The Washington Post's newsroom gets the Sixty Minutes treatment from Mike Wallace in 1974, as he tours the inner sanctum of Journalism's Mount Olympus and interviews Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham. A time, a place, and the huge difference one well-run newspaper made, forever changing the face of American history and journalism. Four days after this aired, President Nixon resigned

From: Bezos bets on Wash Post -- what exactly did he buy?

By Ann Silvio

August 7, 2013 3:08 PM

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57597445-10391709/bezos-bets-on-wash-post-what-exactly-did-he-buy/

In 1974, CBS News' Sixty Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace went inside what would later be considered by some to be the the inner sanctum of Journalism's Mount Olympus, The Washington Post's newsroom.

That summer he spoke to some of the confident-but-demanding people running it -Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham- and some of the reporters whose dogged determination had made it so -Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Wallace even interviewed competitors like the New York Times James "Scotty" Reston, who allows that Post editor Ben Bradlee might now just be good enough to work at the Times.

Four days after this segment aired on Sunday night August 4, 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned from office.

This video is NOT the entire segment that aired.

Yes, a time, a place, and the difference one well-run newspaper made.
While everyone else in the press corps largely IGNORED the Watergate story, one newspaper's reporters were given the freedom to dig-in harder -but had to confirm it with two sources- and forever changed the face of the country and journalism at large

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/08/07/revisiting-the-washington-post-circa-1974/ 

re The Miami Herald: What's black & white, increasingly unread and continually resented? Why is McClatchy Corp. doing nothing as the Herald slides further into irrelevancy, and further alienating its readers by the clear lack of a tangible strategic plan -or even effort- to change? They're running multiple stories on front of website that are weeks old!

re The Miami Herald: What's black & white, increasingly unread and continually resented? Why is McClatchy Corp. doing nothing as their Miami Herald slides further into irrelevancy, and further alienating its own readers by clear lack of a tangible strategic plan -or even effort- to change? They're running multiple stories on front of website that are weeks old!

Last Monday, I sent the email below to some high-ranking executives at McClatchy Corp HQ -in Sacramento- the parent company of The Miami Herald, along with bcc copies to some other interested parties throughout South Florida, the state and the country who wonder -like me- why this area continues to be so severely underserved by The Herald despite the advent of new and rather technology the past ten years that makes actually covering and reporting on everyday news events or even investigating more-complicated stories, easier and quicker than ever.

Why do we STILL see no tangible sign that there's an actual plausible and logical plan in place at One Herald Plaza to actually improve the overall news product and become much more responsive to South Florida's readers desire for better and more-thorough local news coverage? 
Why is there so much resistance to what is staring them right in the face and what what their remaining readers actually want?

It's very, very strange counter-intuitive behavior.

Which is not to say that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel or any of the news operations for the four Miami-area English language TV stations are doing their viewers any favors, either, or being any more responsive, as I mentioned the other in discussing how none of them have done a single campaign story this year on 36-year Broward States Attorney Michael Satz or the two men who plan to ease him out of his office with extreme prejudice.


(By the way, could we all just agree amongst ourselves that stories about diets, fashion, plastic surgery, celebrities-in-jail/celebrity-shoot-outs and phony corporate-sponsored events on South Beach shouldn't be run or mentioned on the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts? That'd be a great start!)

And to point out just three of the many more-obvious things that I've previously mentioned here that are currently missing in the Herald, why in the year 2012 do we STILL not see a single Broward-centric columnist in their pages, a South Florida-based conservative columnist who is NOT a former pol or campaign adviser and who can write persuasive prose that respects both history and reality?
Or even an education blog that is more than simply a random collection of PR releases from publicists, School Boards and colleges?

In the past few months, because I spend so much time reading domestic and foreign news sites and blogs that give me more of what I actually want before I go to sleep, I've gotten in the habit of not actually looking at the physical copy of the Herald until sometime after 4 p.m.

And yet partially because of that new reading habit, just within the past month, I've voluntarily put the kibosh temporarily on 6-8 different blog posts that I've written that dealt with some aspect of problems that I detected in the Herald.


