A Letter to Anders Gyllenhaal of the Miami Herald on Local News Coverage

A few weeks ago, like most Sunday mornings, I was watching Local10's Michael Putney on his This Week in South Florida on Channel 10, when I suddenly did a double-take.

In the next-to-last segment of the show where Michael always reads viewer letters before he concludes with his Putney Perspective, he read the name of a local Hallandale Beach resident I recognized, who'd written in to criticize the generally poor and short-sighted job local media does of covering local news of a non-crime nature.

Because I always tape my Sunday morning chat show marathon, starting with C-SPAN's Washington Journal at 7 a.m., I was able to jot down the excerpted comments and made a note that the next time I saw this individual, I'd need to ask if those were indeed his remarks.
Well, about six weeks ago I was attending the Hallandale Beach Planning and Zoning Board, as there was an interesting case involving a woman who wanted to have an Assisted Living Facility run out of her home in a residential area, in order to take care of a relative.
Some of the neighbors were visibly and vocally unhappy about the prospect of this, despite the fact that national and state public policy actually encourages this by making it illegal for communities to discriminate against them in zoning.

(It was actually quite a heated afternoon, full of often derisive and sarcastic remarks by the neighbors directed at the woman who was trying to look after her older relative in a way that would keep her comfortable and as stress-free as possible.
In my opinion, the neighbors seemed not to have done their homework with regard to what they could actually do to prevent this from happening, since the state had already given their okay on it and there was nothing that the city could do to prevent it if the the applicant met all the requirements.)

After the conclusion of the meeting, I stopped Board member Michael Butler, whom I'd first met a few weeks before at the monthly evening Resident Forums conducted by HB Commissioner Keith London, and asked him if he was, in fact, THE Michael Butler whose on-target comments had struck a chord with Michael Putney, me and most of the other public policy community in South Florida I'd spoken to about the topic.
Bulls-eye!

I explained to Michael B. that I'd written a letter in a much similar vein to news execs at the Herald and had kept in on ice for a few months, but now thought the time was right to send it on its way, knowing that I'd eventually print it here as well.
I told him that thought his comments would serve as the perfect introduction to my own comments about local news coverage, and asked him if he'd consider allowing me to publish his comments to TWISF in their entirety, excising email addresses as I usually try to do.
Happily, he agreed on the spot and a few days later the words were in my inbox, for which I'm much obliged to him.

Subsequent to that, Michael's concerns were also mentioned in the Edward Scumacher-Matos column of the Herald on July 13th, entitled Readers sound off on what they want in the Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/540/story/602080.html

----------------------------------------
From: Michael Butler
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008
To: Michael Putney
Subject: "Local watchdogs struggle to survive"

Dear Mr. Putney,

I watch your show every weekend, and very much appreciate the information you provide the public about local government.

In addition, I agree wholeheartedly with your article in yesterday's Miami Herald about the importance of our local newspapers. In fact, I began my subscription to the Herald specifically because of their reporting on local government that resulted in stories like "House of Lies".

However, I'm disappointed every day with the lack of local government coverage in the newspaper. The paper has significant coverage about national and international news, but often I have heard it already on NPR, or seen it the night before on the NewsHour. There is an entire section devoted to local and national sports. But daily focus on all the many local governments is almost non-existent. My City has commission meetings twice each month, and there is rarely any coverage in the paper. There are important issues that affect everyone in the CIty, but only those who are actively involved are aware because there is no independent, objective communication to the public.

If our local newspapers want to increase local readership, then they should spend far more time reporting on the local issues that impact all of us everyday. Although its appreciated, national and international news isn't as important in the local paper because there are so many other sources. For local government, there is only one source, and only one watchdog.

I have kept a WSJ article from Friday August 10 2001 about "The Daily Newspaper" in Dunn, NC. The subtitle to the article reads..."In an Electronic Age, It Wins With Blanket Coverage Of Hometown Goings-On." The answer to our local paper's declining circulation isn't a mystery. Its been solved already: just report on local issues that we the public can't get anywhere else!

Sincerely,
Michael Butler
Hallandale FL 33009
_______________
My own letter consists of an email that I could've well sent back in April, but kept in reserve on ice until last month, because I saw more and more egregious examples in the Herald of the very thing I initially decried: lack of context and completeness in local stories.
Made all the more frustrating because I was at the event from beginning to end and so know exactly what happened.
But didn't see much of what I saw over all those hours reflected in the story.

This is the letter in essence, minus a few spelling errors I made on account of my sending it out of sheer frustration and wanting to be done with it.
Never a good idea, esp. early in the morning!

