Sharon Waxman adroitly sizes-up pick of Jill Abramson as Exec. Editor at NY Times; a fine choice, it's just not particularly inspired, or inspiring

PBS NewsHour video: New York Times Names First Woman to Executive Editor Job. Jill Abramson speaks to NewHour host Jim Lehrer about her new position starting in September. June 3, 2011.

http://youtu.be/Dg23tQu_Qf4

(What you hear above from Jill Abramson at the very beginning of the interview will be critical later, so pay attention!)

Trailer -Page One: Inside The New York Times, 2011 HD

http://youtu.be/uhw6OeTVcwM

Page One: Inside the New York Times hits theaters June 24th, 2011

TheWrap's Editor in Chief Sharon Waxman adroitly sizes-up Jill Abramson's selection as new executive editor of the New York Times -a fine choice, it's just not particularly inspired, or inspiring.

More thoughts of my own are below Sharon's last two posts that connect-the-dots on the Abramson story that lots of people I know will be watching VERY closely -like me.

For the record, I've been reading the NY Times daily continuously for over thirty-five years, starting when I was at JFK Junior High in North Miami Beach, circa 1974 and continuing when I got next door at NMBHS.

Every morning as I walked to school from our family's home on N.E. 159th Street & 14th Avenue in NMB, I picked up a copy of the paper next to the then-Wolfie's Restaurant on the south side of the 163rd Street Shopping Center, often getting a Black & White cookie, before walking thru the shopping center, back before it had the fabric roof installed, as the two schools were just north of it.

(The sugar from those cookies came in handy at NMB since I was on the early shift and had Spanish with Mrs. Adderly at 7 a.m.!)

No matter where I've ever lived in the United States, when I wasn't subscribing to it, I've always known every single nearby location where a NYT could be purchased, whether at a news stand or a vending machine. And I do mean EVERY one, too.

My stack of NY Times Sunday Magazines while in high school at North Miami Beach came in handy more times than I could tell you here, and I can still remember certain key stories or fashion essays, which is how I knew who Carrie Donovan and William Safire were long before I got up to Bloomington and IU.

There and then later in Evanston and Arlington County, my stash in banker's boxes was, if not symbols of upper-ward mobility or conspicuous consumption, at least signs of organized affinity hoarding.

The information cache in Arlington, 99% of it anyway, eventually wound-up in the hands of the Friends of the Arlington County Library to sell when I had to return to South Florida in late 2003.

My treasure trove of magazines and journals were referred to by some friends, "The National Archives Annex." Usually good-naturedly, though NOT always.

Something they didn't have on the cover of the Times magazine when I was in Junior High in the 1970's -this kind of amazing photography and color composition.

Above, The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox by Lynn Hirshberg, How America's leading starlet made herself up for the multimedia age, NYT 2009-11-11, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15Fox-t.html

There's your the NYT-flavored mini-bio of me to better appreciate the following.

-----

The Wrap

WaxWord blog

Jill Abramson First Woman Editor of New York Times

By Sharon Waxman

Published: June 02, 2011 @ 9:03 am

Jill Abramson has been named the executive editor of The New York Times, the newspaper’s publisher Arthur Sulzberger announced on Thursday.

Abramson has been a managing editor since 2003. She is the first woman to lead the paper in its 160-year history.

http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/jill-abramson-named-editor-new-york-times-27878

-------

The Wrap

WaxWord blog

Jill Abramson’s Twitter Account, and a Vision for the New York Times

By Sharon Waxman

published June 3, 2011, 6:29 am

It would be more interesting that Jill Abramson was named executive editor of The New York Times if the paper was not on such a knife’s edge for survival.

Much respected, Abramson can only be considered dynamic when compared to her predecessor, the bloodless Bill Keller. Keller is so laconic that his own wife has commonly disparaged him as a cocktail party killer.

http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/jill-abramson%E2%80%99s-twitter-account-and-27912?page=0,1

-----

Before reading my comments, see this intriguing insight into Abramson that was in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web column by James Tarnato, a column I've been reading -and occasionally contributing items to- since I was living in Arlington County.

Specifically, read the opening piece titled, All the News That's Fit to Scrub "Absolute truth"? At the New York Times, it's more like Minitrue which includes some great pithy observational comments from Taranto and blogger Ann Althouse, and a nice tweaking of

Hendrik Hertzberg called, simply enough, How to Horrify Hendrik Hertzberg

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303745304576363510218079554.html

None of what is there surprises me.

Now you know why I said to pay attention to the video at the top, no?

