Showing posts with label Ombudsman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ombudsman. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2016

South Florida Journalism in 2016: The ever-expanding gulf between what the South Florida press corps offers up and the quality, local-centric news coverage the South Florida public craves, has never been as large as now; Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets in her final NY Times Public Editor column that hits out against elite/institutional bias

South Florida Journalism in 2016: The ever-expanding gulf between what the South Florida press corps offers up and the quality, local-centric news coverage the South Florida public craves, has never been as large as now; Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets in her final NY Times Public Editor column that hits out against elite/institutional bias
Revised April 21, 2016 at 3:15 p.m.

As most of you longtime readers of Hallandale Beach Blog know well by now -but which you newer readers don't, especially those of you who have only discovered me the past two years via my tweets @hbbtruth- I started this blog in 2007, largely out of a fit of frustration and anger at the self-evident failure and lack of individual/collective effort I saw on a daily basis by the South Florida news media. Specifically, its collective failure to evolve from what it once was -home to nationally-respected who were in some cases some of the best and most-dogged investigative news sleuths in the country.
It's why so many of them eventually wound up at the then-three national U.S. TV networks and the fledgling CNN when that cablenet debuted.

My complaint, summed-up, was that the South Florida's press corps' failed to build upon this track record, and failed to expand its level of news coverage of public policy and local government in ways that readers/viewers clearly wanted to see and rather expected.

Though I was born in San Antonio, Texas a few years before, my family arrived in Miami from Memphis when I was seven years old in the Summer of 1968, the day after Miami Dolphins #1 Draft pick Larry Csonka of Syracuse signed with the Dolphins.
As everyone who knows me then or now can tell you, I have been a devout news, sports and public affairs junkie ever since then.
But the difference between then and now is that when I was growing-up in South Florida in the '70's, there was an All-News AM radio station, WINZ AM 940 that was a CBS News affiliate and provided lots of news reportes to new York, especially those covering weather, immigration and the Sapce Shuttle.

That has NOT been the case in several decades, nor has there been even one attempt by anyone to lay the groundwork for a Local News Cable channel of the sort that has existed in many media markets throughout thsi country, including some smaller than South Florida's.

Why has COMCAST, long the dominant cable provider in South Florida, utterly failed to deliver on that potential? Well, you know who never asks?
The South Florida news media themselves, including the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
If you want to waste an hour, try going thru their newspaper archives and try to find a single story about the subject in the past 20 years.
That's the sort of media area South Florida is.

That's made worse because with my crazy accurate memory, I've been able to recall  at the drop of a hat the names of individual reporters and anchors at local TV/radio stations and reporters and editors at the Miami Herald and the late Miami News -that I spent so much time at as a High School student- and the individual beats their reporters covered and owned .
And the important news stories they broke or gave much-needed historical context to when it really mattered to residents of South Florida, NOT after-the-fact months later in some investigative piece clearly designed to win journalism awards, NOT keep South Florida properly informed.

I still have an institutional memory of what those people were able to do with much less in the way of resources and technology than the current crew of South Florida journalists have and take for granted, for whatever reasons.
That doesn't just rankle, it makes me cringe, because so much of what I regularly consume from local South Florida media isn't just parochial but even shallower than the above ground swimming pools that once seemed to dominate South Florida and North Miami Beach in the 1970's.

And that means that getting to the heart of some of the endemic and unique problems of South Florida, much less their possible solutions, are one day farther away than they need to be for our community's long-term sake.

Over the past nine years that I have been writing this blog, a recurring theme here has been the cleavage between what the South Florida news media believes is perfectly acceptable in terms of effort and end product for news consumers, and what the public wants and expects from them. 

A graph where X never meets Y.

Over the years, the insufficient level of individual and collective effort expended by the South Florida press corps and the dominant English-language news outlets has only gnawed away at me and other well-informed observers I know and trust, as we are continually see both individual reporter bias, institutional lack of historical knowledge and lack of torpedo every well-intentioned effort to make local South Florida residents better informed about their community and the state that is now the third-largest in the country.

We see the growing gap between what the public expects from print/TV reporters and columnists and TV Assignment Editors and News Directors, in the form of interesting and compelling ways to cover local news, and what is actually presented to us as readers and viewers, as the very seeds for our area's growing technology and information gap.
A growing class and income chasm that won't be made smaller by simply pretending that it doesn't exist.

These same national trends are regularly and correctly decried in Washington as harmful to the nation's future and economic vitality when presented calmly as facts by politicians of varying political persuasions and august public interest groups with demonstrated track records for being non-partisan, but somehow, closer to home, these same problems are largely ignored when they are pointed out by people like myself and other public observers in South Florida who want this community to be MUCH BETTER than it is,.
Even when we use self-evident facts and the news media's own track record as our opening and closing arguments.