Whether it was dealing with the reporter's inaccurate use of facts, insufficient use of facts, misleading statements, continuing reliance on a source that is not objective, down to the brutal coverage of the Jonathan Vilma Saints bounty-gate story, where despite the fact that Vilma went to high school and college down here -Coral Gables High School & U-M- there was no original Herald reporting or analysis the next day, just wire service copy.
Pitiful.


This was 100% accurate when I wrote it on June 12th, and one of the two stories I refer to was still displayed on the Herald's website with a photo as of Noon Monday afternoon.

-----

What's black & white and continually read -but resented? 

It's a rhetorical question because there are currently two stories featured on the Miami Herald's

website that are one week old -or older. Why?

We all know it's because of the Herald's continued and pronounced geographical bias for news coverage.

One article is about Miami Beach and the other is about Coral Gables. In fact, the Coral Gables

story is 12 days old.

But The Herald loves both cities and considers them both simpatico and part of the Herald's natural coverage area, while I and my neighbors, 14.2 miles due north, are considered outliers.

If either piece I've highlighted below in red had happened in Broward County, and Hallandale Beach in particular, they'd have vanished from that webpage within about 30 hours, if that long.

But a week later, these two particular stories remain.

Why?

Even as there is nothing in the newspaper about any of about a dozen different stories regarding Broward County people, places and events that I can think of.

Like, for instance, a story about the 36-year incumbent States Attorney and his (perceived)

failed legacy against police, govt. and political corruption.

But the Herald has chosen not to write a single story this year about his campaign race,

so five months have come and gone and now, as of today, he is eight-weeks removed from a

primary election challenge and 21-weeks from a general election challenge if he survives the first.

But the Herald has written nothing about him, and, of course, because of that, they've also

written nothing about his opponents.

That's no way to run a newspaper.

And far, far too often, at almost any time of the day you check it, day or night, too often to be

mere coincidence, the Herald's Broward homepage 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/#navlink=navbar

consists of a majority of stories that have nothing to do with this county, the sixth-largest in the

fourth-largest state in the country.

Last week, checking at random, at different times of the day, on four separate occasions, only

two of the seven featured stories on the Herald's Broward homepage had stories that had anything to do with anyone, anything or any issue in Broward County

That's no way to run a newspaper.

WHEN are we finally going to see some some tangible, positive changes at the newspaper that reflect the genuine interests of the population of South Florida, particularly those of us that live north of the Miami-Dade countyline?

It's getting worse by the month, worse by the week, and worse by the day...

As I've told you previously, that iceberg on the horizon isn't going away, so if a course correction isn't made soon, the Herald will once and for all pass the point of no return for many readers like me who've held out hope that changes were afoot.

At some point, the survival of the newspaper is merely an academic exercise, not one that most of my friends and neighbors will care about after so many years of consistently sub-par performance that irked them instead of informing them.

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

This is the follow-up email sent yesterday in a recent series to Miami Herald President and Publisher David Landsberg, with cc's once again to Herald executive editor Aminda Marques and managing editor Rick Hirsch, plus the same discerning elected officials and activists in Broward County -with a few more thrown in for good measure- regarding the Herald's continuing unsatisfactory news coverage of Broward County, which so often is either invisible when it should be anything but, or obtuse and condescending when it should be penetrating and hard-hitting.
Neither is acceptable.

I also detail some thoughts and suggestions about rapidly changing the dynamic there, using examples at the Washington Post and Aftonbladet, before, like the Titanic almost 100 years ago come April, the McClatchy-owned Herald hits the iceberg and goes under.

Be assured, time is NOT on Mr. Landsberg's side.

-----

December 20th, 2011

3:30 p.m.

Dear Mr. Landsberg:

A follow-up to my email of last week, owing to the fact that last night, I once again saw yet another one of the glaring longstanding problems at the newspaper you run, and not for the first or even second time.

