The state of Florida is at the forefront of a national trend involving ex-spouses who are tired of paying permanent alimony. The house bill, introduced in November, proposes to make sweeping alimony reforms as it sets caps on alimony based on income and terminates alimony payments when the payer reaches retirement.

The final decision of this bill may mean significant changes for Florida, it will give every divorce the opportunity to be reopened and renegotiated.

The Florida Civil Justice Subcommittee took the bill under advisement on December 7^th. While Florida has been making changes to its alimony laws since 2010, nothing has made an impact similar to what is being proposed now.

Angela Neave, a Boardroom Communications client and family lawyer at Barry I. Finkel, P.A, was featured in a front page article speaking out about the alimony bill.

“My gut reaction is this is a good start, but it won’t pass as it is because it is too drastic,” Neave said.

To read the entire article click here.

To read the full bill, click here.

Bal Harbour Shops was recently featured in the Miami Herald business section. Highlighted for their luxury retailers and exclusive shopping experience, Bal Harbour Shops is one of the country’s top shopping centers.

Bal Harbour operating partner, Matthew Wintman Lanzenby, took this excellent opportunity to speak about the recent changes and expansions Bal Harbour Shops is making. Visitors from around the world will find several new tenants opening their stores at Bal Harbour, including Balenciaga, Breguet, CH Carolina Herrera, Panerai, La Perla and Stella McCartney. And more are on the way including Moncler, Canali and Alexander McQueen.

“Invariably it will be our best year of all time,” Lazenby said. “Some tenants are up as much as 100 percent.”

Since its opening in 1965, Bal Harbour’s sales per square foot have increased every year – only exceptions were in 2001 after the 9-11 attacks and during the recession in 2009.

Let’s face it— there’s no such thing as a straight print journalist anymore. If you’re in the journalism field, never has going multi-platform been more important.

Miami Herald reporter, columnist, blogger (and tweeter!) Cindy Goodman agrees, encouraging all journalists to use new media to enhance their brand as well as the quality and readership of their stories.

This is 2011. If you’re not on the new media train, you are most likely soon without a job.

Goodman was one of the first writers at The Miami Herald to start a blog (eight long years ago!), The Work/Life Balancing Act, and is an active voice on Twitter. She has additionally developed her own blog, Raising Teenagers in The Digital Age, uses a website for her own personal branding, and has Facebook pages devoted to her stories.

Goodman is an awesome example of using new media to stay alive in journalism, without sacrificing her journalistic integrity. Here are some tips and tools you can use to follow this new media maverick into the realms of multi-platform journalism:

BLOGGING

• Have fun with voice and personality in your blog. It’s a platform where there’s some wiggle room for editorializing. But don’t go overboard! You are still a journalist at heart.
• Make sure your blog has a consistent theme, voice, or message to establish yourself as an “expert” or “go-to” on your topic.
• Use your blog as a place to put ancillary, fun, less relevant information that didn’t necessarily fit into your stories.
• Keep up a conversation with your readers on your blog. Listen to their opinions and give them what they want!

TWITTER

• Be smart about your tweets to bring traffic back to your news story rather than give it all away in 140 characters.  Always try to tweet with links to a bigger story unless you are giving periodic updates from an event.
• Create a conversation with your followers. Don’t simply promote yourself, your brand, and your stories.
• Be careful about retweets: even if you’re not the one writing them, they still reflect on you and your journalistic voice and integrity. Make sure your retweets are reputable and that you are willing to be liable for them.
• Follow and retweet relevant sources to expose your readers. Twitter is all about vanity, so retweeting twitpics from your followers will encourage others to send in their photos, and ultimately follow you.

VIDEOREPORTING

• Be sure your videos complement the print/online story. They should not reiterate the print but augment it.
• Keep your videos short, from 90 seconds to 3 minutes.
• Sometimes you can use footage from an interview as online video; an interesting fact that didn’t necessarily fit into the story could make it in to the piece this way.
• Again, don’t shoot video for the sake of shooting video. There has to be a reason for people to play it.

With regards to all of this new media, take a deep breath before you post or upload. Think, do you really want to say this? Once you click submit, your words, pics, and video have free reign in the online vortex. You can never really take anything back! So next time you write a story, grab your flip-cam and your smartphone, because you’ll need them!

