline Surfer's contract with the Southeast Volusis Ad Authority was the most read on the print daily's online version before 8 a.m.

Henry Frederick / Headline SurferBy HENRY FREDERICK / Headline Surfer Blog: People, Places & Things

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.  -- The Daytona Beach News-Journal has published a story today headlined, "Southeast Volusia tourism board member, ex-director question cost, politics of new contract," which crosses the line and even the spirit of competition.

It's downright despicable.

The News-Journal abused its editorial privileges to smear the reputation of our 24/7 internet newspaper and myself as the editor and publisher.

I won't stand for it and neither should you.

Let me be perfectly clear about this: I will go to the ends of the earth, if necessary to find an attorney willing to represent our legal interests as we have very little money beyond the operation of our media outlet and taking care of my family. If necessary, I will file a lawsuit as a pro se litigant.

Those who assisted the News-Journal in this hatchet job will be held legally responsible, too. Bet on it!

What the News-Journal did in this story is not journalism. It's blatant abuse of editorial license to portray us as engaging in backdoor politics to make a buck. The reality is the News-Journal is threatened by Headline Surfer's strength in readership and outreach far beyond the borders of Volusia County.

In the entire five years of our existence, the News-Journal has never written a story mentioning Headline Surfer or its founding-name, NSBNews.net, until today. Why? Because in July, we consummated a $10,000 contract to market the Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority for six months.

Of course, the News-Journal, hiding under its mantra of just reporting the news, failed to acknowledge that it had contacted the SVAA about making a pitch of its own for advertising.

In quoting an SVAA member, Lilli Sheller, also identified as until last year as having worked as the SEV chamber’s business development manager, the News-Journal failed to acknowledge that it has a longstanding marketing agreement with the Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce.

The News-Journal story allows key voices in the story to portray Headline Surfer as a lousy product. For example, the News-Journal conveniently allows Renee Tallevast, the recent interim SVAA director, who signed off on the contract to give her opinion on Headline Surfer's product as follows: HeadlineSurfer.com’s editorial content also has raised concerns, with Tallevast criticizing the site for frequently having old news.

The News-Journal does not ask her to explain what she means by "frequently having old news" and the newspaper let the comment stand without providing the reader a response from us. 

The News-Journal not only allows for our media outlet to be denigrated as not producing fresh news, the Daytona print daily allows the pro-chamber source to bash us further: The website’s editorial stances — it has in the past been consistently critical of the New Smyrna Beach government and the Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce — does not mesh with the ad authority’s mission to bring tourists and business travelers to the area, Sheller said. “I feel that we all need to work together and not (point fingers),” said Sheller, who until last year worked as the chamber’s business development manager.

The News-Journal gives me a chance to respond, but leaves out the most important part of my response, with the News-Journal writing as follows: Frederick disagrees. “If you want to have people come into the community, you have to clean up the community,” he said.

What the News-Journal failed to include was Headline Surfer's continuing investigative reports, "Show Me the Money: New Smyrna Beach," regarding the city having spent upwards of $2 million in CRA tax-payer supported grants exclusively for bars and eateries that sell liquor and the extensive advertising and promotion of alcohol-fueled street parties that benefit the bars.

Such expenditures were encouraged by Mayor Adam Barringer and City Manager Pamela Brangaccio, both of whom are the subject of multiple investigations by the Florida Commission on Ethics.

Headline Surfer's multimedia reporting includes extensive video coverage of the drinking events, showing police officers allowing patrons to walk in and out of bars with alcoholic beverages and drinking on the public street in violation of the municipality's liquor laws.

On top of this, we broke the story on the city's agreement with former Police Chief Ron Pagano to "retire" with $70,000 he wasn't entitled to under his original contract and the shocking news that the police evidence room under Pagano's watched had been pilfered o(or otherwise unaccounted for) of more than 900 items, including $8,000 in cash, firearms, ammunition, narcotics, jewelry, electronics and as many as 30 automobiles.

A new police chief was hired in the five months between the sweetheart deal for Pagano and the hiring of a new chief before the city acknowledged the theft scandal.

The point we most stressed to the News-Journal was our concern for public safety with lax enforcement of the open container law and the likelihood that eventually somebody would die.

That happened just after midnight May 6 while the Flagler Avenue bars continued to push alcohol sales.

Riccilynn Rigoli, a 32-year-old Port Orange mother of three was drinking with her husband and her father at Tayton O'Brian's, an Irish pub during the festival, before she and her husband headed towards home (with her behind the wheel) and crashing into the concrete median on the South Causeway bridge. Both were ejected. The pick-up trucked rolled several times before landing on her body. Her husband survived.

The Medical Examiner's Office determined she was nearly three times the legal limit for intoxication and had cocaine in her system.

Beyond the initial crash and a follow-up the next days, the News-Journal has not reported the news of the ME findings or the police homicide report. Nor has the News-Journal written anything about the public drinking and the extensive CRA funding.

And the News-Journal has not publicly disclosed its advertising with the city and its CRA.

We made the News-Journal aware of the SEV chamber's past aggressiveness in discrediting us to potential and existing advertisers and the fact that even though Headline Surfer had been a full-paying member of the chamber for nearly three years, it was the only media outlet denied a "media sponsorship."

We made it clear to the News-Journal that our interest in asking County Chair Jason Davis to sit in on a presentation I have to Tallevast was so that he, too, could better understand our product.

The News-Journal implies through its quoted sources and write-up that this was a shady situation, the writer himself stating his own opinion:  The tourism advertising authority entered into the agreement in July after objections from the group’s interim executive director, and it was never brought to the organization’s board for discussion because the contracted amount fell one dollar shy of the threshold that requires board approval.

The bottom line is it's the Daytona Breach News-Journal, which, has numerous advertising agreements amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in taxpayer money from Volusia County government, many of the county's 16 municipalities and their CRAs, the three advertising authorities, the publicly-funded indigent care hospitals and Daytona State College.

Who has approved these expenditures? Where's the transparency from the News-Journal, which has now used its editorial resources to put Headline Surfer in a negative light as a product with old news that is hurtful to New Smyrna Beach and plots behind the scenes with politicians to get money. It's all a big lie and it's not fair.

It will be interesting to see how Volusia County handles Tallevast for the way she handled the situation and ran to the newspaper. 

The Daytona Beach News-Journal had better take stock in how it presents the news because what it did today was cause great harm to us, our business and our reputations.

The saddest part of all of this is the deep pockets they have in thinking they can just steamroll all over us, knowing how little and precious the little revenue we have generated is so vital to our survival.

That survival is now in jeopardy thanks to the Daytona Beach News-Journal's maliciously-published story today.

Published: 2013-08-07 04:10:14

About the Headline Surfer Team:
Headline Surfer is the award-winning 24/7 news outlet published in New Smyrna Beach, Florida since April 7, 2008, when it was first known as NSB News. The media site was renamed Headline Surfer last year. It is owned & operated by award-winning journalist Henry Frederick. Sera King is the multimedia editor and Darlene Vann is a blogger.