It's not exactly a secret that compared to the rest of the country, South Florida's relative youth historically -the City of Miami not being founded until 1897- and large and ever-growing population of Northeastern and Midwestern transplants whose history and allegiances remain elsewhere years after they've moved here, has always worked against the long-term interests of South Florida institutions, civic groups and foundations, even ones who profess laudable societal goals and do try to show some spirit and verve.

But this also means these groups are NOT front-of-mind and front-and-center when it comes to focusing the community's attention on problems the way similar groups are elsewhere in the country.
It's not an excuse, merely a reflection of history and common knowledge, borne of experience living in and growing-up in South Florida.
But at some point, these same groups current unwillingness to point out the problems at hand and suggesting tangible solutions, has to be called out, and I will be doing just that in a future post with some energy and enthusiasm that I know will surprise and anger many with its ferocity and focus.

So be it!

My blog has never been interested in carrying the water for South Florida's elites or well-off.
#disrupt

But as it concerns today's theme of journalistic lack of effort in South Florida, it's hard to shake the notion that many of these civic groups ansd foundations, so dependent upon the South Florida news media for positive attention and charity dollars when they can get it, seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy denying self-evident problem in large part  because of whose oxen may well need to be gored. (Or is it a case of being afraid to bite the hand that feeds them?) 
The South Florida news media's.

To me and many of the people I regularly speak with and confide in here in South Florida and throughout the Sunshine State -even many reporters, editors, columnists and TV anchors whose names are known instantly to many of you- the gulf in South Florida between what is possible in local journalism because of advances in technology that make it easier than ever to report accurately and in real-time, has, unfortunately, never seemed so large as at it does at present.

This is made all the worse by what takes place everyday with the two largest South Florida-based daily newspapers, McClatchy's Miami Herald and the Tribune Company's South Florida Sun-Sentinel, both of whom are and have been going in the wrong direction from readers desires for far too many years.


Since the majority of my focus on this blog, despite my 1,001 other interests and passions, has always been what is happening in South Florida -for good or for bad and why- I write to day to share some much-needed wisdom from a trusted source I have long depended upon, even while never mentioning her previously: Margaret Sullivan, the departing New York Times Public Editor.
At the end of her term as the the Reader's Ombudsman, just as was true throughout when she never hesitated to challenge long-established Times icons and the Times' often counter-intuitive ways of thinking about the larger public interest, Margaret Sullivan gives as good as she gets.

As I have remarked here many times in the past with fact-filled blog post and copies of letters to the Miami Herald's management, the Herald never replaced their Ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, after he left for NPR. And they consciously ignored many of the common sense suggestions he made about journalists.

That includes his April 25, 2010 column, Reporter-columnists tread fine line with readers' trust about the need for journalists to publicly come out to readers as one one thing or the other, i.e. not being both reporter AND columnist, because of the damage that such dual roles can cause to perceived bias and credibility with readers.

The Herald ignored that advice when it came to dealing with both Beth Reinhard and later, Marc CaputoIf you want a copy of that column, just write me and ask for a copy.
It's not been available at the Herald's website for many years.

To see how indifferent the Herald's management was to reader perceptions of bias or unfairness, take a poke at my blog post from May 21 of 2012 titled, 
"What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there..." 

See also, among many others to choose from:

11/12/10 - 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
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/day-in-life-of-mcclatchys-miami-herald.html

12/21/11- 
For another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County, more lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza -Part 1

8/13/13 - Former Miami Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos -whose position at the Herald remains unfilled 27 months later by McClatchy execs- as NPR's Ombudsman, lays the wood into NPR's Laura Sullivan & Amy Walters for a 2011 investigation re foster care in South Dakota, which officials there took umbrage with, and for good reason it seems. “My finding is that the series was deeply flawed and should not have been aired as it was”

I hasten to add that this was also during the McClatchy era when the Herald ran a multi-weeks old story about Donald Trump in the "Breaking News" section of the Herald's Broward homepage on Monday December 19th, 2011 at 11:21 p.m.
And there it stayed for days...
Really. :-(

Margaret Sullivan's final column from last Friday is a column of pure gold, for it has much that the South Florida press corps could and SHOULD learn from in the way of perceived reporter/editorial/institutional bias, attention to accuracy and willingness to publicly admit mistakes.

I highly commend it to you and ask you to consider sharing it with others you know in South Florida and throughout the Sunshine State who think as I (we) do -that South Florida and the rest of the state would be much better off with a fully-engaged and curious press corps year-round, not the one we have had for years that habitually takes a Summer slumber or vacation come mid-June, never to be seen again until after Labor Day, no matter how important the story.

