Showing posts with label Miami Libre: Cuban Bloggers Document Castro's Daily Atrocities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miami Libre: Cuban Bloggers Document Castro's Daily Atrocities. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

PJTV.com video re Babalú Blog: Miami Libre: Cuban Bloggers Document Castro's Daily Atrocities; South Florida as media backwater

In my email in-box today came the daily email I get from PJTV.com and today it's of particular interest to South Florida, a video titled: "Miami Libre: Cuban Bloggers Document Castro's Daily Atrocities."

It consists of a 17-minute video with Dr. Helen Smith, of www.drhelen.blogspot.com interviewing the team behind
Babalú Blog, http://babalublog.com/ at Cuban Crafters, discussing their intent and motivations behind the Miami-based blog, as well as the efforts of other Cuban-Americans and Cubans like Yoani Sánchez of the Generation Y blog, to lift the veil on what's going on with Fidel & Company's island prison. http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

See the video at http://www.pjtv.com/v/3531
Registration is required but it's quick and free.

After you see it, you'll probably think the same thing that I did.
The same sort of thing I so often think after watching a compelling segment on CBS News Sunday Morning, or reading about something on the Internet or in a magazine: Isn't this precisely the sort of thing that should've already been run on a local Miami-area TV station?

Something that should've been run on their weekend public policy programming?
Despite all the current media blather that exists about media organizations getting hyper-local or using technology to keep readers, and to tell compelling stories in a more interesting and interactive way, compared to efforts elsewhere in the country, local South Florida newspapers and TV stations do what can only be described as a piss-poor job of incorporating technology in illuminating local news issues, or in giving South Florida a fresh perspective on someone or something locally that creates ripple effects elsewhere, whether positive or negative.

Here in South Florida, that grandiose talk about getting hyper-local is, indeed,
nothing but media hyperbole, as the curious lack of news media present at public policy events I regularly attend, week-after-week, month-after-month, only confirms this belief and our very sad reality of living in a journalism backwater.
Why such a consistent serious lack of effort?

This interesting PJTV.com video on
Babalú Blog is but the latest example that reminds those discerning news consumers and public policy types among us of South Florida's media backwardness, but there are plenty of other examples that I've observed in the past and plan on bringing to your attention. (And examples that many of you have shared with me, too.)
Examples that I've written about in my notebooks but have never actually posted, usually out of frustration.
Trust me, there's a lot of gold in that "Draft" vault, though I suppose you all will be the ultimate judge of that.