In my opinion, Sharon Waxman's Friday column was MUCH more incisive than anyone else's analysis I've read -and I've read a lot- on not just the well-known and generally understood problems at the Times and it's odd mixture of both high-minded sense of duty and the more immediate need to make (and keep) a buck in the digital age, but also on Abramson's laconic personality and whether that will prove helpful or hurtful to making some necessary changes there, laconic NOT being a synonym for inspiring or motivating.

And, of course, her well-deserved tweaking -but not Tweets- of Bill Keller's well-known social media myopia, even though Times readers are MUCH more likely than other newspaper subscribers to not only have a Twitter account, but actually have something worth saying and reading!

It seems counter-intuitive that someone like Keller, at the nexus of so much useful information and insight, someone who always says the right measured thing on his appearances on The Charlie Rose Show, should be the one who actually thinks they're going to tell/lecture society -and his own readers- that they're engaged in folly.

(In that respect, Keller's myopia is akin to the Miami Herald's/McClatchy's current management keeping their head firmly in the sand when there's a million compelling stories down here in South Florida that they are consciously ignoring, but which a real energetic and properly-motivated newspaper would be doing amazing things with, a point that I've made here many times in the past with specific examples of stories they slept on.

They even bury their own reader blogs that they launched and triumphantly hailed but two short years ago -of which mine was among the originals, to my own surprise, since they never contacted me- but have now ignored them to the point that they "promote" them with nary a graphic or icon on the page but merely the word, South Florida Blogs.

At the very bottom of their web page.

I even forget they exist -and I'm listed.

in the year 2011, despite the fact that many smaller newspapers or niche online publications have them -and have had them for years- the Herald still doesn't even have a simple widget that websites or blogs can post to run their stories about sports or South Florida news or... to send readers their way.

In many respects, to me, the current Herald is like a mediocre college newspaper circa 1992 -their whole world is about to change drastically, but instead of having faculty advisors who are prescient, they have ones who think this Internet thing will have little relevancy for them, so they keep ordering nothing but more barrels of ink.)

Is there a business model for quality journalism?

http://youtu.be/vr9HvaTrNQk

I last wrote a lot about the Times here on the blog in April, when I just wanted to unburden myself of some tidbits and random thoughts from my time spending lots of time in and near their Washington bureau, though there was a LOT that I intentionally left out.That post was Memories of D.C. bureau of N.Y. Times; Cool stuff from NYT Graphics: Key states for Obama in 2012; 2010 Census interactive map

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/memories-of-dc-bureau-of-ny-times-cool.html

Eye Street trivia -I shared this with Rick Berke himself many years ago -Separated at Birth: NYT's Rick Berke and ESPN's baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian.

Another take on the whole Bill Keller conundrum is at Forbes' online media blog

Forbes Magazine

Media blog

NY Times Editor Bill Keller: The Exit Interview

By Jeff Bercovici

June 2 2011 - 8:00 pm

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, caught media watchers off guard today when he announced that he’ll step down in September, with managing editor Jill Abramson replacing him. After eight years of leading a 1,200 person newsroom through wars, recessions, elections and political sex scandals, he’s returning to being a full-time writer. I caught up with Keller, who told me what made him decide to walk away now, what he finds “damned annoying” about Arianna Huffington, and why he’s hoping the next three months will be filled with worldwide chaos.

Read the rest of the post at:

http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffbercovici/2011/06/02/ny-times-editor-bill-keller-the-exit-interview/

----

WaxWord blog, Sharon Waxman's take on life on the left coast, high culture, low culture and the business of entertainment and media is at:

http://www.thewrap.com/media/column/waxword

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/thewrapnews

Alan D. Mutter's blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/

**********

A March 21st post of Alan's titled, A shock video to keep news execs up at night

highlighted this video below, and I agree; check it out and think about how different the Miami Herald would be today if someone like this was in charge:

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2011/03/shock-video-to-keep-news-execs-up-at.html#comments

The Newspaper Association of America's session from their mediaXchange 2011, in Dallas, TX,

Newspapers—A Path Forward

Speakers Ken Doctor, Affiliate Analyst, Outsell Clark Gilbert, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deseret News Publishing John Paton, Chief Executive Officer, Journal Register Company

http://www.naa.org/Resources/Articles/2011-mediaxchange-video/2011-mediaxchange-video.aspx

Once again, Alan Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur blog has it right about the American news media: ‘Objective’ journalism is over. Let’s move on.