New study by "the American Press Institute - almost no one trusts the media. The report found that just six percent of Americans have a great amount of confidence in the press.  To put that into perspective, the API ‘s study showed that Americans trust only Congress less than the media. Other organizations that the public has more confidence in than journalists: banks, organized religion, the Supreme Court, and the military.  The number one reason people mistrust the media is that they found reports one-sided or biased. Following closely behind was that readers found something factually inaccurate. Interestingly, respondents to the API report said that how a media outlet responds to inaccurate reports is extremely important.  “Several focus group participants said they do not expect news sources to be perfect and how a source reacts to errors can actually build trust,” stated the report. “Several people said that owning up to mistakes and drawing attention to errors or mistakes can show consumers that a source is accountable and dedicated to getting it right in the long term.” 
On the heels of this not-at-all surprising survey comes this great rear-view column from Sullivan, soon-to-be the Washington Post's new media columnist.




New York Times
The Public Editor's Journal - Margaret Sullivan  
Five Things I Won’t Miss at The Times — and Seven I Will  By Margaret Sullivan 
April 15, 2016 10:00 am 
April 15, 2016 10:00 am
While preparing to leave the public editor’s office and move to Washington, I’ve been getting together in recent weeks with some people I’ve met while living in New York. One was Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, who asked me over lunch what columns I planned to do before I left. I tossed it back to him, asking what he would like to read, and he suggested I take up “what I love and what I hate about The New York Times.”
This guy’s definitely got a future as an editor! I decided to tweak his idea, with a nod to Nora Ephron’s list from her book, “I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections.” (Of all the people I wish I had been able to meet in New York, she tops the list.)
Read the rest of her great post at:
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/five-things-i-wont-miss-at-the-times-and-seven-i-will/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=1

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Former Miami Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos -whose position at the Herald remains unfilled 27 months later by McClatchy execs- as NPR's Ombudsman, lays the wood into NPR's Laura Sullivan & Amy Walters for a 2011 investigation re foster care in South Dakota, which officials there took umbrage with, and for good reason it seems. “My finding is that the series was deeply flawed and should not have been aired as it was”







Poynter.org
NPR stands by story its ombudsman criticized
by Andrew Beaujon
Published Aug. 12, 2013 5:29 pm
Updated Aug. 12, 2013 5:34 pm
There are six chapters of NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos’ epic examination of Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters’ October 2011 investigation about foster care in South Dakota.
The series won awards but was also criticized by the state’s governor and head of its Department of Social Services. “Many South Dakota residents also have written me in disapproval of it,” Schumacher-Matos writes. “My finding is that the series was deeply flawed and should not have been aired as it was.” 
Read the rest at:












Edward Schumacher-Matos split his Ombudsman position at the Miami Herald in May of 2011 after he'd been WITHOUT either a blog or a weekly print or online column, but rather saddled with a peculiar once-in-a-while, sometimes every 3-4 months column thing, for NPR in Washington, D.C. 

Schumacher-Matos' position at the Herald remains unfilled 27 months later by McClatchy execs, who seem to place no value on readers and their questions of fairness or bias having a seat at the table.
There's nobody to represent readers' deep and justified concerns about examples of bias, misrepresentation and flackery in the paper on behalf of South Florida's powerful and privileged, who have high-powered attorneys and PR consultants to ensure they are seen only in the most positive light.

But then that's just one of many unresolved customer problems there these days that cause it to lose readers every week.
It's fair to say that a lot of people in South Florida took ESM and his position for granted, including lots of local bloggers and politicians, and the Herald certainly did him no favors by NOT giving him much of a perch to speak out from.

But something, even infrequent, is better than nada, and right now, with that reader level of confidence among serious readers of the Herald as low as it's ever been, it's worth a minute to consider what message they are sending when they refuse to name anyone to that position.

His infrequent columns at least tried to keep Herald reporters and editors on the level and be square with readers, but since he left, anything goes -and does.

While I've written about this troubling subject many times on this blog, and have written Herald management and editors about their failure to fill the position, even posting those emails to them here for you to see for yourselves, it's clear they have a different point-of-view.
It is what it is.

To see how indifferent they are to reader perceptions of bias or unfairness, take a poke at my blog post from May of 2012 titled, "What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there..." 

Monday, February 18, 2013

We applaud TheWrap's Sharon Waxman for adroitly performing a LIVE autopsy on curious recent Washington Post and N.Y. Times moves -WaPo booting Ombudsman position while NYT's "T" Mag curiously goes into a Time Machine and then bows and genuflects to NY society grande dame Lee Radziwill

We applaud TheWrap's Sharon Waxman for adroitly performing a LIVE autopsy on curious recent Washington Post and N.Y. Times moves -WaPo booting Ombudsman position while NYT's "T" Mag curiously goes into a Time Machine and then bows and genuflects to NY society grande dame Lee Radziwill 
TheWrap
WaxWord blog
Washington Post May Cut Ombudsman; New York Times Shills for Lee Radziwill
By Sharon Waxman
Published: February 17, 2013 @ 3:52 pm
The Washington Post is about to cut its ombudsman, according to its ombudsman.
In the latest, lamentable sign of the diminishing of America’s great daily newspapers, Patrick Pexton wrote this weekend that he is likely to be the last reader representative for the paper when his two-year term ends on Feb. 28.
Read the rest of the column at


Beware the Ghosts of Carrie Donovan! 
Democratic on their voter's registration card, yes, but baronial in their tastes -who said the class system was dead in New York?