It was sent to Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal after having originally sent a shorter version of it to Herald Broward AME Patricia Andrews, with a cc to Edward Schumacher-Matos .

Having just recently sent this email before seeing a funny Disney film on Turner Classic Movies, some of you who are ardent film fans may recall that "Anders" was the name of the spy in Europe who was all set to receive the Section 32" device smuggled out by newly-arrived art curator, Dr. Mikhail Andrassy (Alexander Scourby) in the 1959 Disney classic, The Shaggy Dog, starring Fred MacMurray and Tommy Kirk.
The latter coped as best he could as a late '50's-era teenage boy afflicted with lycanthropy, cold war spies on his heels, and a bit of a crush on a cute French tart with a spy for a father,
when not morphing in and out as a Bratislavan Sheep Dog. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053271/
------------------------------
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 6:25 PM
To: Gyllenhaal, Anders - Miami
Subject: Am resending this due to incorrect email address

Friday July 18th, 2008

Mr. Anders Gyllenhaal
Executive Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132


Dear Mr. Gyllenhaal

I tried to send the email below to you as a cc on Thursday morning but neglected to have the "a" before your name on that email, so it was necessarily bounced back to me last night.

I have some additional comments below the email to Patricia Andrews.

Letter below as sent
______________________
Subject: Miami Herald's coverage of Broward Charter Review Commission
Thursday, July 17, 2008 6:00 AM
To: Patricia Andrews
Cc: Anders Gyllenhaal, Edward Schumacher-Matos

I've kept this in Draft form for three months, since the April meeting that marked the final Broward County CRC meeting, thinking that maybe I'd eventually see some tangible improvement in the Herald's local news coverage.
Nope!
----------------------
Sunday April 13, 2008

Dear Ms. Andrews:

Having followed the Broward County Charter Review Commission issue pretty closely since they began their work, I find myself needing to ask you a simple question, and it's one that, frankly, I could've posed at almost any time within the past year, given what's been written and how it's been written about the CRC in The Herald.

Ms. Andrews, as AME for Broward, is there a specific stylistic or editorial reason that NONE of the Herald's local stories involving the actual casting of votes by elected officials (or their proxies) -and on this important subject in particular- ever have an actual tally box or something approximating one, so that Herald readers can ACTUALLY know who voted for or against the item that's being written about?

Over and over and over again your paper goes with the voting obfuscation, regardless of subject, topic or location in the community, whether city council or county commission.
It's like you're keeping that info close to the vest and can't reveal it except to certain selected folks who pay for some premium service called Herald PLUS.
As if the NY Times didn't show what a bad choice that was.

Is it felt at Herald HQ that including that sort of factual nugget would make the Herald seem, well, too much like a weekly newspaper in a small parochial town that none of your current reporters or editors would ever want to work at (again)? Is that it?

Is it verboten to have a helpful tally sheet at the end of a Herald story in the same curious way that the newspaper seems to go out of its way NOT to ever mention a website URL within a story, especially in comparison with the frequency and ease with which other newspapers of the same size (and larger) do so everyday, without any compunction at all?

(Though it's not your area, per se, as a questionable practice that does readers absolutely no good, it's not dis-similar to the very weird way the Herald has for months refused to give proper photo credits under photos that appear on their so-called People page.
There are usually six to eight photos or trade-marked items on that page, yet the only one that consistently gets a credit is a photo taken by a Herald staff photographer.
Hm-mm... that's a bit more than just a curious coincidence.

So am I to understand that simply running the phrase "Wire Reports" at the very top of the page is now sufficient credit for the professional photographers who took the shots?
Though she's clearly very talented, for all her many amazing abilities, I know with certainty that Sports Illustrated cover model Marisa Miller didn't take that photo of herself in a bikini, that was featured a few days ago.

Do you know who did snap the photo?
Yeah, neither do I, Ms. Andrews.
I guess that's really sort of the point, isn't it, and puts us in the same boat.

And honestly, what about the Herald sports section dogged refusal for months to consistently list weekend NY Yankees radio broadcasts in its On Air chart?
Perhaps because the radio station that airs them has a relationship with the Sun-Sentinel?

Couldn't say for sure, but its omission only draws more attention to the nature of the people who supposedly run that section of the newspaper, and make it seem like so much child-like pettiness.
No one I've met yet in South Florida is at all impressed by that bit of faux cleverness.)

These sorts of curious editorial and reporting patterns and habits are one of the most distinctive aspects of the Miami Herald in the year 2008, and trust me, I don't mean that as a compliment, either.