Sometimes, with a news article, column or blog post that's particularly cogent, well-argued and well-written, there's little left for your humble blogger here in South Florida to say other than to encourage you to read it for yourself and become educated.

Well, today is one of those days, as Alan Mutter out in San Francisco has such a persuasive and common sense post today on his must-read media blog, Confessions of a Newsosaur, on the myth of a fair-and-balanced animal called "objective journalism" in the United States.

That legendary animal NEVER actually roamed this land, from sea-to-shining sea.
It was all merely a journalism industry construct that was passed down from one generation to another.

Alan has, by far, one of the most varied and successful journalism and venture capital backgrounds of anyone you could possibly meet in the U.S., literally, the nexus of both the legacy media as well as the new media. Even now, he's on the adjunct faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/

Which is why his opinion really counts for something.

-----
Reflections of a Newsosaur blog by Alan Mutter
Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media executive, who fears our news-gathering companies are stumbling to extinction
Thursday, December 02, 2010
‘Objective’ journalism is over. Let’s move on.

It’s time to retire the difficult-to-achieve and impossible-to-defend conceit that journalists are now, or ever were, objective.

Let’s replace this threadbare notion with a realistic and credible standard of transparency that requires journalists to forthrightly declare their personal predilections, financial entanglements and political allegiances so the public can evaluate the quality of the information it is getting.

This not only will make life easier for scribes and the public. It also could do wonders for the sagging credibility of the press.

Read the rest of this post at:
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/12/objective-journalism-is-over-lets-move.html

See also:

http://paidcontent.org/

http://www.mondaynote.com/

http://mediagazer.com/

http://www.beet.tv/

http://www.mediabistro.com/

http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/

http://www.jackshafer.com/slate_columns/slate_columns_index.php

http://www.jackshafer.com/

http://www2.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45 - Jim Romensko

http://www2.poynter.org/

http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/

http://journalism.indiana.edu/

A day in the life of McClatchy's Miami Herald, as viewed by a reader who's largely given up on them fixing their problems, or surviving long-term

Above, November 12, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier of a Miami Herald vending machine on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

UPDATED 11/13/10

I guess I hardly need mention to anyone living in South Florida that the prices posted on this vending machine haven't been accurate for quite some time, but then the Miami Herald management's foolish insistence in the recent past that only charging Broward readers a quarter, while already charging fifty cents in Miami-Dade, would get them more readers and eyeballs on their ads, never made any sense either, though from a distance, it might've sounded good in theory.
Say from Sacramento, Calif., the home of McClatchy Company, which owns the Herald.

Even their own reporters and columnists knew this, as prior to their finally charging the same amount in both counties, it would've been rare for any phone conversation I had with a Herald reporter or columnist to end without them bringing the subject up, which told me in no uncertain terms that it was clearly a sore subject.

For the better part of the 14 years I lived in suburban Washington, D.C., in Arlington, VA, and caught the Metro train into downtown Washington for work during the week, whether from the Clarendon Metro station or the Ballston station, I happily paid fifty cents for the Baltimore Sun from a vending machine on my way down into the station -since the 1990's- while paying less for the Washington Post, because it was a very smart, well-written and well-edited newspaper.

The Sun, a newspaper I first read as a kid in North Miami Beach while growing-up a devout Orioles fan, is not what it once was, owing to a lot of curious moves made by parent Tribune Company, but on any given day, it's still usually much better than the Herald and the Tribune-owned Sun-Sentinel combined, and was well worth the price.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/

People in South Florida, especially serious people, will always be willing to pay more for quality, but they want to see it first.
That quality they seek is seldom if ever seen in the current version of the Miami Herald.

So what's the plan for the Herald's future, if any?

Exactly.

Back on September 18th, I emailed the following thoughts of mine, most of which were written while once again exasperated by what kind of product the Herald was producing.

I sent it to a couple of dozen or so of the usual well-informed, media-centric folks I know in Florida and around the country who get my observations before I usually share them here with you all later in the day, often after getting insightful comments, corrections or head's ups from them about related (or worse) MSM screw-ups closer to them geographically.

In light of what I wrote here on November 3rd about the Herald's truly dreadful coverage of the recent Giants-Rangers World Series, that is, their mentioning NOTHING about Game 2 the following day, on a Friday morning, while the South Florida edition of the New York Times, printed up in Deerfield Beach, 25 miles north of me, had a page-and-a-half of stories and columns, plus nice photos and box score info.