Just as I've already written about previously a few times on my blog when the Herald ran a multi-weeks old story about Donald Trump in the "Breaking News" section, this is what appeared on the Herald's Broward homepage 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/#navlink=navbar on Monday

December 19th at 11:21 p.m. under "Breaking News"

-----

Breaking News 

Teen becomes Deerfield Beach school’s Santa Claus 

Forfeits cost Boyd Anderson district title 

Boca’s Lynn University to host final presidential debate of 2012 

K-9 injured in Plantation crash to be released from hospital 

BSO plans to stop dispatching Fort Lauderdale 911 calls 

Former Broward sheriff Nick Navarro dies 

Blackout of Miami Dolphins game averted 

Teen boys charged with friend's murder expected in court » More

Just a few minutes of investigating reveals that of the so-called eight "Breaking News" stories, the most recent one is from two weeks ago, and only half were written by Herald reporters.

These articles, whatever else they may be, are nobody's reasonable idea of "Breaking News" in Broward County. 

Story #1, Teen becomes Deerfield Beach school’s Santa Claus, is from December 8, 2011, and was written by Alysha Khan

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/08/2548494/teen-becomes-deerfield-beach-schools.html

Story #2, Forfeits cost Boyd Anderson district title, is from November 8, 2011, and

was written by Andre C. Fernandez and Manny Navarro

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/08/2491571/boyd-anderson-forfeits-seven-games.html

Story #3, Boca’s Lynn University to host final presidential debate of 2012, is from 

October 31, 2011 and was written by "Miami Herald Staff"

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/31/2481007/bocas-lynn-university-to-host.html

Story #4, K-9 injured in Plantation crash to be released from hospital, is from October 10, 2011 and was written by Linda Trischitta of the Sun-Sentinel 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/10/2447354/k-9-injured-in-plantation-crash.html

Story #5, BSO plans to stop dispatching Fort Lauderdale 911 calls, is from September 30, 2011 and was written by Scott Wyman when he was still with the Sun-Sentinel.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/30/2432468/bso-plans-to-stop-dispatching.html

Story #6, Former Broward sheriff Nick Navarro dies, is from September 29, 2011, and was written by Michael Vasquez.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/28/2429614/former-broward-sheriff-nick-navarro.html

Story #7, Blackout of Miami Dolphins game averted, is from September 15th, 2011

and was written by Craig Davis of the Sun-Sentinel

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/15/2409135/sunday-dolphins-blackout-averted.html

Story #8, Teen boys charged with friend's murder expected in court, is from August 17, 2011, and was written by Sonia Isger and Alexandra Seltzerof the Palm Beach Post

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/17/2362940/teen-boys-charged-with-friends.html

In short, Mr. Landsberg, nothing remotely resembling LIVE, LOCAL and Late-Breaking...

And the Herald still hasn't written anything in print or online about the new Broward County redistricting map voted upon last Tuesday by the County Commission, which in large part prompted that email of mine to you in the first place, even though I'd been thinking about sending you something for well over a year.

Yet not surprisingly, there was something online by Martha Brannigan about Miami-Dade's new map the same day, yesterday, at 7:24 p.m. 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/19/2553831/miami-dade-commission-approves.html

But almost exactly a week after the redistricting vote here in Broward County, NADA about the same issue, affecting roughly 40-45% of this media market's population?

http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=redistricting

This gets to my -and other's- longstanding contention that more than is either logical or reasonable, far too much of the Herald's reporting is based on geography, NOT actual news value or impact.

That is to say, geographical proximity to you and your HQ on Biscayne Bay.

Witness the embarrassing debacle in March with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and how abysmally slow the Herald (and Sun-Sentinel) was to wake-up hours after-the-fact, which I wrote about here:

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/sun-sentinel-miami-herald-snooze-for.html

Mr. Landsberg, I wasn't joking about what I said to you in my email last Friday about hoping

that you were busy working on that "plan" to change the dynamics of both the Herald's physical copy and the website, because if I can notice all this within just a few minutes of looking at the Herald's poorly-designed website, so heavy with ads at the top and right column, imagine what I would find if...

http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/10/30/proof-by-mask/

Look at the DAILY measures the Washington Post goes to get its execs, editors, reporters, columnists and bloggers in front of the public in their community -where I lived for 15 years- so that they are more than a little aware of what's going on in the minds of their savvy readers, esp. what's bothering them, via community forums and their very popular LIVE online chats.