New York magazine
The Cut blog
Deborah Needleman Puts Lee Radziwill on Her Debut T Cover
By Charlotte Cowles and Jenni Avin
Posted February 7, 2013 at 9:57 a.m.

Speaking of Lee Radziwill, at a joint press conference today, Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Col. Robert R. McCormick announced...

See also:
Valentine’s Day Bloodbath: WaPo Lays Off Workers in Hush-Hush Manner
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/washington-post-layoffs-valentines-day_b96626

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Friday, February 15, 2013

Uh-oh! Washington Post Ombudsman cries 'Shame on Us' for reporting Sarah Palin would join al-Jazeera -it's actually the liberal hyperbole-prone author of "Vagina: A Biography," Naomi Wolf, who's thinking of hectoring unsuspecting al-Jazeera viewers until they turn the channel to get away from her shrillness

Uh-oh! Washington Post Ombudsman cries 'Shame on Us' for reporting Sarah Palin would join al-Jazeera -it's actually the liberal hyperbole-prone author of "Vagina: A Biography," Naomi Wolf, who's thinking of hectoring unsuspecting al-Jazeera viewers until they turn the channel to get away from her shrillness 
POLITICO
Naomi Wolf in early talks with Al Jazeera
By Dylan Byers
2/14/13 8:31 PM EST
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/02/naomi-wolf-in-early-talks-with-al-jazeera-157116.html

Breitbart's Big Journalism
WaPo Ombudsman: 'Shame on us' for false Palin report
by Tony Lee  
14 Feb 2013, 6:25 PM PDT

The Huffington Post
Naomi Wolf Ends Weekly Guardian US Column; Will Contribute Monthly
Michael Calderone, Senior Media Reporter, The Huffington Post
Posted: 02/14/2013 12:29 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-calderone/naomi-wolf-guardian-column_b_2687066.html

Slate
Naomi Wolf’s New Book About Her Vagina
It’s as ludicrous as you think it is.
By Katie Roiphe
Posted Monday, Sept. 10, 2012, at 3:30 AM ET

Monday, May 21, 2012

What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there...


What's going on at the Miami Herald? More than a year after the last one fled, the Herald still lacks an Ombudsman -and shows no sign of getting one- to represent readers deep concerns about bias, misrepresentation and flackery on behalf of South Florida's powerful & privileged at the Herald. And that's just one of many unresolved problems there...


Those of you who come to this blog regularly will recall that back in December and January, I sent a very thorough letter to the top management of the Miami Herald -Publisher David Landsberg, Executive Editor Aminda Marques and Managing Editor Rick Hirsch among others- and some folks at parent company McClatchy Company regarding longstanding problems that I'd been aware of and had observed both in the newspaper and on their website. 


Problems that, from my perspective, at least, they seemed to be expending precious little time, energy and resources on resolving any time in the near-future, judging by the physical product they continue to churn out and what you continue to see on their crummy static website.


Clearly, that doesn't speak well of what's going on down at One Herald Plaza, but then that's not breaking news, either.


After sending those emails, I later re-purposed them and posted those comments here on December 21, 2011.


For another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County, more lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza -Part 1
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/for-another-consistently-lousy-year-of.html

Part 2 of More lumps of coal in the Christmas stocking of One Herald Plaza for another consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald, esp. covering Broward County

I heard via email from several other concerned media watchers in South Florida -some of them with names you'd instantly recognize- who also don't like the look of things at the Herald -or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, either, for that matter.


People who, like me, feel that that given its enormous resources, even with a smaller staff, the Herald is not only short-changing the community in its geographical area, but has actually abdicated many of its basic reporting coverage responsibilities in critical ways, and yet can't even point to better and more nuanced reportorial coverage of the places it will actually deign to cover. 


While many people who wrote agreed with me just about 100%, others admitted that they hadn't personally noticed certain things I brought up to Herald management, but that once I mentioned it and they'd had some time to think about it, they found themselves largely agreeing with me that in a competitive marketplace, there was no logical reason for failing to resolve some of these longstanding problems that Herald readers have with the newspaper.


That was especially the case with the Herald's atrocious coverage of Broward County people, places and government, both local and county, where almost every night of the week, you can go to the Herald's Broward homepage, and yet consistently find that less than 40% of the listed stories have anything to do with Broward County.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/#navlink=navbar


Who deliberately runs a newspaper like that? 


In any case, besides some small initial response that first week after they were sent, which came just before the holidays, six months later, nobody from the Herald's management has since followed-up with me or gone public in the newspaper about what and when the Herald is going to do something to prevent the slippery-slope from becoming "the new normal."