The Miami Herald's dismal Pony Express-style coverage of The World Series -compared to the New York Times- is a bad omen for readers
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/miami-heralds-dismal-pony-express-style.html

The following email is also in that vein, and all came together one particularly frustrating day about nine weeks ago, when I was checking the Herald's website for some information and noticed something quite troubling, which was not good news for either Herald readers or serious-minded people in South Florida who continue to ponder this simple question:
What's going on at One Herald Plaza?

-----

The Miami Herald's staff finally smells the coffee.
But is it too late?

Back on Sept. 1st, I sent an email to Edward Schumacher-Matos, the Herald's Ombudsman (the one without either a blog or a weekly column, but rather some once-in-a-while thing) because that was the day where an armed intrusion took place at the Discovery Channel HQ in suburban D.C. -a Maryland building I've been in dozens of times- yet it took the Herald hours to put something about it online.

This, even while a nice but not great photo of actress January Jones of Mad Men fame remained online just below the masthead for hours, while nothing about the story up in Silver Spring, being shown on LIVE TV for hours on the cablenets, was there.

It was just the latest in a VERY long line of jaw-dropping and galling editorial and content decisions at the Herald in the recent past that befuddle the Herald's dwindling number of readers.

In fact, I was so dismayed that I actually wrote Hallandale Beach Blog fave, Alan D. Mutter, creator of Reflections of a Newsosaur blog fame, and mentioned here often,
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/ and asked him -only half-jokingly- if there was any chance that one of his savvy Venture Capital friends in Silicon Valley might want to reinvent themselves, and play the role of a media mogul, and perhaps take the Herald off of McClatchy's hands?

I even told him, "Trust me, the concerned and conscientious people in South Florida would've be very much indebted!"

Sadly, Alan replied that he didn't know of such a person.
But then I presumed that such a person even exists, oui?

-----

Date: Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 4:52 PM

Subject: Surprise! Takes over THREE HOURS for Herald website to mention hostage drama at Discovery Channel HQ in Silver Spring. Sleeping on the job, Just like Herald's Broward coverage!

To: Edward Schumacher-Matos

September 1st, 2010
4 pm

Dear Mr. Schumacher-Matos:

Nothing in this email is about the Herald's spotty coverage of Broward County in general or Hallandale Beach, and to a less degree, of Hollywood, in particular.
The paper's unsatisfactory coverage of them is what is is.
Reality.

Did you know that there are media sites overseas that have had something about this hostage story for a while now, yet the Herald has nothing almost three hours later but STILL has prime space at the top for

Kardashians

New fashion collection

They're cute girls and all and I get their appeal, but why has the paper completely
OD'd on them?
Seriously..

You should have one of the Herald's interns check and see how many times in the past six months there hasn't been something about them in the Herald.

Or how many times, since she was hired two years ago, Myriam Marquez has written anything at all about something going on in Broward County or of particular interest to readers there.

Trust me, it won't be pretty.
In fact, it will be grim.

Consider that your Sunday public policy section, Issues & Ideas, did not have the word "Broward" in it anywhere.
Or any story or column about some issue, personality or idea of particular relevance in Broward
Again.
For at least the second week in a row.

Do you know how many times THAT fact pattern has been true this year?
I did, I really did, but I stopped counting because it was so disturbing.
And pathetic.

The other day, in reference to the glacial and practically non-existent coverage of the Broward School Board races last Tuesday, and their lack of updates online, I compared the Herald's pace to the Pony Express on my blog.
In retrospect, I might've been exaggerating, but not quite in the way you might imagine.

In a day or so, I'm going to show that a careful analysis of Herald stories since last year's approval of the Marlins Stadium by the M-D County Commission, 5 of the 9 commissioners who approved it never had a story written about them in the ensuing 14 months that ever said anything at all about them and their vote on the stadium's financing, or any possible second-guessing or doubts from constituents.
ZERO.

That explains a lot.
Like why the paper was beaten soundly by a website on the stadium financing story due to a leak.

If someone with that info had tried to give the info to the Herald, unless they immediately got savvy reporters Matthew Haggman and Charles Rabin on the phone, unlikely, do you know what the Herald reporters and editors would've said or done?
Nothing.

The same response that Herald readers in South Florida routinely get from reporters and editors, like Beth Reinhard, Jay Ducassi and dozens of others when they contact them.

Those Herald employees first response is to call other people rather than call you back or return your emails about solid news you know or possess, even when you have photos that corroborate everything you say.

I know this first-hand and so do many other people I know who closely follow what goes on in Broward County and South Florida.