Chats that I've even participated in myself and which have readable transcripts archived on their website, making them great resources.

http://live.washingtonpost.com/

Not that you're probably aware of it, but consider what the largest national daily in Sweden

-Aftonbladet- based in Stockholm, did when they wanted to think outside-the-box.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/

I eagerly read their website everyday and can tell you that they created a place on their own website where they challenged their readers and critics to look at what their tentative plans were for re-designing the site, a tabloid-sized paper that in many ways largely sets the daily conversations and talking points that will take place that day in offices, homes, schools, trains and coffee shops across the country.

And they dared their readers to improve upon their own plans.

Now anyone can dare someone, but what they did was actually put something on their website that gave readers a means to show management -and Aftonbladet's 2.5 million daily readers- what their suggested 'better mousetrap' looked like.

Not surprisingly in a well-educated and talented country of news readers, some of those suggestions WERE BETTER than management's.

See Hur skulle du bygga om aftonbladet.se?

http://blogg.aftonbladet.se/redesignbloggen/2011/09/hur-skulle-du-bygga-om-aftonbladet-se

So tell me, Mr, Landsberg, what's wrong with letting the best ideas win in Miami?

Sometime on Thursday afternoon, unless something else comes up that prevents it, I'll be posting to my blog just some of the valid criticisms of you and your management team, editors and reporters that I and other well-informed Herald readers I know are painfully aware of, as well as mention stories that you all have either foolishly ignored, given short-shrift to, or otherwise marginalized for inexplicable reasons.

The logical result of that attitude at One Herald Plaza was giving the South Florida public -especially the readers in Broward County, my friends and neighbors- considerably LESS than what they were reasonably entitled to expect from the Herald in the year 2011.

A LOT less.


------


The Donald Trump-related blog posts of mine that I reference above, in describing Herald management's longstanding unawareness that they have been and continue to describe stories as Breaking News on their awful website when they are, in fact, old stories -which I meant to link to in the email but forgot to!- are described here:
July 21, 2011, Miami Herald grave robbers at it again! Herald's threadbare Broward homepage runs 15-day old story as Breaking News to fill-up space!, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/miami-herald-grave-robbers-at-it-again.html

I can't emphasize enough that if you care about the interplay of journalism, technology, innovation and the 21st Century news media, you are making a big mistake if you don't subscribe to The Monday Note newsletter edited by Frédéric Filloux.

http://www.mondaynote.com/

In its own way, it's consistently interesting and amazing in the same ways that the late and much-missed manhattan, inc. magazine and Spy were, both magazines that I was a charter subscriber to when I lived in Chicago and Evanston in the mid-'80's, and which I devoured from cover-to-cover upon arrival in my mailbox because of their consistent quality writing and insight. 

Oh for those days of penetrating stories on the people and personalities behind LBO and hostile takeovers and "short-fingered vulgarians.")

I actually reference The Monday Note above in the paragraphs about what was going on this year in redesigning Aftonbladet. http://www.aftonbladet.se/

Unless something crazy happens between now and then, always possible when you live South Florida, I will be posting those promised examples of Herald nonfeasance and journalistic apathy from above, tomorrow afternoon.

Trust me, just like Santa Claus, I've been keeping track of who's been bad.

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

Miami Herald vending machine in front of Denny's restaurant, Hallandale Beach, FL.July 3, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Below is the email that I sent last Friday afternoon to David Landsberg, President and Publisher of McClatchy's Miami Herald, with cc's to Herald Executive Editor Aminda Marques and Managing Editor Rick Hirsch, along with certain Broward County elected officials and activists I keep in regular contact with. 