A good first step, though long overdue, would actually be hiring an Ombudsman, one who actually lives in South Florida and who not only has a weekly column, but is also equipped with a daily blog.


Someone to better represent readers with deep concerns about the Herald's reporting and editorial bias, misrepresentation of facts, consistent curious choice to leave some key facts out of certain stories, and the perennial concern about Herald flackery on behalf of South Florida's business interests and the personally powerful & privileged -like the newspaper's love affair with M-D Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho, of whom seldom is heard a discouraging word.


But it's been more than a year now since Edward Schumacher-Matos left for NPR and the Council for Foreign Relations, and nothing is happening, even though that's actually something fairly easy to fix on that laundry list of unresolved problems there...
When are we going to see some tangible signs of positive change at the Herald?


And have you seen how weak their offerings are on their YouTube Channelhttp://www.youtube.com/user/MiamiHerald/ 


Without naming names, I know for a fact that there are twenty-something female bloggers in Scandinavia who are so popular that they produce more original video content and get more eyeballs seeing their original content on their YouTube Channel than the Herald gets for their's. (And they do it themselves, too.)


In fact, I know one such blogger in particular who has produced a number of videos within the past six months, most of which have been seen more times than ALL the Herald's videos for the past nine months combined. 


You'd think that by now, the folks locally at the Herald and in Sacramento for McClatchy, would have the good sense to be embarrassed at having all the resources they have, in a large market like this with so many interesting, bizarre and controversial things going on, yet posting such feeble content.
But, apparently, they're not.
------


Miami Herald
Looking back on 4 years of critiquing The Herald
By Edward Schumacher-Matos
May 1, 2011

Nearly four years ago, I wrote my first column as ombudsman. This is my last. I leave having learned a lot about you, the readers. I leave having failed you, too, in one promise.

I learned foremost that you care — about your community and your newspaper. You write a daily avalanche of e-mails to me and others at The Miami Herald or post comments online, often with passion, over issues in South Florida and the state.

When you don’t like how your point of view was treated in an article, you often threaten to cancel your subscription. Few of you actually do, at least for reasons of coverage. If anything, your reaction shows that you are reading the newspaper. And while most of my columns have been critical of something The Herald has done, you and I share this secret: For every article we disagree with, there are many, many more that we like. No other local news outlet keeps us as well informed.

I also learned your hottest buttons: Cuba, Israel, immigration, taxes, gay rights. And, of course, party politics. Your antennas are acute for any indication that The Herald might be tilting pro-Republican or Democrat.

But whatever your political inclination, the stories you like the most are investigations that ferret out local corruption. As The Herald has redefined itself through smaller staffs, shrinking paper size, and online expansion, you have overwhelmingly implored that it continue investing in the investigations that it does so well. After that, you most like local stories, though the Caribbean Basin and Middle East are local for you, too. You are sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

Few places in the country are so interesting. I am leaving to take up a new post as ombudsman of National Public Radio. I look forward to the political sensitivity of that role as NPR and the media nationally wrestle with how to finance responsible journalism and serve communities. But I will be sad to leave you.

So, how did I let you down? I announced in the beginning that in passing judgment on The Herald’s coverage — on whether it was one-sided, for example, or unfair or incomplete — I would tell you my position on the issue being covered in the original article. It was a revolutionary idea. Here is what I wrote in my first column:
“I’ll tell you upfront, and I’ll tell you my biases, for in the end what I write will necessarily be my own reasoned judgment. But I promise you it will be as fair as I can make it, never cynical, but sometimes irreverent. I strongly believe in good professional journalism, but I don’t think it’s Holy. You are welcome to agree, disagree or demand to kill the ump.”

That first column had to do with the coverage of the Gomez brothers, two young Colombians who were popular students but unauthorized immigrants detained for deportation. Their saga and the proposed Dream Act that might legalize them remains ongoing. Once a Colombian illegal immigrant myself, I wrote that I was sympathetic toward legalizing the unauthorized immigrants in the country.

Still, I criticized The Herald’s coverage for being slanted in favor of the boys. It largely overlooked legitimate questions held by many readers about the fairness of the Dream Act and legalizing the brothers.

But if I lived up to my promise in that first column, I found as the months went by that to state my position on the issues distracted from my critique of the coverage. I became the issue, instead of the reporting and editing by The Herald. As a mechanical matter, it also made the columns too long, especially if I wanted to explain the nuances of my views.

I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop the practice, but my promise somehow just slipped away.

I still wonder if there is a way to revive the idea, not just for ombudsmen, but for reporters.

We know that journalists are human and have opinions and political preferences. There also is no such thing as pure objectivity. We all see through the lens of our upbringing.

Most reporters stretch mightily to set aside their biases and follow basic journalistic rules. Editors further scrub stories for objectivity and fairness.