As a journalist, you may be entering uncharted waters, but with street smarts and adaptability, you should be a-okay.

Congratulations to Lynd, a growing commercial real estate investment and management company, for this feature story in the San Antonio News Express.  The article detailed  how brothers Mike and David Lynd are taking the company their father founded to a new level. Lynd has made substantial investments in distressed properties this year with big plans for future growth. Their strategic use of public relations has not only crafted an image for the company as it grows, but has also created new business leads. To read more click here.

Sun Sentinel re-runs Miami Herald article on Boardroom PR Client Flamingo Road Nursery and Farmers Market

It’s no secret that many newspapers don’t have as many reporters as they used to, so securing home run media placements – such as the Miami Herald Business Monday Cover story on innovative ways that nurseries are bringing in more business – are often some of the most challenging part of a publicist’s job. But sometimes, it can work to your advantage.

The Sun Sentinel recently re-printed the original Miami Herald article featuring Jim Dezell, owner of Flamingo Road Nursery and Farmers Market.

Click the image to read the full story…again.

Congratulations to Charles Gusmano, CEO for Southern Waste Sytems/Sun Recycling for the nice coverage he received in the Palm Beach Post on Monday.  Mr. Gusmano told his story of how he got started in the waste management business up north and was a visionary in the area of recycling. 

Sun Recycling is the largest independent recycler of construction and demolition debris in Florida. It recycles up to 90% of the materials it brings in, already exceeding the state’s goal of 75% recycling by 2020.  The company is taking a lead position in this area. Read the full article here.

Our client and friend, David Roda CEO of Roda Asset Management,  shares his expertise and comments regarding the Fed’s QE2 plan in his article featured in the Miami Herald. David writes…

David Roda

“The financial markets have rallied on the Federal Reserve’s plan to help jump-start the foundering economy through the purchase of more than $850 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds over the next eight months.

Make no mistake, this strategy of quantitative easing, dubbed “QE2,’’ is a highly unorthodox and controversial initiative that is fraught with risks and potentially harmful side effects.

In order for QE2 to succeed, much of the new money needs to find its way into such job-creating investments as new production facilities and equipment, construction projects and new home loans. However, there are certain overwhelming structural imbalances in our economy that will block much of this new money from being channeled to its targeted uses.

I share the Fed’s fear that the economy is at risk of falling back into recession. Vital statistics such as the unemployment rate, housing prices, mortgage default rates, and business investment remain at critical levels.

By buying Treasuries and pumping money into the economy, the Fed hopes to push interest rates down, stimulate lending and investment, and modestly increase inflation.

(more…)

Tenet Healthcare hospitals in Palm Beach County received widespread TV coverage for their assistance to the Haitian people following the devastating earthquake in January 2010. Boardroom Communications stayed in constant contact with the newsrooms of network affiliates to supply information on incoming patients and doctors who traveled to the island nation to provide emergency care.

Three doctors from Delray Medical Center quickly mobilized and traveled to Haiti to treat the injured. Doctors from Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach and West Boca Medical Center in southern Palm Beach County also went to help with recovery efforts. Delray Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach received injured Haitians who were flown for treatment.

In all, there were more than a dozen news reports and newspaper media placements in two languages on local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC newscasts, as well local print media, during a three-week period. Boardroom generated a majority of the stories, keeping the news flowing to reporters and assignment desk editors. Here’s a rundown on the news reports:

• On Jan. 14, WPBF (ABC-Channel 25) aired a story on preparations at Delray Medical Center for an influx of Haitian medical refugees.
• On Jan. 18, WPEC (CBS-Channel 12) aired a report about three Haitian patients being treated at St. Mary’s Medical Center in which doctors were interviewed.
• On Jan. 27, WPEC and WPTV (NBC-Channel 5) aired a report about Dr. Anthony Dardano, Dr. Louis DeLuca and Dr. Lloyd Zucker of Delray Medical Center leaving for a medical mission to Haiti. Dardano and DeLuca are plastic surgeons; Zucker is a neurosurgeon.
• On Jan 31, WPTV aired a Spanish-language news program, “Con la Communidad,” that featured a report on Drs. Dardano, Zucker and DeLuca’s mission to Haiti.
• Also on Jan. 31, WPTV reported that Good Samaritan Medical Center’s Dr. Jean Monice was headed to Haiti on a medical mission.
• On Feb. 2 WFLX (Fox-Channel 29) ran a story on the return from Haiti of doctors from Delray Medical Center.
• Also on Feb. 2, WPEC aired a live shot on its noon news in front of St. Mary’s Medical Center as part of a report on new Haitian patients that arrived for treatment.
• And on Feb. 2, WPTV led its 11 p.m. newscast with a report on injured Haitians arriving at Palm Beach International Airport and being taken to hospitals including Delray and St. Mary’s medical centers. WFLX also had a late news report.
  