And guess what, the Herald daily shows that lack of context or understanding of the area they purport to cover, which is why so many readers constantly complain that the Herald's local news and govt. stories have an unusually high degree of fact and context problems, and are usually more notable for what is left out, often the most important aspect of why something happened -or didn't.

But unless you are there in person, like I am so often, you wouldn't know anything about it.

Seriously, when are we going to see the positive changes the Herald needs to make it viable and engaged?
What's the plan?

Not the silly one that got in print a few months ago, but a real plan that actually benefits readers who want real news?

The Herald's current plan of ignoring news because it's not in Coral Gables, Doral, Miami or Miami Beach is NOT working and is repelling readers from both the physical paper and the website, for reasons like why I wrote this in the first place: sleeping on the job!

From my perspective, the ship is still listing and there are NO ships around to rescue any survivors, if any.

I will leave to another day the confounding situation with reporter Alfonso Chardy and why his disingenuous professional behavior is allowed to continue apace, like nobody really noticed what he did a few weeks ago, blatantly lying to Herald readers in a news story.
But notice we did.

Not just me, but full-time print and TV reporters from around the state.
I know that because they contacted me to tell me they noticed, too.
And those are facts.

(About an hour later, after some website magic happened, I added.)

P.S. Congrats! It only took over three hours and continuous coverage on the TV cablenets for someone at the Herald to finally post something online. I can only imagine how things will be in the future when some blogger scoops the Herald that Fidel Castro is dead.

------

Well, as you might imagine, despite having exchanged cordial emails with him in the past, I never heard back from the Ombudsman, whose email address I have since deleted from my computer, since really, what's the point?

If the Herald's current and recent management care so little about their own readers that Schumacher-Matos lacks the tools or frequency he needs to be taken seriously by Herald readers, the sorts of things other large newspapers provide -and the facts clearly show they do- why continue to kid myself and think my emails to him will accomplish anything other than temporarily venting some of my dismay?

Which is why many of the past emails I've penned to him over the years but never actually sent, keeping in DRAFT instead, will be now be revisited here on the blog when similar situations occur in the future at the newspaper, as they inevitably will, since the Herald keeps making the same mistakes over-and-over.
They won't stop digging the hole they're in.

To use an image that I've often used here in the past, their behavior is akin to a dog chasing-its- tail -initially amusing, but ultimately, fruitless and irritating.
Like many current network TV programs.

I forgot to mention above in my prologue that in my second email to my media-centric pals, friends and acquaintances here in Florida and around the country, I also sent them a link to Bob Norman's spot-on Daily Pulp post of Sept. 17th about the greatly rising frustration level of the Herald's own employees.

It's so good, I have it here and urge you to read the entire thing, including the reader comments, whose frustration with the newspaper and its management is clear .

BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes
Herald Reporters to Management: Stop Mimicking Twitter and Focus on Serious Journalism

By Bob Norman
Friday, September 17 2010 @ 5:57PM

The following letter appeared yesterday on the Miami Herald's internal memo board, Readme. Signed by numerous veteran reporters and editors, it was posted the same day 49 more layoffs were announced at the depleted newspaper.

-----------

Sept 2010
OUR HOPES FOR A BETTER HERALD:

So, it's Saturday night, and you want to hear live music. Among your choices: going to the Hard Rock Cafe to hear Shakira (or Seal or Ringo Starr or Reba McIntyre); or going to a bar with an open mike. At the Hard Rock, you'll hear a polished, professional artist.
At open mike night, you'll probably hear people with day jobs singing Sweet Caroline ... perhaps lustily, probably off key.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with that open mike bar. But we'll bet most people, with
the ability to choose, would go hear the pro.

The Miami Herald, we would argue, is becoming the newspaper equivalent of open mike night. Or a flea market.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/09/miami_herald_reporters.php

There are 177 reader comments!

See also McClatchy Watch on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/McClatchyWatch

McClatchy Watch website, while defunct since before last Christmas, is still online:
http://cancelthebee.blogspot.com/

The Miami Herald's dismal Pony Express-style coverage of The World Series -compared to the New York Times- is a bad omen for readers

The Miami Herald's dismal Pony Express-style coverage of The World Series -compared to the New York Times- is a bad omen for readers, or, Breaking News at the Miami Herald STILL isn't the same as Breaking News elsewhere in the country.

Today's latest installment of "That's why they're the Herald"... which I've been meaning to discuss for ten days.

According to the Miami Herald, two of the headlines I've copied below were also Breaking News at 8 p.m. Friday night.