This is the first of two emails sent directly to him about the Herald's considerably lackluster performance for the year 2011, where sins and errors of the past were neither corrected nor forgiven but merely repeated over-and-over to an inexplicable fair-thee-well. 


In the subject header that day, I wrote: More lumps of coal in your Christmas stocking for such a consistently lousy year of journalism at the Miami Herald covering Broward County.
-----


December 16, 2011



Dear Mr. Landsberg:


You're the publisher and president of the Herald, and yet as of 4 p.m., it's now been more than 65 hours since the Broward County Commission formally approved new district maps based on 2010 Census information, and as of right now, your newspaper has printed absolutely NOTHING about it in-print or online. 
http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=redistricting
Nada!


But then the Herald also NEVER wrote in-print about any of the myriad issues arising out of the many public meetings that've been held in the county the past few months about that required redistricting in Broward.
Nothing about what the maps might look like given that some members will soon be termed-out, or even whether or not it was likely that a 'Hispanic-majority' district might somehow be carved-out of it somewhere, which might necessarily change the county's current dynamic.
http://www.broward.org/Redistricting/Pages/Default.aspx


Congratulations!


That's certainly entirely in keeping with the strange and counter-intuitive journalism decision-making that beleaguered Broward readers have continued to see coming out of 1 Herald Plaza the last few years, with enough bad decisions having emerged to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to your remaining Broward readers that you all consider Broward to not just be terra incognita, but almost persona non grata as well, given how Broward barely exists at all in your blogs, too, regardless of the subject area.


To my eyes, among the worst and most unforgivable sins for a media enterprise that still contends that they're RELEVANT now is how week-after-week, month-after-month, NOT a single instance of an article, column or essay written by a Miami Herald employee -or even a Guest Op-Ed- will appear in that embarrassing excuse for a Sunday public policy section, Issues & Ideas, that directly concerns issues, people, pols, government and personalities of and in Broward County.
Month-after-month-after month!


The self-evident facts, the actual newspaper itself, don't lie, and they could hardly be more
glaring or damaging to the newspaper's faltering credibility.


Here we are at the end of the year 2011 and there is NOT a single Broward-oriented columnist appearing in print in your newspaper.
How can you possibly think that's a good idea?


As for your decision to go seven-plus months without an official Reader's Ombudsman, since
Edward Schumacher-Matos left for NPR, and the curious management decision to NOT
replace him, well, there's yet another completely counter-intuitive journalism decision that
further shows the newspaper's lack of seriousness and integrity.
But hey, who's counting all those curious decisions, right?


I mean there's only... well, now that you mention it:


-the longstanding lack of even one South Florida-based conservative columnist with both some historical knowledge of the area and some flair & verve in their writing that could challenge the stagnant South Florida status quo to readers 2-3 times a week


-the complete lack of an Education blog in the year 2011


-the Editorial Board's abject failure to consistently run meaningful well-written dissenting
points-of view in your so-called "Opposing Views," as you instead prefer running columns
and essays that merely replicate the prevailing status quo orthodoxy of the Editorial Board,
even to the point of running crummy columns by Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star that sound eerily like Herald editorials.
But she's even more condescending and patronizing, if that's possible; and she proves it
whenever you deign to put her words into print.


To most reasonable people, Mr. Landsberg, calling something Opposing Views conjures
up a mental image of an actual opposing point-of-view, not merely uttering the same exact
ideological nostrums or cant with someone else's name attached to them.
It's the difference between a voice and a chorus.
A more accurate name for the top of that editorial page in the Herald now would be "The Choir." 


And lest you forget, as we approach 2012, there is NOT a single Broward-oriented blog on the Herald's entire website.
Pitiful!


That said, you sure have managed to corner the market to yourself on useless minutiae on
Cuba, or writing sycophantic stories about commercial and residential real estate 'upturns'
in downtown Miami.
I will give you credit for that, if that's what it is.


