DEBARY -- So Daytona Beach News-Journal, how does it feel? How does it feel to want? To have to strike out by writing a lame-o story with the grand dame dame of the Fab Four on the County Council?
. So you don't like the cheese stix gimmick with the new SunRail ad running on the Orlando TV stations. Well guess what, News-Journal Editor Pat Rice and your watered-down cast of press release re-write specialists?
Here's our little one-liner for you: "It's like no ad stix, no ad stix! no had stix, yeah!"
You put out a half-baked, drivel-laced whiner shiner with quotes from ol' reliable on the dais that nobody pays much attention to any more.
You have your formula and it's working for you, at least for the time being. Nice big fluff piece on one of your staples: Daytona International Speedway and the PR biker fluff.
But alas Headline Surfer® has the harder-hitting story at the top of Daytona Beach section in the Google News Directories, even if they didn't give us any answers. At least we're out there asking the questions, while you're trying to think up a list for the 25 biggest big shots in Volusia County.
This Daytona Beach-area, that's now shared territory, Pat Rice. You're gonna have to start getting used to it.
Let's not forget: Before Jon Kaney, Jr. became a six-fire investigator for the likes of John Tanner and now Jim Dinneen, he was busy concocting funding for the News-Journal Center. A little bit of ECHO money grants here. A little bit of LSO money there. I believe, $13 million from Cox Enterprises. Well, you get my point.
Back in those days, the main squeeze for today's Headline Surfer® was wracking up all those print media awards with the cops and courts beat for Kaney's wife, Georgia, and good ol' Tippen Davidson.
Then Mr. Kaney's grand plan went awry and lots of people lost their jobs.
The News-Journal ended up on the scrap heap of federal court in Orlando where the conquering hero of drivel, your very own Michael Redding, eked out a few coins from some rich outfit in Arkansas and bought the News-Journal for $20 million, .far less than the $129 million it's minority partner's share was valued at..
But you have it made now, don't you, Pat? In the last three years alone, you've gotten $700,000 in advertising revenues from Volusia County government.
Tack on another $2 million in revenues you get from other government taxing entities in Volusia County -- municipal CRAs, city governments, public college and school district, indirect funding from the ad authorities through merchants groups, the Ocean Center and the three hospital districts, and you've got your bases covered, which explains the watered-down news coverage.
You've got Top Cop and walking press release motor mouth Michael Chitwood at your beckon-call, so long as you don't dare question his decision-making like we do, and journalistically so, which is why he avoids us.
And his non-blood-namesake, Joie Chitwood, III, the president of the Speedway, whose name and promotional coverage are good for a couple of times a week. And who knows what kind of marketing agreements you have with them or with the Atlanta-based Jacoby with the second Speedway project. Based on the coverage, there's the cheese, but not the kind on the Sun Rail commercial you dislike.
And, of course, there's the Fab Four on the County Council -- GOPers in name only Deb Denys and Pat Patterson Patterson and Democrats Doug Daniels and Pat Northey, the voting bloc where one hand washes the other, along with campaign boosting from from wealthy ICI Home builder Mori Hosseini.
And obviously you're keeping Mr. Hosseini happy with the latest ICI Homes advertorial published Sunday, complete with architect drawings, super-sized houses on steroids and the accompanying amenities drivel. You call it a story, we call it blatant promotion.
Just be glad you don't have to hustle like Headline Surfer's lone wolf and report the stories that matter like Kaney's whopping $37,000-plus tab so far in his Waverly investigation and that's before he's even gone to court to brow beat a judge to make people respond to his unenforceable subpoenas.
Never mind that the State Attorney's Office, which has real subpoena power, hasn't served anybody for the better part of a year. They're waiting for the feds to wind down their own mortgage fraud case.
Oh, and you might want to check out the Headline Surfer® story today on the pickle the presiding judge now finds himself in, thanks to a real investigative reporter.
In closing, let me be perfectly clear about this: Daytona Beach is Headline Surfer® turf, too, so you'd better start getting used to it or you might as well go stick your head in the sand.
Since your boss pays the Daytona chamber 50 grand a year and lesser amounts to the other chambers, you get the inside track on advertising and lock it down, but how long will the marketplace support your expenses.
Sure , you've trimmed at least another dozen staffers in the last six months or so, but imagine if you had to do what I do every day by myself, you'd probably wet your pants, curl up in the fetal position and crawl back to Panama City; begging for your old job back. Whatever nondescript position that was.
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