Breaking News
* Teen slashed with machete at North Lauderdale street brawl

* Democrat donor files suit against GOP congressional candidate David Rivera *

* NBA commissioner: Miami Heat is a global sports obsession

They are stories which had also been Breaking News all Friday afternoon in the same exact spot as they were, more or less, when I sent out an email to a few folks I know in the sports world and newspaper industry, at 3:47 p.m. on Saturday, October 30th, following the latest lethargic and embarrassing loss in the Randy Shannon era of U-M football.
(To UVA up in beautiful Charlottesville.)

One of which -shocker- was a puff piece to the NBA on the day of the Miami Heat's NBA home opener against the Orlando Magic, and a national telecast on ESPN.

To quote myself, "Guess it's been a slow news day at the Herald, huh? I hear there's an election coming up soon..."

Friday's edition of the New York Times for the South Florida market was printed in Deerfield Beach, about 25 miles or so north of me.

On 60% of the front page of the Times' Sports section were stories and columns about Game 2 of the World Series, reflecting that the Giants had won and were half-way to winning their first title in San Francisco.


The next page was entirely about the second game, also reflecting the final score.


Friday's Broward version of the Miami Herald, located exactly 14 miles away, simply had the words Late Game near the top of the sports section next to Game 2.
They had no information about the second game.
Really.

See for yourself.


It's low-hanging fruit I know, but why make it complicated to show how the Herald continues to sink deeper into the abyss, as it takes its remaining readers for granted?

Before the playoffs started, my prediction was Giants-Rangers, with the Giants winning in 6 games.

By the way, if you hadn't noticed it, the Herald now considers Broward County and it's readers so far away from the center of their strange upside-down News Universe, that in the recent past, they've now re-classified Broward County, and now place us in the distant outpost category of The Keys, as you can see just below the masthead and the headline about Meek.


Above, "Broward & Keys Final"

Speaking of San Francisco as I was -which I last visited in January of 2000, when I walked around the Giants new stadium on the Bay before it opened later that spring- I commend to you an illuminating blog post from last Tuesday by Alan D. Mutter at his excellent and noteworthy blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur, subtitled Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media executive, who fears our news-gathering companies are stumbling to extinction, http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/

Alan's post is about a Bay Area ice cream shop called Humphry Slocombe besting the San Francisco Chronicle, Ice cream shop out-‘fans’ S.F. Chronicle
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/10/ice-cream-shop-out-fans-sf-chronicle.html#comments

As usual, Alan's post was informative and amusing, and holds lots of lessons for people at all levels of the news and media world, whether print or digital.

Lessons they'd be foolish to ignore.

Miami Herald HQ is now taking in 'boarders'; David Carr on future of newspapers

My comments follow the article. 

---------------------

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/943097.html

March 10, 2009

Brown Mackie moves to Miami Herald building

The bayfront headquarters of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald now also will be home to Brown Mackie College. The Miami media company is leasing more than half its top floor to the private school in a move to generate revenues amid a severe recession.

The college's lease of 51,000 square feet ranks among the biggest downtown Miami office deals this year. The under-construction Met 2 office building announced a 50,000-square-foot lease with accounting and advisory firm Deloitte earlier this year.

The Brown Mackie deal, brokered by Alan Kleber at Cushman & Wakefield and Steven Hurwitz at CREC, is for 10 years. Prices weren't disclosed but said to be in the low $30-a-square-foot range.

Brown Mackie, which has outposts from Tuscon, Ariz., to Akron, Ohio, plans to open at the new location in September. The college offers associate degrees and bachelor's of science degrees in programs such as business management, early childhood education and computer technology. The Miami school has roughly 750 students.

Reader comments at:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/943097.html?commentSort=TimeStampAscending&pageNum=1#Comments_Container

-----------------------

The Miami Herald article above was placed online at 7:45 p.m. Tuesday night, and was sent to me by a reporter friend at the Herald who'd written, "Meet our new neighbors" in the subject header.

Actually, I think they were kind of disappointed that it wasn't at least a hospitality school with cooking facilities, like Johnson & Wales, with one of those faux restaurants,  so the reporters could at least get some good food for cheap, even while serving as guinea pigs.

My own thought, why not a quality bookstore, taking advantage of that great view of Biscayne Bay?

As a kid in high school, I used to spend LOTS of time every month at the late Cox newspaper,

The Miami News, that was in the same building, as part of their JOA, and fortunately for me,

the Sports Dept. and the Entertainment desks were right near the windows with their awesome views.