• On Feb. 2, WPTV aired an interview with a Haitian patient at Delray Medical Center and the center’s trauma director, Michelle Sutton-Epps.
• On Feb. 3, WPBF aired a report on the return from Haiti of the doctors from Delray Medical Center, as did WFLX.
• And WPBF reported on the return of Dr. Kenneth Jeffers of West Boca Medical Center from a second trip to Haiti to provide emergency treatment.
  

As for local print media, the Palm Beach Post ran several stories on the hospital’s involvement with treating Haitian victims, collecting supplies, as well as doctors and nurses traveling to provide medical care:

• Palm Beach Post, Jan. 18, “Local employers lend support to Haitian workers”
• Palm Beach Post, Jan. 18, “PBC hospitals treating at least 6 Haitian quake victims”
• Palm Beach Post, Jan. 31, “Florida hospitals handling hundreds of Haiti victims”
• Palm Beach Post, Jan. 31, “Haiti in relief: a reporter’s notebook”
• South Florida Hospital News, Feb issue, “St. Mary’s Medical Center treats 3 victims from Haiti Earthquake”

Corporations went to great lengths and expense at Super Bowl XLIV to make the weekend in Miami fun — but not for the fun of it. Participation in events with a global audience can help a company make money, Boardroom Communications COO Don Silver told NBC 6 for a news report that aired on the eve of the big game.

Even though there is a trend to tone down the glitz and spending, companies still look for high-profile opportunities to showcase their products and services. Most important, Silver told a WTVJ reporter, the Super Bowl provides business owners and managers an exciting stage on which to solidify and build relationships with those most important to them: customers, prospects, distributors, vendors and employees.

A company that engages in sports marketing should evaluate whether the rewards justify the costs. If the payoff is there, he said, the public relations and advertising efforts tend to fall into these categories:

• Branding of events and locations, such as the recent renaming of Sun Life Stadium, where the Super Bowl was played
• Gaining paid endorsements from famous athletes like the Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning
• Getting exposure through sponsorships of sports organizations like the NFL
• Hosting of events tied or timed to high-visibility sports competitions such as the Super Bowl

Even if a company has no direct connection to sports, the association with the nation’s most watched sporting event creates a buzz, Silver said. The lucky people invited to a sit in a skybox or go inside the velvet ropes of a VIP event come away with a more positive impression of a company or brand.

To capitalize on the huge audiences that watch the Super Bowl, many makers of consumer products and services think it is a good investment to pay millions of dollars for a 30-second spot to reach hundreds of millions of viewers, Silver said. Those dollars are leveraged through the free exposure that their crazy-funny ads get from news and entertainment media.

The most popular videos get free publicity through social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This is known as earned media, Silver said.

Super Bowl ads can also support online marketing campaigns that drive people to a company’s Web site, Facebook page or virtual store, he said. And the spots can help young companies and non-profit causes gain national notice from consumers and potential supporters.

As part of its media engagement for Florida Peninsula Insurance Co., Boardroom placed the firm’s CEO, Roger L. Desjadon, on the cover of the January 2010 issue of the South Florida edition of Smart Business. The management journal provides insight and advice for top decision-makers.

Throughout the profile, Desjadon detailed his leadership style and his belief that providing employees with a sense of purpose contributes to their productivity and success. A notable quote:

When you hire highly qualified individuals and you pay them well, you need to give them more than they can handle and allow them to rise to the occasion.

The five-page article, headlined “Following Policy,” featured a full-page portrait of Desjadon and and second photo. A question-and-answer article with the feature had a headshot.

Boardroom regularly places corporate clients in media strategic to their businesses. Profiles, interviews and feature stories are linked to a company’s goal of raising its awareness and bettering its image with a targeted audience.