Is it that you and the Herald's management are semi-comfortable keeping readers in the dark, or space concerns, and if the latter, why don't you at least have some context on the Herald awful joke of a website, where physical space isn't supposed to be an issue?
But you don't.

What am I to think when your newspaper seems to be so obtuse about not capturing any of the inherent drama of the story Wednesday night, and can't even bring itself to publicly reveal the identities of which CRC members were on which side of each vote?

I don't want quotes from one or two or three members, but NOT KNOW the actual votes cast by the CRC members on the issues you're writing about.
Why is that so difficult?

I was at the CRC hearing Wednesday, from beginning to end, and, as it happens, I'm someone who's been very supportive of the proposal for a county-wide elected mayor in Broward County, and a MTA to make transportation more efficient and responsive to residents and riders.
For many reasons, not the least of which is simply common sense.

Not that either of your TWO reporters mentioned it in their dispatch, but the best reason for the mayor proposal was actually uttered by a very frustrated member of the CRC late in the proceedings, perhaps in one of those moments when you only think of something in perfect
clarity when you are either truly angry or exhausted.

To paraphrase what CRC member Michael Buckner said, everyone on the CRC goes home to a city in Broward where the mayor is actually elected.
"Why can't that be the case for the county for all Broward County citizens, too?"
Exactly!
It has the virtue of being simple, honest and to the point.

It sure would've been nice to actually see that comment of his somewhere in your newspaper!

Even if I weren't in favor of the elected mayoral proposal or the MTA, even if I was against them -like the ONE citizen who showed up to urge the defeat of the elected mayor proposal- I'd still like to read in a Herald story about a vote that determined whether or not I'd ever be able to vote on the proposal, WHO was AGAINST my having that vote.

What's the reasonable explanation I'm missing here, Ms. Andrews?

And honestly, if you're going to have two reporters at County Hall for the meeting, is it too much to ask that they write in a way that doesn't read as if they were watching the proceedings on closed-circuit TV, for all the lack of detail they gave us of the mood of the room?

I'm a thoroughly modern person, Ms. Andrews, but I'm old-fashioned in that I like context and nuance, and being able to have information that helps me make sense of things, or as Wednesday
clearly demonstrated, in trying to understand the inexplicable.
I got nothing from your paper on that score.

With two Herald reporters assigned to the story, how did it never occur to them to consider the role of a CRC member's profession or political position -or which sitting Commissioner selected them- in the final vote breakdown?
Yeah, that kind of context often proves helpful.

Was it just coincidence that the only two city mayors on the CRC, the Chair, Lori Mosely of Miramar and Debbie Eisenger of Cooper City, both voted against the elected mayor proposal?
Could that be in part because of a reasonable fear of loss of influence in their part of the County?
That'd only be human, I suppose.

But then your story never even gets close to explaining why there's been so many ups and downs over the months that led to the vote that took place Wednesday.

Point of fact, your story never even mentions the chair, Mayor Lori Moseley.

It also NEVER mentions that prior to the public start of the meeting at 1 p.m., the CRC members had already voted to prevent public input on additional topics, even though that was on the agenda, as evidenced by the documents that the staff passed out to everyone when they showed up and signed in.

Wow, that's both kind of curious and important, don't you think?

Why the secrecy?

Even worse, in all the hours and hours that preceded the actual final arguments for and against
the elected mayoral proposal, with an uncertain vote time, Mayor Moseley and all of the other members of the CRC, as well as their staff, NEVER bothered to do the right thing and publicly announce this decision to the citizens in the chambers, or those watching on Cable TV.
Or, for that matter, to the few reporters who were there.

They kept that information to themselves.

As it happens, there actually WAS a woman who waited the entire day to speak on that specific agenda item, and surely, she would've appreciated knowing hours earlier that she would be denied a chance to get in her two cents.

Like everyone else in the audience, we wondered why that decision was made and what the vote breakdown on it was.

The Herald's story never mentions ANY of that, Ms. Andrews.

It's like it never happened.

If I'd known at the time that your TWO reporters weren't going to even mention it, maybe at the time, I'd have banged a bit on the glass window in the media room in the back of the chambers and reminded your reporters to write about THAT, too.
But coulda. woulda, shoulda.

Like so many hundreds of Miami Herald stories over the not-so-recent past, Ms. Andrews, the actual presentation of the local news actually raises more troubling questions than it ever seeks to answer.
_______________
July 18, 2008
4 p.m.