It may be different now, but back then, the mid-to-late '70's, during powerful summer thunderstorms, 

being near that window meant the thunder sounded THREE times normal volume, and would positively

make you jumpy after a few hours, plus, the view looked like you were watching the end of the world

with ominous clouds right on top of you.

I specifically mention bookstore because as we all learned in November of 2007, per the Miami Book

Fair International held downtown every year, there was not a single general interest bookstore within the City of Miami?  Es verdad!  http://www.miamibookfair.com/

----------------------------------------------------------

Miami Herald

SHOPPING: Miami is a bookstore desert - THE HOME OF NEXT WEEK'S FAIR HAS NO

GENERAL-INTEREST BOOK SHOPS

By Andres Viglucci

November 2, 2007

Next weekend, during Miami Book Fair International, the lecture halls

and streets in and around downtown's Miami Dade College will become

the nation's largest bookstore as mobs of readers snap up 70,000 books

from 300,000 titles on display. 

But if you're looking for a comprehensive, general-interest bookstore within city boundaries any other time of the year, buena suerte. There is none. 

You read that right: Miami , a major city of more than 360,000 people, has not a single such bookstore anywhere. Not downtown. Not in Coconut Grove. Not in the Upper East Side. There is no Borders, no Barnes & Noble, no multilingual independent beyond a smattering of niche stores. 

"Shocking," said Robert Gibbs, a Michigan-based planner and urban retail consultant who has worked all over the country, including Miami . "We even have a Borders in downtown Detroit." 

And there isn't much in the offing, apart from a planned independent store in the Grove. The city 's two new retail developments -- Midtown Miami and Mary Brickell Village -- have no bookstores and no immediate prospects. 

Certainly, Miami has some well-established specialized booksellers -- among others, Lambda Passages, a gay and lesbian bookstore on upper Biscayne Boulebard and Afro-In Books & Things in Liberty City . It also has a few Spanish-language stores, including Libreria Universal, long a beacon for Cuban literary culture and history on Southwest Eighth Street. 

And there are general-interest bookstores aplenty in the suburbs -- from chain stores in Aventura and Kendall to the redoubtable independent Books & Books, with branches in Coral Gables, Miami Beach and Bal Harbour. 

So why should it matter that in Miami -- with its diverse population, the region's largest employment center downtown, an ostensibly sophisticated international repute, and a recent wave of intense urban redevelopment -- there's zilch? 

Booksellers, book lovers, retailers and planners say bookstores function not just as fulcrums of culture, learning and community, but as key ingredients in a successful mercantile mix in urban commercial centers. 

And can Miami claim to be a center of arts, culture and commerce without a major bookstore in its city limits? How can a city have a new half-billion-dollar performing arts center but no bookstore ? 

"I would have thought someone would have put a bookstore in there somewhere," said Les Standiford, bestselling author and chairman of Florida International University's creative writing program, referring to new development across the city . 

MANY FACTORS 

Why the lack of stores? No one is quite sure, but many factors may play a role, including high rents, a large non-English speaking population and the absence of a retail district with foot traffic sufficiently heavy and deep-pocketed to sustain the low-margin business of bookselling. 

The independent Bookworm in the Grove is but a distant memory. More recently, chain stores pulled out of Bayside Marketplace downtown and Cocowalk in the Grove. 

"It's tough," said Miami Book Fair co-founder Raquel Roque, owner of the tiny Downtown Book Center, which her father opened in 1965 after arriving from Cuba. Though she still carries some English-language books, newspapers and magazines, she said, "we've had to switch to Spanish to survive. It just reflects finances and the population." 

Her store's clientele, she said, is mostly now recently arrived immigrants looking for English-instruction books and bargain novels. She keeps the doors open thanks to a thriving wholesale Spanish-language book distribution business. 

Other Spanish-language bookstores in the city also look beyond a local clientele to Web sales. Customers for Libreria Universal's broad stock of Cuba-related books are all over the country, said owner Juan Manuel Salvat. 

The trend is clear, Salvat said: General-interest bookstores , especially those trading principally in English, have gone where the biggest concentrations ofbook-buyers are, in well-off enclaves like Pinecrest, Coral Gables and Aventura. 

Census estimates tell part of the story. Book-buying is closely linked to education, experts say. In 2006, only 22 percent of adult Miamians had a bachelor's degree. In Coral Gables, it was 58 percent. 

Chain stores in particular have developed location formulas that demand lots of well-heeled, well-educated people, said Gibbs, the Michigan consultant: within a five-mile radius, 75,000 people with a bachelor's degree or higher and annual incomes of $75,000 or more. 

