* * *
You live in Miami Shores, and about four years ago you went
to the village building department for a permit. What was that
about?
This is the weirdest thing. I said I wanted to paint my house. “Okay,
what color do you want to paint it?” I’d like to
paint it this color. “No, we don’t approve of that
color.” Okay, I’m easy. Give me the book with the
list of colors you approve and I’ll pick one from there. “No,
we don’t have a book.” Really? It’s sort
of like pornography, I guess — they’ll know it
when they see it. And so I’d bring them a color and they’d
turn it down. It was one of those things. And it was during
one of those visits that this thing took place with the building
official.
Charley Esher.
Right. I’d just written a column about Cuban Shriners,
and the building inspector recognized my name and just started
going off on Cubans, about how they’ve ruined this town.
I thought it was wholly inappropriate, so I wrote a column
that didn’t identify Esher by name, just as a building
official, and used it to get into that issue of older Miamians
who think the Cubans ruined Miami, a common refrain you hear
all the time — which of course is a crock. A village
councilman was outraged and figured out it was Esher and went
to the village manager and Esher was fired. And there was this
big backlash where a lot of people wanted me to write a column
saying it was wrong for him to be fired. I said it really wasn’t
my place to do that, and people said you’re a journalist,
you should appreciate free speech. And I said this wasn’t
a free-speech issue. As an employee of the Miami Herald I couldn’t
go out on the steps of the Herald and spew racist beliefs.
If I’m operating under the color of that agency, my employer
has the right to say that’s inappropriate. You can say
these things, but you’re not going to do it while you’re
our employee acting in your official capacity. So then it became
a matter of educating people about what free speech is about.
Do you think we’ve made progress
as a community that historically has been divided along racial
and ethnic lines? At New Times you were writing about this
as a problem ten, twelve years ago.
I think there’s been some progress among certain groups
in certain areas, but I don’t think there’s been
much progress made among African Americans. I think their feeling
of being left out is more pronounced now than it was back then.
There’s almost a sense of resignation about it. There
have been some advances with Cuban Americans and Hispanics
generally. In the last 15 years I’ve been here, it’s
gone from them being on the outside — or believing they
were on the outside — to realizing they are in control
of the power. Among Cuban Americans in particular there’s
a greater sophistication and understanding of where they are.
There’s a recognition among them that it doesn’t
have to be a zero-sum game, at least for them. For African
Americans I think they do feel it’s a zero-sum game,
that whenever someone else gains, they lose something. But
for the Cuban Americans who are in power, there’s a recognition
that just because someone else gains doesn’t necessarily
mean they lose. So it’s a more mature view of the power
they wield.
But don’t we still see constituencies
playing identity politics?
Yes, but maybe we’re seeing the end of it — to
an extent. Maybe. In the past, the person most responsible
for playing that sort of politics was the county manager, who
had to play to those different constituencies as represented
on the county commission. There were certain department directors
you could never go after because they had constituencies on
the county commission. But look at what’s happened in
the last six months, since the “strong” mayor vote.
You now have an Anglo as head of the [formerly black-run] Corrections
Department. You have an Anglo in charge of the Miami-Dade Housing
Agency, where that had gone back and forth between Hispanic
and African American. And you just had one of the great sacred
cows of the [historically African-American] Transit Department
toppled by a mayor who didn’t want to play that game.
Hopefully we’ll be getting away from that. Remember that
[Miami-Dade Mayor] Carlos Alvarez’s first appointment
of a department director was an African-American woman. So
in some areas we’ve advanced, but in other areas we’re
right where we were 15 years ago.
* * *
It was 15 years ago that DeFede arrived in Miami to begin work
at the weekly New Times.
(Full disclosure: As editor of that
paper, I hired him.) He’d made a name for himself as
a reporter at the daily Spokane Spokesman-Review, where his
rise to prominence had been swift. As an intern fresh from
Colorado State University, DeFede broke a major crime story.
“I was working my ass off as night cops reporter,” he
recalls. “The big break for me was the serial rapist,
the Shadle Park rapist, a Spokane guy who had raped eight women,
ranging in age from five or six years old to the oldest in
her sixties. Very strange case. There was a task force trying
to find this guy, and the community was in a panic: “Help
us catch him!”
Spokane police, DeFede relates, had arrested a man for exposing
himself, but the incident took place in another part of town,
far from the Shadle Park neighborhood. The cops were suspicious
of this particular individual, though, and when DeFede heard
that, he began visiting the man in jail. His name was George
Grammer. “The first time I went in, I asked George point
blank: “Are you the Shadle Park rapist?” He said
no. I said, “All right, George, I believe you, but you
should know that some people believe you are and you may get
messed with in jail and I don’t want that to happen because
I don’t think that’s fair — if you’re
not the rapist. So I want to continue to come and visit you
to make sure you’re okay.” He said that would be
very nice. So I visited him for weeks. We’d just talk
about whatever.”