But we as a society are now in a cynical “post modern” age in which we have been taught to “deconstruct” articles in search of the writer’s supposed underlying intent. Trust in the news media is low. Would transparency about a reporter’s personal views help recover trust then? Is there a practical way to make it work? Or would it be a distraction from the news itself?

I don’t have the answers but would appreciate knowing your parting thoughts. As the news media fragments into many slivers of opinion, we risk fragmenting as a society and a nation. We need to have at least a common base of facts.

Thank you for the privilege of having been allowed into your homes and your considerations these past four years.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Rudderless Miami Herald -Six months since Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos left for NPR, Herald STILL hasn't replaced him -or done much of value

Above, "What's Black-and-White and..." neither a zebra or written or read with any enthusiasm. The Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel continue to underwhelm South Florida's populace with their chronically poor news coverage of local news, especially of local government and the nexus of lobbying and crony capitalism. August 21, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Rudderless Miami Herald -Six months since Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos left for NPR, Herald STILL hasn't replaced him -or done much of value
In fact, six months later, it's not just that there's still no Ombudsman... there's still no Broward-centric columnist or an Education blog or a South Florida-based conservative columnist or...

Below is the last column of Schumacher-Matos, someone whom I probably wrote at least once a month about self-evident mistakes, poor editorial judgment and leaps in logic, examples of bias, and all-too-many examples of reporters, columnists and editorial board editorials saying things that were factually incorrect and could be proven, all things I saw and continue to see in the Herald daily.

What's the Herald's plan???

The absence of a plan with the best interests of the readers and the continued taking for granted of both the readers and their intelligence, and the complete absence of what is already basic at many if not most newspapers of the Herald's size, makes me think my intuition is right:
Iceberg, dead ahead!!!

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Miami Herald
Looking back on 4 years of critiquing The Herald
By Edward Schumacher-Matos
May 1, 2011

Nearly four years ago, I wrote my first column as ombudsman. This is my last. I leave having learned a lot about you, the readers. I leave having failed you, too, in one promise.

I learned foremost that you care — about your community and your newspaper. You write a daily avalanche of e-mails to me and others at The Miami Herald or post comments online, often with passion, over issues in South Florida and the state.

When you don’t like how your point of view was treated in an article, you often threaten to cancel your subscription. Few of you actually do, at least for reasons of coverage. If anything, your reaction shows that you are reading the newspaper. And while most of my columns have been critical of something The Herald has done, you and I share this secret: For every article we disagree with, there are many, many more that we like. No other local news outlet keeps us as well informed.

I also learned your hottest buttons: Cuba, Israel, immigration, taxes, gay rights. And, of course, party politics. Your antennas are acute for any indication that The Herald might be tilting pro-Republican or Democrat.

But whatever your political inclination, the stories you like the most are investigations that ferret out local corruption. As The Herald has redefined itself through smaller staffs, shrinking paper size, and online expansion, you have overwhelmingly implored that it continue investing in the investigations that it does so well. After that, you most like local stories, though the Caribbean Basin and Middle East are local for you, too. You are sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

Few places in the country are so interesting. I am leaving to take up a new post as ombudsman of National Public Radio. I look forward to the political sensitivity of that role as NPR and the media nationally wrestle with how to finance responsible journalism and serve communities. But I will be sad to leave you.

So, how did I let you down? I announced in the beginning that in passing judgment on The Herald’s coverage — on whether it was one-sided, for example, or unfair or incomplete — I would tell you my position on the issue being covered in the original article. It was a revolutionary idea. Here is what I wrote in my first column:
“I’ll tell you upfront, and I’ll tell you my biases, for in the end what I write will necessarily be my own reasoned judgment. But I promise you it will be as fair as I can make it, never cynical, but sometimes irreverent. I strongly believe in good professional journalism, but I don’t think it’s Holy. You are welcome to agree, disagree or demand to kill the ump.”

That first column had to do with the coverage of the Gomez brothers, two young Colombians who were popular students but unauthorized immigrants detained for deportation. Their saga and the proposed Dream Act that might legalize them remains ongoing. Once a Colombian illegal immigrant myself, I wrote that I was sympathetic toward legalizing the unauthorized immigrants in the country.

Still, I criticized The Herald’s coverage for being slanted in favor of the boys. It largely overlooked legitimate questions held by many readers about the fairness of the Dream Act and legalizing the brothers.

But if I lived up to my promise in that first column, I found as the months went by that to state my position on the issues distracted from my critique of the coverage. I became the issue, instead of the reporting and editing by The Herald. As a mechanical matter, it also made the columns too long, especially if I wanted to explain the nuances of my views.

I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop the practice, but my promise somehow just slipped away.

I still wonder if there is a way to revive the idea, not just for ombudsmen, but for reporters.
We know that journalists are human and have opinions and political preferences. There also is no such thing as pure objectivity. We all see through the lens of our upbringing.

