More proof -as if necessary- that the Miami Herald and Sen. Bill Nelson are closer than ever to hitting the iceberg like the Titanic...
Miami Herald
Corrections & Clarifications
Posted on Wednesday, 10.19.11
A story on a wake in Cuba for dissident Laura Pollán, which appeared on Page 10A in Tuesday’s Miami Herald, included the wrong party designation for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
Not mentioned -who at the state's largest newspaper wrote the story with the wrong information: Juan O. Tamayo.
And since he's with El Nuevo Herald, and we all know what their reputation for scrupulous fidelity to accuracy and facts are -like Lindsay Lohan's- this surprises whom exactly?
Also not mentioned -the name of the sleeping Herald editors who didn't know that 11-year U.S. Senator Bill Nelson is a Democrat, albeit, NOT the former Cleveland Browns QB of the same name. Nelson's the only statewide-elected Democrat still in office in Florida, a fact that is very likely to end next year. A fact that you'd think at least one editor at the largest newspaper in the fourth-largest state in the country should have noticed.
Yes, some of you may recognize that name, as Tamayo is the same exact guy who, more often than you'd think made sense, curiously, gets front page coverage of his pieces in the Sunday Herald's laughable excuse of a public policy section called Issues & Ideas.
The very section of the newspaper that rarely if ever contains a single use of the word "Broward" in an editorial, column or essay written by a Herald employee, or Guest Op-ed author.
But which often has 3-4 separate things about a country called Cuba.
In case you have somehow missed it when I've mentioned it before here on the blog, under the current news management leadership put in place here by McClatchy Company, the Herald often goes many, many months in a row without EVER mentioning the name of the South Florida county where 40-45% of their own readers live in that particular "section" of the newspaper, which used to be six pages and which many months ago shrank to four pages.
And four feeble pages at that!
In fact, Tamayo had a piece this past Sunday on Broward Commissioner Sue Gunzburger's upcoming trip to Brazil as part of FL Gov. Rick Scott's trade mission.. Well, actually he and the Herald didn't write about that, though they should have.
(Comm. Gunzburger leaves this coming weekend for about five days or so, minus two days of travel since flight is over 8 hours long.)
Per usual, Tamayo wrote about something involving Cuba that I'm quite sure that 95% of the Herald readers waking up Sunday morning couldn't have cared less about -the Archbishop of Havana.
And the word "Broward" did NOT appear anywhere in that section on Sunday.
Just like the week before and... but there were THREE separate pieces about Cuba on Sunday in their four feeble pages.
The Herald makes no secret of wanting to cover Cuba infinitely better than it does Broward County... and does, often writing about Cuba in the State & Local section so much that you wonder why they continue the pretense at all.
Why won't the Herald bite-the-bullet and print a separate section that's focused on Cuba and Latin America news for those readers in South Florida who can't get enough of that, and then, correspondingly, actually run MORE articles about Broward in the local news section?
Perhaps because they suspect that given how the Herald has foolishly force-fed Cuba-related articles down Herald readers' throats for years, given a choice, English-language readers will overwhelmingly ignore a new Latin-oriented section and the ads contained therein.
But if they do, wouldn't beleaguered readers have ample reason for doing so?
Yes, which is part of why Herald management has to whistle-past-the-graveyard and can't publicly acknowledge that chronic over-reach of theirs.
Trust me, I've spoken to many Herald employees the past eight years since returning to the area from Washington, D.C., and almost every time this topic comes up, they confide that they personally believe that fear of readers ignoring their flood of Cuba & Latin America stories in a separate section is part of the reason why the Herald does things in such a ham-handed way and crams Cuba stories into the local news section rather than Section A.
You know, the local section section, the one that for YEARS didn't have a single story about the mis-adventures in democracy and governance at Hallandale Beach City Hall or even show up for HB City Commission meetings?
(And by "ignore" it, I mean just like I and so many others ignore their awful Living Today section that's so often full of dim-witted stories about diets and the celebs who love them and chick-lit style self-empowerment pieces that are ludicrous to read.
That section is 180 degrees from the way the Washington Post's famous and popular "Style" section I got used to reading every day for 15 years is edited and focused like a laser-beam on what Washingtonians want to know more about. It's not like night and day, it IS night and day! )
As I've mentioned here in the past two weeks, the evidence is overwhelming that while McClatchy and Herald management have no qualms about letting Herald columnist and Editorial Board member Myriam Marquez and columnist Fabiola Santiago -see my photo above from Wednesday's "An example to inspire the Cuban people"- keep writing about Cuba in a section that purports to be about news re Florida and South Florida, they have ZERO interest in hiring someone to be a columnist that opines largely about Broward County issues, trends and personalities for the 40-45% of the area that lives there.
If they wanted to, they would have.
They haven't.
They take us completely for granted!
As I said in that Oct. 3rd blog post of mine about Marco Rubio that happened to mention Marquez and her complete disinterest in anything north of the county line the past 39 months,
Marco Rubio vs. Univision - An attempted political smear FINALLY awakens the Miami Herald to Univision's thread-bare claim to journalism. Finalmente!
living in Broward County in the year 2011 is to know that the Miami Herald has no interest in writing about the world you and your family and friends live in, even while constantly telling you about people you've never heard of who live in another country hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
And yet, the Herald continues to impart a sense of importance to these other people's lives that's completely out of proportion to the reality of its readers, while ignoring Broward county and municipal elected officials mis-adventures and poor decision-making here that DO affect our daily lives.
And not surprisingly, the logical consequence is that failing to see their world accurately and fairly reflected in the largest area newspaper in South Florida, more and more well-educated and well-informed people in Broward County who were once readers have completely stopped reading the Miami Herald... and seeing the advertising that appears in it.
It's dead to them.
Iceberg dead ahead!