At some point in the next few weeks, you might want to avail yourself of a blog post I wrote
on November 27th of last year that connects-the-dots rather well on what I and many other 
well-informed and civic-minded residents of Broward County continue to see as your and the Herald's failings.


How a video of Paramore in Stockholm & Razorlight in London proves the Miami Herald is too damn slow. Iceberg dead ahead!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-video-of-paramore-in-stockholm.html

It's just one of many posts on the decline we've all seen at the Herald, and in particular, your perfectly awful news coverage of Broward County.
I don't know whether you plan on making any meaningful, positive changes to the newspaper and website in the new year or not as part of some collective New Year's resolutions, but if you aren't, you're making a huge mistake.To quote myself from that post:

When specifically is Miami Herald publisher David Landsberg finally going to publicly share with Herald readers what his actual plan is to rescue the newspaper, and make it relevant to readers and news consumers, which it increasingly is NOT by any stretch of the imagination?  It's getting kind of late in the voyage with Landsberg at the helm, and while I'm no expert on icebergs, I can see with my own eyes that the known and unknown icebergs keep getting closer and closer to the Herald's bow as it steers into unchartered waters without a compass or, seemingly, a legitimate plan to get to its destination.  And like you all, I know with absolute certainty that most of an iceberg is unseen -and below the surface.Just like the Herald's myriad problems.But some problems are too big to hide.

Continuing to routinely treat so many of a newspaper's readers with profound condescension and almost child-like indifference is the sort of thing that at other newspapers would quickly get people fired, but is something which at the Miami Herald is simply called business-as-usual or, Sunday.

You can either change that or you can just ignore that.
We'll all see in January which choice you made.


-----


In my original email to Mr. Landsberg on Friday, I made a small mistake.
I called the column on the page opposite the Herald editorial page that, rather than being contrary to the Herald Editorial Board's position as you'd think, based on what they call it, it's usually complementary, "Opposing Voices." 
It's actually called "Opposing Views."


Regardless of what the Herald calls it, the point is not just valid, but still just as sheepishly embarrassing as well.


For those of you who are new to this blog and have never seen it before, when I first started my South Beach Hoosier blog and Hallandale Beach Blog in 2007, I made a conscious point of posting the following as an anchor to the blog -something that would always be present- so that anyone coming to them would know precisely where I stood on the issue of the Herald and its faltering news coverage of South Florida and fleeting influence within it.
I mention this because there are a lot of people in the blogosphere who are Miami Herald sycophants, from whom "seldom is heard a discouraging word..."


The following is what was on South Beach Hoosier in 2008 and 100% accurate at the time it was written, though many changes have taken place since then -just not enough positive ones for South Florida residents who want more 'hard news' coverage in their newspapers more often -everyday.


I hope it provides some helpful context for understanding what I wrote in Part 1 above and
what you'll soon see here in Part 2.


-----



South Beach Hoosier will also examine the latest amusing or not-so-amusing scandals, cover-ups, controversies, contretemps and mis-adventures bedeviling South Florida, something I became used to while growing up in North Miami Beach in the late 1960's and the 70's.
Fortunately, because of my news-junkie DNA and myriad magazine subscriptions, and long-standing relationships with media types in Miami, I was able to keep up pretty well with the South Florida area while living in Bloomington, Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette and Washington, D.C./Arlington, VA.
Communities where sensible civic activism and high standards of journalism were the norm and not the exception.


Due to my own personal/business/political interests and experiences in those cities, as well as my good fortune to have a large number of well-informed and well-connected friends and former housemates while living there, many but not all of whom are or were reporters, columnists, editors, TV/film producers, along with a few who are now well-placed in Statehouses and legal circles across the country, I'll have a deep bench of facts, opinions, point-of-views and fact-checkers to work with. 
That's the goal for South Beach Hoosier.


It's my hope that this'll help me offer up pinpoint criticism, whether of national and South Florida pols, media organizations and sports or show biz personalities, that have heretofore evaded public scrutiny, transparency or accountability -as well as well-aimed brickbats. 
To examine the proverbial case of the latest dog that doesn't bark, or analyze why the latest case of media conventional wisdom has -again- been proven wrong, and why.