Most reporters stretch mightily to set aside their biases and follow basic journalistic rules. Editors further scrub stories for objectivity and fairness.

But we as a society are now in a cynical “post modern” age in which we have been taught to “deconstruct” articles in search of the writer’s supposed underlying intent. Trust in the news media is low. Would transparency about a reporter’s personal views help recover trust then? Is there a practical way to make it work? Or would it be a distraction from the news itself?

I don’t have the answers but would appreciate knowing your parting thoughts. As the news media fragments into many slivers of opinion, we risk fragmenting as a society and a nation. We need to have at least a common base of facts.

Thank you for the privilege of having been allowed into your homes and your considerations these past four years.

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Below are excerpts from an email that I wrote some well-informed media friends around the country back on January 24th.

Reading this Romensko column from earlier today about the relative state of the Washington Post that I read in print everyday for 13 years, and have read just about everyday online in the seven years since moving back to South Florida, I once again got to thinking about the Miami Herald and their part-time ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, a sometime subject on my blog, along with former Herald Exec. VP and Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, now up in McClatchy's HQ in D.C.

Three weeks into 2011, the Herald's ombudsman still doesn't have a print column that runs once a week, or even runs fairly regularly, since it's often many weeks in-between his essays.

Today is January 24th, but his last column was January 2nd:
Educators weigh in on Herald’s coverage

And the last one before that was... November 28th:
Ombudsman: Are teachers treated fairly by The Miami Herald?

And before that, October 10th:

(Three columns in 14 weeks.)

Hmm-m... it's as if Schumacher-Matos is filing his columns via 'a slow boat from China,' which is yet another example of the Herald continuing to NOT properly use technology and resources available to them, to add to an already LONG list of negatives that readers I know are definitely keeping track of.

For whatever reason, one that has never been fully explained to readers, Schumacher-Matos STILL doesn't have a blog like many other newspaper ombudsmen, there's STILL no designated space on their website for him, with either his name, the word "Ombudsman" or an icon, to make him easier to find for readers.

In fact, you STILL have to use the search function to find his most recent column.

And unlike has been the tradition with the NYT's Ombudman column, which links directly to the stories that are being hashed-over, so that readers can see for themselves what it originally said, the Herald has no links and the original stories are usually locked in the paid archives discussed because... yes, it's six weeks between his columns.

If you never saw the article being discussed the first time, you're out of luck and have to rely on him being accurate in his description.
Is that really any way to run a railroad in 2011?

---------
To compare the seriousness with which it takes its role of being the eyes and ears of the community's readers with the Herald's benign, er, malignant neglect, read this column by the-then Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander in his last column in that position ten months ago:

The Washington Post
Can The Post regain its legacy of excellence?
By Andrew Alexander
Sunday, January 23, 2011

My fourth-floor office looks out over the main entrance to The Post. I often glance across 15th Street and see tourists taking photos of the newspaper's iconic nameplate. For so many, The Post has a reputation for journalistic excellence. Will it endure?

I've pondered that question while crafting this column, my last as ombudsman. So, too, have many of the tens of thousands who e-mailed or called during my two-year term as the readers' representative. A dominant theme has been that The Post's journalistic quality has declined. It's a view I share.

Read the rest of the column at:

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Informed speculation on the future of "South Florida blogs" on the Miami Herald's website. Hmm-m-m...

Towards the bottom of the Miami Herald's webpage in the space between BLOGS and COLUMNISTS, you'll find the link for South Florida blogs.

Not that most of you who come to this site regularly have been wondering about it but... yes, people have noticed the minimized role of the South Florida blogs on the Miami Herald's website since they tried to persuade certain bloggers to become part of their News Network.


See my earlier post on this topic from April 13, 2010, and at the bottom of this post, see the article the Herald's own Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos felt compelled to write about certain other Herald news partners.

A week ago today... the road not taken with the Miami Herald and some 411 about Beth Reinhard to consider http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/week-ago-today-road-not-taken-with.html

In fact, to be honest, though I noticed it myself many weeks ago, most of the people who have noticed this change for the worse and mentioned it to me are bloggers who get many more daily hits than I do, and since many of them run ads, unlike me, this change in focus is actually co$ting them, even while it has no real effect on me.


And, lest you forget, I remind you that the Herald went ahead and listed me on their webpage without ever contacting me about it, as I noticed it only after I'd been on the "Communities" list for a bit and someone emailed me about it.

If their emails are any judge of what they're really thinking, it sounds to many South Florida bloggers currently on the Herald's site that the newspaper is just trying to string them along until some time in the near-future, possibly the Holiday season, after they've achieved what they deem to be the optimum geographic coverage they've always wanted.

Then they'll "reluctantly" announce a change of plans and simply eliminate the listed blogs they don't have agreements with.