Tensions in Shadle Park and elsewhere remained high. As far
as anyone knew, the rapist was still at large. Then late one
night, while making his rounds at the police station, DeFede
noticed unusual activity in the major crimes unit. He figured
something interesting was afoot. Just then a door to one of
the “conversation” rooms was opened and he caught
a glimpse of George Grammer inside. “I knew they were
working him,” he says, “and so I parked myself
right there. Apparently he’d just started with the detectives,
just teased them a little bit, but hadn’t really unloaded.
So when George was brought out, I looked at him and said, ‘George,
is it time you and I have a serious talk?’ And he said, ‘Maybe.’”
The next day DeFede went back to the jail and listened for
three nerve-racking hours as Grammer confessed to being the
Shadle Park rapist. Physically and emotionally drained, DeFede
went home and tried to sleep. It was a Saturday night. On Sunday
he returned to the jail and listened for another two hours
as Grammer elaborated on his confession.
Monday morning he
gathered his notes and straggled into the newsroom to alert
his bosses.
Within minutes of DeFede’s arrival, the Spokane district
attorney and the police chief showed up and asked for a private
meeting with the publisher and executive editor. After learning
that DeFede had spent five hours with their suspect over the
weekend, they deduced that Grammer had confessed. The young
intern was summoned to the boss’s office. “They
called me in and said, ‘Jim, you did great work, but
we need a little time on this.’ And I said, ‘What
do you mean?’ And they said the district attorney has
asked that we not proceed with a story, that they needed to
get their ducks in a row, they needed to do more research,
they needed to bring the victims in for photo IDs and lineups
and the rest of it. They said, ‘We don’t want to
put anything in the paper until they’re sure.’ I
didn’t know any better, so I just said, ‘Okay.’ The
newsroom went nuts.”
The paper held his story for nearly two weeks before breaking
it with banner headlines. It was a highly controversial decision,
both in Spokane and within the world of professional journalism. “It
blew up that the newspaper knew about this for two weeks while
the community was still in a panic,” DeFede says, adding
that a leading industry journal weighed in on the subject with
an article that was flattering to the intern but critical of
his bosses. “The editor said, ‘Yeah, we pay him
next to nothing, he owns one tie, and does just great work.’ So
this comes out and other editors are saying, ‘This is
embarrassing! You’re bragging about the reporter who
broke the biggest story in the city’s history and you’re
saying you’re not paying him anything?’ I got hired
right then. Full-time.” He went on to break many more
stories, to elicit more confessions from criminals, and to
win national awards that brought him to the attention of Miami
New Times and eventually the Miami Herald.
* * *
After being booted by the Herald in 2005, you ended up in radio
as the morning host at WINZ, 940-AM, “South Florida’s
Progressive Talk.” You also began doing opinionated television
segments at WFOR, Channel 4. In what ways are radio, television,
and newspapers different?
I love different aspects of each of them. What I love about
print is you can play with the language more, you’re
more precise with the language. Also print has more gravitas,
more heft. There’s just something more substantial about
seeing it in print than hearing it over the airwaves. Print
also tends to set the agenda more than broadcast. But one of
the shortcomings of print is that you can hope people will
read your work the way you want them to, but you can’t
guarantee that. You can’t do sarcasm in print, it just
doesn’t work. If I write, “George Bush is the best
president we’ve ever had, really,” it doesn’t
read sarcastic. But if on television I say, “George Bush
is the best president we’ve ever had , really [wink,
wink],” you get it, you understand I’m making a
joke. That’s what I love about TV, the ability to present
what I write exactly the way I want it to come into your head
and your ear. It’s very appealing, the ability to marry
words and images to make a point. When it’s used right,
it’s a very powerful medium. What I love about radio
is the immediacy. I can say something and immediately have
someone call and tell me I’m an idiot. Radio is much
more a high-wire act — you can’t script reality.
I’m on the air three hours a day, five days a week, and
you can’t plot out everything you’re going to say.
There is back-and-forth. Another thing I hear about the radio
show is: “I didn’t know you were funny.” I
could come across as funny in print, but radio is much more
bawdy, much more over the top, much bigger. I like that.
Do you think you’re more politically partisan now than
you were as a columnist at the Herald?
I think I get pressed more to state views and opinions that
I would normally steer away from at the Herald. Do I think
the war in Iraq is dumb? Yes, but would I have written a column
about it? Probably not. On radio I’m telling people more
about who I am than they knew when I was a columnist. But I
don’t know if partisan is the right word. We have lots
of Republicans on my show, all the time. Some Republicans won’t
come on because they’re dumb and they’re cowards.