Dear Mr. Gyllenhaal,

Knowing a little of your background with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and being very familiar with what a consistently excellent paper it is, more often than not, I know that you desperately want the Herald to once again have a sense of purpose and clarity, to regain the positive
influence it once held in good stead in South Florida, otherwise you'd never have accepted the offer to return here as Executive Editor.

Since returning over four years ago to the area I grew-up in during the '70's, after 15 years in the Washington area, I've observed far-too-many examples of simple, self-evident and, frankly, head-scratching problems at the Herald.
Ones that never seem to be properly addressed or resolved and merely linger on, like an unpleasant smell.

Rather than get on a tangent here, I'll simply close with one example, perhaps unknown to you now, that speaks volumes to me and others I know, who aren't just devout news junkies, but also the public policy types that are actually going to the local meetings, forums and symposia that are the actual nuts and bolts of this very apathetic community, such as it is, unfortunately.
I realize that makes us a tiny minority around here, but that shouldn't negate the point-of-view that many of us have with regard to local news coverage -or the lack of it.

We're your current but still thoroughly dis-satisfied readers, folks who spend lots of time and money invested in reading trade & industry journals and magazines, and out-of-town newspapers, printed and online.
Not to mention, more locally, the Daily Business Review and Miami Today News and the Miami SunPost among others.

And, yes, even start blogs, however imperfect, because of our great frustration with the South Florida media environment we wake up to every morning, both print and electronic.

But that doesn't change the fact that we all still share the same desire to see the Herald contain the proper mixture of clever-and-informed nuance AND some hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners journalism.
We just want more of it sooner rather than later.

The sort that I strongly suspect you think this area deserves, and ought to expect to get regularly from a newspaper that you are involved in shaping.

Two-three years ago, I responded favorably when, completely out of the blue, the Herald contacted me about giving some constructive criticism.
(Or as I call it dismissively, "the Kim Marcille experiment." Sound and fury signifying nothing.)

Despite all the back-patting proclamations and emails I received at the time, saying how much my input would be valued, I never got any response to my short emails.
Not long opinionated discursive tangents on policy issues or claims to bias of one sort or another,
but rather simple connect-the-dots stuff.
Nada!

This was beyond exasperating.

In my opinion, as well as some other folks in South Florida I know who were also contacted by the newspaper, people who are very well-read and informed on community affairs, in retrospect, it seems to have been either a very poorly conceived and executed temporary PR stunt, or,
even worse, if possible, an attempt to have readers help guide the Herald/McClatchy marketing people in their efforts to better reach advertisers, under the guise of actually improving the content and scope of the newspaper.
Absent all the facts, I don't know which is worse, but my intuition leans towards the latter as the real purpose, almost by default.

I'm in no position to know definitively what the thinking was there, but whatever its real intent, the result was nothing but more fuel on the fire.
And I'm far from alone in that sentiment.

Not to be presumptuous, but having thought about this for quite some time, I'll be dropping you an email in the near future with some other self-evident (to me) examples of issues that I suspect you're either unaware of, or thought had been been resolved, but weren't.

Again, Mr. Gyllenhaal, I'm a reader who wants the Herald to be much better than it currently is, but at some point, if there aren't any tangible changes for the better, you'll be losing me for good.
_____________________________
A similar version of the WSJ's page one story about the Dunn, NC newspaper can be found at:
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2001-08/a-2001-08-25-14-Dunn-s.cfm

The topic of local news coverage animates this interesting early 2005 Jim Romensko post, titled,
Many papers don't have a relationship with readers
http://www.poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=8821

His inclusion of this David Cay Johnston quote is dynamite in a bottle:
"What has happened to the relationship between news organizations and their audiences?" Many modern newspapers have no relationship at all with their audiences. The chain-owned, formula-produced papers are no more neighbors than any other garish franchise on the local commercial strip -- as surprising as a Holiday Inn, as nourishing as a Dunkin' Donuts, and as worldly as an Outback Steakhouse.

As a point of public information, the Minutes of the very last public Broward County Charter Review Commission meeting on April 9th, the hearing I attended and which I refer to above, where final decisions were made on which proposals would be voted upon by Broward voters in November, are NOT on the county's CRC website, despite implying that they are.

What is actually there at http://www.broward.org/charter/pdf/crc_regular_meetin20040908final.pdf
is a Summary of Discussion from the 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. session which was closed to the public. So where are the Minutes of the actual public meeting that began at 1 p.m.?

I'll be making some phone calls on Monday to County Hall and hope that it's just an oversight, not intentional.