Worth another look. . . Remember that horrific plane crash last year? Who was the only reporter to get the correct location?

The answer to that question is below. If you saw the front page of the Post last Saturday (11/26) you know this Palm Beach County ‘paper of record’ still can’t figure out municipal boundaries. No wonder the public gets confused when the Post has difficulty grasping the concept of suburban Lake Worth and the actual City of Lake Worth.

If you didn’t know, the Lake Worth Swap Shop on Lake Worth Rd. is not in “Lake Worth”. It’s located in the Village of Palm Springs. You would think after that terrible plane crash last year (see below), very close to this location, the Post’s headline writer/editor would have learned about the Lake Worth Corridor by now. But apparently that’s not the case. Here’s another recent error in the Post:

“The Real News Starts Here”? Interestingly, the reporter who first reported this shooting wrote, “The man who was shot this morning in unincorporated Lake Worth . . .”.

If you recall that horrific plane crash last October the only reporter to accurately report the location was NBC5/WPTV reporter Charlie Keegan. While every other reporter was stumbling around saying “where am I?”, Keegan reported the location as “suburban Lake Worth”. How did he do it? It’s not magic:

The zoning may have changed since last year, but then the “Lake Worth” Swap Shop located in Palm Springs had unincorporated County areas west, south, and to the east as well.

The reason why the Lake Worth Swap Shop is called the “Lake Worth” Swap Shop is rooted in history. The “Lake Worth” is a mailing address. The short explanation is this: “back in the day” after people established a Lake Worth mailing address and later moved west, they took a Lake Worth mailing address with them, just a different zip code. Why? Because there were no other post offices nearby. That’s why there are 9 Lake Worth zip codes but only two are the City of Lake Worth: 33460 and part of 33461.

One “Lake Worth” zip code is on the edge of the Everglades. That’s why so many reporters get the location of the South Florida National Cemetery wrong.

The reporter cited above (Hannah Winston) went on to write, “Rescue crews responded to a shots-fired call on the 4000 block of Davis Road [emphasis added], just south of Lake Worth Road between South Congress Avenue and Kirk Road”. And again, she reported this accurately as “unincorporated Lake Worth” but “suburban Lake Worth” is also correct.

If you’re not sure, enter a nearby street address into the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s website or check the City’s Zoning Map. Or. . . take the easy route and call everything west of the County’s John Prince Park “Lake Worth”.

The actual borders of the 6 square mile City of Lake Worth.