This is especially true of The Miami Herald, the morning newspaper I grew-up with and have suffered with since first leaving North Miami Beach for Bloomington in the Fall of '79, as its most talented people jumped ship and the paper become evermore a shell of what it once was: an excellent newspaper with talented and respected reporters and editors telling compelling and intriguing stories of intrinsic value to its readers throughout polyglot and transient South Florida. 


Television news-wise, when I'd return to South Florida from school or work in Bloomington, Evanston, and DC, whether for Christmas vacation, Baltimore Oriole spring training games or visits for weddings, I could still see that Miami had the kind of scrappy and innately curious reporters who make a tangible difference in a community.
The sorts of enterprising reporters that so many of my friends at Ernie Pyle at IU, and Medill at Northwestern were already well on their way to becoming. 


http://www.idsnews.com/
http://journalism.indiana.edu/news/erniepyle/  
http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/
http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/ 


Reporters who might have the talent and ability to convey to the waves of newcomers and visitors to the area, a nuanced sense of South Florida's decidedly mixed historical past, by writing with the proper amount of factual research, balanced perspective and sense of disbelief, to describe the events unfolding around them. 
Then, ending the piece by dropping the hammer on whichever local corrupt/incompetent miscreant, pol or agency hack was the target of their ire, for attempting to perpetrate yet another in a long of of dubious acts against the people of South Florida.


Sadly for the people of South Florida, things have gotten so bad now that The Herald's numerous flaws are as much for what they don't publish, as much as for the self-evident mediocre quality of its writing and reporting, lack of thorough fact-checking, and inadequate search for conflicts of interest.
For all the talk of improving the paper by the new McClatchy management, it shows no tangible signs of changing for the better any time soon, a great disappointment to its readers.


It's common knowledge within the industry that The Herald's website is a joke compared to the efforts of many smaller circulation newspapers. www.miamiherald.com


Frankly, the website itself remains a constant source of embarrassment for Herald reporters and columnists, who are constantly besieged by readers and told yet another horror story about not being able to find recent Herald stories that should be on the paper's website but aren't.
The reporters can do little more than shrug their shoulders in response.


Even in the year 2008, The Herald still DOESN'T have a permanent Public Ombudsman to represent the interests of both its readers and basic fairness, like many newspapers with much smaller circulation numbers!
Meanwhile, with much more to fear and lose, The New York Times has an independent Public Editor, currently Clark Hoyt, who weekly takes the Times' policy, owners, editors, reporters and columnists to task publicly, even providing links back to the original story or column in question, unlike the once-in-a-while effort at the Herald. 
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html?8qa


Meanwhile The Herald's Sunday attempt at high-minded opinion-shaping and public policy, Issues & Ideas, is so embarrassing and muddled on so many different levels that it's all one can do to not laugh from crying, so feeble is its effort, so low is its aim, so puny the actual result.


Yet rather than seeking the creative input of bright and knowledgeable new faces who are familiar with the real problems of South Florida, The Herald still regularly farms-out the Guest Op-Ed space in the paper on Saturday to people living outside of the area, more than any other newspaper in America I've ever read. They continually run long excerpts in their editorial space from parochial interest groups whose political sentiments echo that of the the Herald's own Editorial Board. 


Even worse, if possible, in many cases these particular guest editorial tangents have already appeared in other forums or publications! And speaking of the Herald's Editorial Board, who's on that exactly, anyway?


It's a great mystery that nobody seems able to fully explain away, yet The New York Times, under the guidance of Andy Rosenthal, has an entire webpage specifically devoted to detailing the background and credentials of its Editorial Board. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html


Hmmm... call me old-fashioned, but South Beach Hoosier prefers transparency!

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By the way, as I write this post on early Wednesday morning, it's now been exactly a week since the Broward County Commission vote on redistricting and the Herald has STILL NOT published anything in print or online.


Part 2, my follow-up email to the above, will be here soon.