CITY ATTORNEY GATHERING INFO ON LUMACHI’S FATAL TRIP TO FLORIDA
By LBReport.com
LBReport.com has learned that the City Attorney’s office is in the very preliminary stages of gathering information about the trip to Florida in which Shaun Lumachi, publisher of LBPost.com, was part of a three-person group on official business for the City of Long Beach when he was killed in a Dec. 3 car crash near Key West.
Lumachi chaired the board of the Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Network, an entity organized as a non-profit in which the City of Long Beach participates. He was nominated to the board by Mayor Bob Foster and approved by the City Council. In addition to his day-to-day oversight of LBPost.com and his work for the City, Lumachi ran a statewide business, Chamber Advocacy, designed to position clients “to be a powerful voice when representing your interests at all levels of government.”
22 Comments
As a business person Shaun would appreciate that if there is any City(taxpayer) exposure,it will turn largely upon if he were in transit
to or from:
l.Airport.
2,Lodging
3.Meeting venue.
There should be no exposure if he were in transit to and from any
sightseeing side trips.
The elephant in the room is,why in these tough economic times,
one would not use social media( to which he was no stranger) to
inter face and communicate.
What is with all the secrecy? It looks like a cover up. Who is covering for who? What was he really doing in Florida? How did he really die? Why is the press going along with this cover-up? I always thought his site was guilty of a lot of right wing dishonesty. Is this part of the conspiracy to hide the truth?
St. Petersburg is a long way from Key West, especially for an overnight trip.
Since the car was a rental, it probably has some kind of GPS tracking and/or “black box” recorder that could provide more information about how the car was being operated prior to this accident.
The driver of the car may have to answer questions from the Lumachi estate.
The important thing is to make sure the taxpayers do not end up paying.
interesting how things can only be discussed at a golf resort in florida, not say, the conference room down the hall in the office.
The LB Post, which Lumachi co-founded, is not a news website, it was only cleverly positioned to look like one because you could make more money that way. It’s a mutual backscratching operation that cares more about its contributors than its readers, which is not surprising given Lumachi’s business of flacking for the Chamber and development interests (2nd+PCH was a Lumachi client? Why am I not surprised?).
I believe our own Dave W. wrote up an interview he had with Lumachi that indirectly made this point well. But if you want conclusive, incontrovertible evidence of this, you only have to compare LB Post’s coverage of Lumachi’s death with Bill Pearl’s coverage.
Pearl’s story today is a bare-bones, factual account of what can be learned by picking up a phone and talking to police officials about an accident that anybody who follows Long Beach news knows about. It answers many previously unanswered questions, sets up a timeline and itinerary that many people I know we’re mentioning was entirely missing from previous coverage, and stays entirely away from editorializing.
Contrast this with coverage by LB Post personnel, who, even operating with presumably complete access to the people who knew Lumachi best, were content to leave people in the dark about what happened. LB Post followed their predictable MO (established by Lumachi) of just offering a place for people to leave comments and generate the hit count that Lumachi was so proud of. Oh, and to give us the “news” that his family, friends and employer were very sad about his untimely death. Day Five of coverage, and this is still all the news we get from LB Post. That and a lachrymose splash page.
After reading the first LB Post story, which said something to the effect of “we’ll tell you more about the accident when we feel it is APPROPRIATE to do so” (emphasis mine), I knew that Pearl, Wielenga or the P-T would be the source for real news on this evolving story. Don’t you love it when a “news” site tells you it has valuable information but just doesn’t feel like sharing?
A friend of mine noticed that, among the many comments on LB Post for Lumachi’s canonization, there were a few negative comments about Pearl’s coverage of the death. My friend told me she submitted a comment pointing out that Pearl’s coverage was good and that LB Post’s “coverage” was just a huge publicly visible circle jerk pity party with no redeeming public value, but her comment did not appear. I wonder why they didn’t post it . . .
She’s submitted comments like that for years at LB Post, only to never see them posted by LB Post. I guess Lumachi wasn’t the only one censoring comments that legitimately question the integrity and value of that website. It appears he taught his successors well.
Somewhere, somehow, I think Shaun is reading all this and smiling.
Citizen Journalist Quotes of the Day — The Only Question
“The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.” — Mary Catherine Bateson
“You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.” — Barbara Sher
“When you die and go to heaven, our maker is not going to ask, “Why didn’t you discover the cure for such and such?” The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is, “Why didn’t you become you?” — Elie Wiesel
“The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” — Mitch Albom
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” — Nelson Henderson
(Source: joyofquotes.com)
The cause of this tragedy is Keith Weitzman falling asleep at the wheel at 11:30am on a Saturday. Is it just an isolated individual bad decision on his part that has no meaning or somehow connected with any larger common conditions of our world?
According to Keysnews.com, there was also was an infant in the 1994 Ford driven by Keith Weitzma who is still listed in critical condition. The infant was uninjured.
http://keysnews.com/node/36424
Why do you keep censoring my comments?
mike if you post more than one link in a post it gets flagged for moderator attention.
Disclaimer- I agree with many about the LB Post. It’s agenda driven to be sure and not anything remotely close to a news site. That said:
I posted about Pearl on LB Post. What I said was classless guy that he is, Pearl can’t bring himself to type the words “LB Post” when referring to Lumachi. He despises the Post, and has proven it on a number of occasions. Even when referring to Lumachi;s death, he still can’t do it. That’s petty. That’s small. That’s Pearl.
The post that was censored only had one link in it and that link was to another GREATERLONGBEACH article.
The chamber toilet paper is petty and small. Pearl reported Lumachi’s demise respectfully; and more professionally than the toilet paper initially did.
Actually, your whining about Pearl amongst the unanimous praise was petty and small.
pearl once ran an article decrying internet censorship in china then deleted my post pointing out that he censored his site pretty heavily. i prefer to post here about his articles.
mike im just letting you know what dave said when i accused him of censoring me;)
Pearl not mentioning the Post in writing about Lumachi is a complete lack of respect on Pearl’s part, no matter what one’s opinion is of LB Post or LB Report. He’s telegraphed his opinion of the Post already, so anyone familiar with Pearl knows what he’s doing. In a situation like this, one should be able to put aside professional differences. The guy’s dead, let it go for a while. Pearl has demonstrated he’s unable to do that. That’s petty, that’s small, that’s Pearl.
Not unlike Harry at the Grunion what ever anatttribute the man had–being a
a journalist was not one of them—any more than is spell checking one of
mine.
A good technial editor-like Harry-perhaps–especially when editing out
things they do not like–which forever more will define the size of their
far from large minds.
Dave got a hold of me to let me know what happened. I’m more than satisfied with his response.
Note to Mike:
Dave has always been straight forward-a bit funny looking–but straight forward!!!!
Ironically, Pearl is like the IPT in that neither are interested in comment posts.
I too have been censored by Pearl. I tried to point out that the LB Fire Dept. is over funded and causing deep holes in the rest of the city budget. Pearl who is a big Police and Fire supporter refused to print my comments. He is not just censoring wild or inflammatory comments, but anyone who disagrees with his agenda.
Note to Richard Stuart:
Check your computer settings it might be like mine-.In order to avoid
spam as well as allowing me to tell where any posts are comming my
settimngs are highly restrictive–and thus are precluded from the servers
LB POST use.
It also might be your postings might expose the site operator to libel.