Ileana [Ros Lehtinen], Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart — they’re
cowards. But most Republicans know they’ll get a fair
shake from me, and we’ll talk about the issues. I don’t
know where the Republican and Democratic lines are drawn on
an issue like property taxes. It’s the same with homeowner’s
insurance. I don’t know that there’s an intrinsically
Republican position on homeowner’s insurance and a Democratic
position.
But there’s a context to the radio show, and it’s
provided by listeners who’ll say “Jim, I’m
a life-long Democrat and I love your show and we’re all
in this together.”
I’ve told people many times: I’m not a registered
Democrat. I’m a registered independent. I was vicious
in going after [U.S. Sen.] Bill Nelson. His vote on the Military
Commissions Act? I called him a coward, I openly suggested
people should just go ahead and vote for Katherine Harris.
Nobody who is going to forfeit my rights for political reasons
is going to get my vote. He’s 30 points ahead in the
polls and he’s afraid of the commercial that could be
used against him? I was just brutal with him. I had people
call me saying, “We don’t need this on this station,” and
I said, “I don’t care what you want on this station,
I’m going to say it.”
You’re on the air at 6:00 a.m., Monday through Friday.
How are you handling that kind of schedule?
I thought it would be a lot worse. Everyone kept telling me
that getting up so early — I start waking up between
4:00 and 4:30 — people told me I’d hit a wall after
about three months, that my body would start breaking down,
tired and achy all the time. I’m in my eighth month,
so I think I’ve pushed through that wall.
What time do you go to bed?
If I’m smart I’m in bed by 9:00 or 9:30. If I’m
not so smart, 10:00. If I’m really dumb, 11:00.
* * *
As a student at Colorado State University,
DeFede stayed up late, often. By his own admission, he was
really dumb — initially
at least. Freshman year was his first away from his hometown
of Brooklyn, New York. He arrived on campus with ambitions
to become a civil engineer and design bridges, but quickly
succumbed to temptation. It was a blurry year of parties and
booze. The unexpected death of his father sobered him up, though
by then he’d been kicked out of the engineering program.
He moved over to the humanities, where, he says, “They
thought my drinking would be endearing.” He enthusiastically
leaped into student government, found he was good at it, and
in time was elected the university’s student body president,
a prominent platform from which he launched repeated made-for-media
guerrilla assaults on penny-pinching state officials and bumbling
university administrators. His efforts won him widespread acclaim
on campus and fear and loathing at the state legislature.
In his fifth year on campus, DeFede left student government
for the student newspaper, where he developed a latent talent
for writing and a taste for hard-hitting exposés. By
then he’d accumulated a set of experiences and skills
to make a thesis advisor proud, but he was no closer to obtaining
an academic degree than he had been that first sodden semester.
“All my roommates and friends were graduating, and it
didn’t seem like I needed to stick around any longer,” he
recalls, “so I decided to drop out of college. I’d
accomplished exactly what I wanted: I came to realize that
waking up in a pool of my own vomit is not a fun thing, I got
my life in some sense of order, I learned a sense of discipline,
and I found a career. So I didn’t have a diploma. Who
cares? I got the cap and gown, my mom and my sister flew out,
I went through the ceremony, got the diploma case, and popped
the champagne. I just don’t have a diploma in the diploma
case. As far as I was concerned, I had graduated.”
***
How good a job do you think the Herald is doing these days?
I still have a lot of friends at the Herald and so I know pretty
much what’s going on over there. I think right now their
middle management — city editors, assistant city editors — is
probably the best they’ve had in ten years. A lot of
the good work you’re seeing is flowing out of those people.
But I think the budget-cutting has had a major psychological
effect that is going to be very difficult to reverse. And I
don’t know that there’s going to be the [financial]
ability to reverse it. The Herald can do the big story well,
but it’s the small, day-to-day stuff where they get caught
short because they don’t have the bodies to cover what
needs to be covered. You and I, who’ve been here a long
time, know all the great stories that are out there, and know
they’re not all getting covered. That’s where the
Herald gets to be frustrating.
Suppose new executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal called you
to say, “Jim, come back.”
I’d go back.
Drop radio and TV?
I don’t know that they’d want me to drop radio
and TV, and I’d want to keep the radio. I should be coy
about it, but who am I kidding? I love being a columnist. I
enjoyed working for the daily newspaper. So yeah, I’m
a print guy. Do I think it’s going to happen? I don’t
think so, but who knows?
Do you think our Biscayne Corridor is ready to take off?
I’m waiting to see what happens when the construction
dust clears. It’s almost like you’re in fixer-upper
mode, when you walk into the house and it’s all paint
cans and tarps on the floor and you think, my god, this place
looks awful. Then you come back in a week and it’s all
cleaned up and it looks great. I’m hoping that’s
what it’s going to be. The trick is going to be those
old motels — what you need is a developer to come in
and appreciate their style and what they represent and then
cater to a crowd of folks like those who used to come down
here to winter. If we could get that and have a mix of retail
and restaurants, that would be great.
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com
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