That's a long way to go to cut your own throat, but it wouldn't be the first time this year the Herald's management has made what I and many other readers paying serious attention believe are critical or fatal errors, since for many months, after a lot of initial promotion on the website, as you can see for yourself from the photo I snapped above around 1 a.m., there's currently no photo, graphic or interesting eye-catching icon to call your attention to the "South Florida blogs" on the Herald website.

Just a link in black - South Florida blogs

Personally, I don't think that's by accident.


Miami Herald
OMBUDSMAN
When partner goes too far, who is responsible?
May 23, 2010
By Edward Schumacher-Matos

It used to be said that the best way to get your opinion heard in a newspaper was to own one, a privilege -- and abuse -- that still reigns at some small community papers.

The Herald has recently entered into online alliances with several of them as an innovative way to aggregate community information across South Florida into one site for readers and advertisers. Some, such as The Key Biscayne Times, maintain high professional standards, but Herald editors are finding themselves entangled with the owners of others whose ethics are challenged by readers.

"I cannot believe that The Miami Herald is allying themselves with the Community Newspapers," wrote Doug and Yvonne Beckman, for example, of a 12-paper chain in South Florida. The Herald has partnerships with the chain's South Miami, Cutler Bay and Pinecrest editions, and the chain's owner, Michael Miller, says he is negotiating to add more.

Yet, the Beckmans (no relation to the late Commissioner Jay Beckman) continue: "There [is] no worse example of yellow journalism I have ever seen. In South Miami that rag is commonly known as the 'Mullet Wrapper.' For years and years the owner has openly interfered with politics in South Miami in the most egregious way."

"Michael Miller is no journalist," wrote another reader, Dean Whitman. "He is not governed by any standard of journalistic ethics with regard to accuracy, objectivity or disclosure of conflicts of interest. His goal is simple, to change the zoning governing height and density of commercial property that he owns on 62nd Avenue in South Miami. This property adjoins a residential neighborhood to the west and Miller wishes to increase the currently zoned height from two to four stories."

NOT HIDING
Miller in an interview acknowledges that he writes about the building, for which he has been suing to change the zoning since 1997, but he said he does so openly in his column, without hiding his self-interest.

Reviewing a number of past issues of the South Miami newspaper, I found that most articles were straightforward, offering information on local events and services. Most of the reader complaints, however, concern Miller's weekly "Around Town" column, and I can see why.

It is a compilation of often unsubstantiated political gossip, much of it harmless, some of it playing favorites.

One column was offensive, making reference to an anonymous death threat letter received by Vice Mayor Valerie Newman, an opponent of Miller's zoning change. The letter said she might end up like Commissioner Jay Beckman, who was allegedly shot to death in 2009 by his teenage son.

Miller wrote: "If you know who just might want to waste their time sending such a note to Valerie, please let the police know as they would love to add this to her package of goodies. And speaking of packages, I hear that Valerie will soon get her day in front of the Ethics Commission on the charges that were initiated by the late Jay Beckman.

"Hmmm . . . One big mouth civic activist told me a few months ago that Jay Beckman had 'turned against us.' Golly, I thought, then the guy winds up dead?"

Whitman noted: "Consider what the response of your readers would be if an esteemed Herald columnist such as Carl Hiaasen, Fred Grimm, Leonard Pitts, or even Glenn Garvin wrote such things. Certainly such things have no place in a legitimate newspaper."

Of course, the column did not appear in The Herald itself. The Herald links to its community newspaper partners from the home page of MiamiHerald.com. But the Herald does highlight on its home page some of the articles from the partners. Two or three Herald articles in turn appear on the partner sites. The Herald pays to help develop the partner sites, and splits advertising revenues with the partners.

The arrangement greatly expands the local news in the Herald's Web edition without having to pay for the reporting, Miller noted. The small allies get to tap into The Herald's large Web traffic. Both sides win economically. Readers are better served by the deep information offered by The Herald's site.

'INVENTIVE'
"The partnership with community sites is one of the most important and inventive things we've started this year," Herald Executive Anders Gyllenhaal told me.

And what of the ethical concerns? Is The Herald tarred when one of its partners commits a transgression? Separately, is The Herald validating those transgressions by featuring or linking to them on its home page?

UNDEFINED LIMITS
"Any new project like this will have its struggles, and we are going to continue to work on how this all fits together," Gyllenhaal said. "The idea is that each of the sites has independence, but that we share the website, the content and also the ad revenues.

"Readers' complaints and objections about coverage are going to come up no matter what the publishing system is. If readers don't like something originated by The Herald, we're the ones who respond. If they don't like something from one of the partners, the partners are the place to go with the concern."

My position is that there is a limit -- undefined, still -- about how much The Herald can accept in its partners. The community papers are valuable for being close to the ground, and in a practical sense can't be held to the same rigorous standards as The Herald. But Miller, at least in his South Miami paper, goes too far. The Herald should rein him in, or cut him off.