They also require several contiguous anchor stores selling clothing and home furnishings, and as many as 10 restaurants, he said. "They can't work by themselves," Gibbs said. "All of those retailers reinforce each other." 

But Miami has long suffered a shortage of retail of all stripes, from supermarkets to clothing stores. 

That has prompted an effort by Miami Mayor Manny Diaz to lure new stores to the city . High on the wish list: a bookstore , said Diaz' retail consultant, John Talmage, CEO of Social Compact, a nonprofit that promotes investment in inner- city areas. 

"It's hard to say you are a literate, knowledge-based community if books are not part of the mix," Talmage said. 

The best option for Miami , Talmage and others say: independents who can tailor themselves to the local market. 

A COMMUNITY SERVICE 

That's what Felice Dubin hopes to do in Coconut Grove, where giant Borders couldn't make the numbers work. The longtime Groveite and Village Council member and a business partner, Sandy Francis, are installing a bookstore in the old Banana Republic space on a prime corner on Grand Avenue . 

Call it a community service, said Dubin, who has no bookselling experience. The Bookstore in the Grove will have not only books but a bar serving wine and organic free-trade coffee, unusual gifts, and toys for a targeted clientele of both locals and tourists. 

"We're working every angle," said Dubin, who hopes to open by Thanksgiving. "Everybody is so desperately wanting a bookstore that, if we're any good at all, people will come." 

The rest of the city will eventually catch up, others say, maybe once downtown's new condo towers fill up. 

"There will be bookstores in the city of Miami ," said Books & Books owner, Mitchell Kaplan, who has considered Miami but hasn't found a viable site. "It will have to be something so powerful it becomes a destination by itself. But it's just a matter of when and how."

Alan D. Mutter's Sunday blog posting at his Reflections of Newsosaur site was particularly fantastic and

really had me sighing and laughing, and gave me a lot to think about.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/  Want to save your local paper? Read this  first 

Mostly, it made me think of all the hours I spent at the IU Library cafeteria on Sunday nights, especially after the last NFL game of the day during the winter, talking and and listening to my friends who were either journalism students at the Ernie Pyle School or on the school newspaper, the ids, or both.

See http://journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/  , http://journalism.indiana.edu/

and  http://www.idsnews.com/news/headline.aspx

As I've mentioned here before, since we were a pretty well-read crew, on Sundays, most of us had usually polished off the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Chicago Tribune and the Indy Star, so by the time we made it down to the cafeteria, we were like eager Editorial Board members, ready to diagnose and solve most of the problems on campus and in Bloomington -and the NFL- over Cokes, cheeseburgers and slices of pizza.

After we'd done that, some would wax rhapsodic about someday starting a newspaper that would be different and innovative and...

Yes, we were all going to be smart and savvy vertically-integrated media moguls who'd sometimes dabble in sports ownership.

Of course, I didn't know Marc Cuban back then.

Alan's Sunday post clearly shows what happens when people with good intentions get into the newspaper biz... It literally takes over their lives and their finances and affects everything they do, good and bad..

Another interesting perspective on what's happened to local news coverage is this one from Gary Imhoff, editor of the feisty DC Watch, on the coverage in Washington, D.C. since I left the area, and from DC Watch contributor Jason Lee-Bakke on what happens when a powerful-but-useless DC pol threatens a tiny neighborhood newspaper that reports/exposes his longstanding incompetency and apathy, compared to his colleagues.  http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2009/09-03-04.htm

 

I also encourage you to read all the reader comments to David Carr's excellent New York Times article

from Monday on the futures of American newspapers that quoted Alan, United, Newspapers May Stand

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/09/business/media/09carr.html

Readers comments at:

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/09/business/media/09carr.html

There were some spot-on comments there reminding everyone that many papers have all but given

up the ghost when it comes to being serious local news hounds, and are now just the middlemen

in handing readers over to advertisers, as this excerpt from Times Reader #3 says:

Yes, newspapers need to start getting their share of revenue from freeloading aggregators.

However, this idea that charging subscriptions online will ultimately keep papers afloat is

totally ludicrous. Newspapers don't sell news - they sell audiences to their advertisers. 

They're losing, because they've failed to do so. Charging for content will only drive readers away

- The Wall Street Journal might be able to pull that off, but the San Francisco Chronicle just can't.

----------------------------------------------------

If you're not that familiar with The Miami News, a great overview is available at:

History of The Miami News (1896-1987) by Howard Kleinberg, Tequesta, 1987

http://digitalcollections.fiu.edu/tequesta/files/1987/87_1_01.pdf