Letters

Resnick: Excellent!
With reference to Ted B. Kissell's excellent article on Ed Resnick ("A Taste for Trouble," November 19), I'd like to note for the record that although Ed and I parted ways over the Portofino issue, we are friends today.

Over the years Ed provided intelligent, logical, and articulate leadership as chairman of the South Pointe Advisory Board and on other city issues. I hope we are all smart enough to let bygones be bygones so we can again make use of his ample talent and ability.

Neisen Kasdin, mayor
Miami Beach

Resnick: Insulting!
The article about Ed Resnick was a totally insulting and misleading attack on a man of tremendous integrity with true dedication to the obligations of good citizenship.

Scholarly reporting research would show you that Ed Resnick received absolutely no personal gain from his attempts to save the City of Miami Beach from the excesses of the Portofino deal. Resnick should not be vilified but should be praised for his efforts, not only for the hard work he did to make the best of a bad deal that had been concocted by the city commission years ago, but also for his many efforts to better the community. He is one of our most productive citizens and has exemplary integrity.

Shirley M. Zoloth
Miami Beach

Parade magazine, a Worthy Succissor to Tropic
This is in response to Jacob Bernstein's article "It's Money That Matters" (November 19). The Miami Herald's Tropic magazine ran a story about how my family dealt with my sister's schizophrenia. During the process of telling the story to writer Madeleine Blais, I not only learned about my sister's great strengths but also about my own incredible weaknesses. And for that I am eternally grateful to everyone involved. Tropic has been a unique voice in South Florida, and without doubt the corporation that operates the Miami Herald is making a tragic mistake. If they want to save a few dollars, they might consider dumping that milquetoast rag known as Parade.

If it weren't for the crossword puzzle, there would be nothing to attract me to the paper at all. Consider it a challenge to you, New Times.

Meg Livergood Gerrish
Miami

So Long Tropic, Hello Free Weelky Bird Dogs
The death of Tropic magazine is most unfortunate because it was one of the few sections of the Miami Herald where one could find originality, humor, and even quirkiness. As far as I'm concerned, its demise began when the editors arbitrarily axed the weekly Callahan cartoon because, as Jim DeFede reported, one installment was allegedly disrespectful of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ("A Nocturnal Omission," April 27, 1995). I did not think it was disrespectful at all. I thought it was funny. And from what I know of Dr. King, he would have had a good belly laugh over it. Ironically, not long before that Tropic published a reader survey that revealed Callahan to be its most popular feature.

There are countless reasons for the decline of the Herald. Some have to do with the proliferation of new media. Others, however, are strictly the fault of Herald management. To wit:

*The paper has primarily become a giant advertising circular.
*It keeps showering English-speaking readers with pages of Latin American news while ignoring most of the rest of the world and the United States.

*Local news is heavily oriented toward the same old VIPs, while the genuinely interesting stories about true community heroes are lucky to make the back pages of the "Neighbors" section.

*The Herald is prone to absurd excesses; their coverage of Gloria Estefan's bus accident in March 1990 rivaled their coverage of wars, presidential elections, and natural disasters.

On May 2, 1997, they gave the Labor Party landslide in Britain eight front-page column inches below the fold, with a one-column photo of Tony Blair. The same front page featured a huge color photo of Miami Heat player Alonzo Mourning, which, together with an article about a losing Heat game, occupied 25 column inches above and below the fold. I suspect the paper has run more column inches about Madonna and Sylvester Stallone than the National Enquirer.

Over the years the Herald's editorial board has managed to endorse almost every politician and judge who was later indicted, convicted, and/or jailed. Furthermore, the Herald has alienated almost everyone: Latins (with its patronizing attitude); Jews (with rare but nasty outbursts reeking of anti-Semitism, like a cartoon showing Israelis using American GIs as cannon fodder and a column mocking the memory of the Holocaust); working people and taxpayers (with its unstinting support of almost every new tax, bond issue, and expensive boondoggle); and my fellow Miami Beach residents (with its equally unstinting support of the destruction of our once-beautiful city by uncontrolled development).

I get the Herald for the "Neighbors" section, movie listings, ads, local political gossip, Carl Hiaasen, and Robert Steinback. I get the real news from the New York Times and National Public Radio.

As for the November 19 letter to the editor from Herald assistant managing editor Mark Seibel, he obviously was incapable of understanding that Ted B. Kissell's piece about Herald coverage of the courthouse buzzards was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek ("Taking Flight," November 12).