In this blog we have noted before how important news in Miami is buried in B section, when it belongs on A1. If you want to know what the community cares about most, you'll find those issues in Letters to the Editor, not in the A section and sometimes not even in the B section.
Such is the case, today, with Mayor David Dermer’s letter to the editor, “Miami-Dade county tramples citizens’ rights”. Dermer writes, “Recently, the Miami-Dade County Commission passed three ordinances that diminish our liberty. … The ordinances criminalize specific speech of the petition gatherer. On the surface some may find it to be a good idea to protect the petition signer from intentionally misleading statements from petition gatherers. In practice, the government will be required to police and prosecute the gathering of petition signatures.”
This story was reported in the B section, poorly, in yesterday’s paper. It belonged on A1.
For more than year, county commissioners Joe Martinez, Natacha Seijas Dennis Moss, and Barbara Jordan have been throwing verbal barbs from the dais at citizens in the audience who have the temerity to oppose what they want on behalf of their major campaign contributors.
The Miami Herald has lightly reported what is happening. Seijas repeatedly declines to talk to Miami Herald reporters about her conduct.
Chair Martinez was furious when citizens submitted more than five thousand letters to his office last year, including signed petitions, opposing his support for applications to move the Urban Development Boundary.
From the dais Chairman Martinez belittled citizens collecting signatures against the UDB applications as “liars”.
The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald have only lightly touched on the bubbling outrage of the de facto chair Natacha Seijas who proposed yesterday’s measure.
We believe the Herald chooses to cower in the shadows on these visible threats to democractic principles in Miami.
Seijas is facing a recall vote in a few weeks, and her measure is designed in part to ensure that no citizens ever have a chance to interfere with the status quo on Hialeah by collecting signatures on a recall petition.
Breaking the status quo is how powerful leaders like David Dermer gained public office. Dermer says as much in his letter.
Dermer writes, “My concern stems from my experience in fighting a hostile government through the petition-gathering process … Too often a government will be hostile to those advocating reform through a citizen initiative. The more onerous government makes the process, the more we devalue ourselves as Americans. What makes our democracy so special is the fundamental belief that our government is empowered to serve the people, not the other way around.”
What Dermer doesn't say, is that he fought big and powerful real estate development interests to become mayor of Miami Beach. And a similar fight at the county level is what the strong mayor referendum, and the effort to unseat Seijas, is all about.
The Miami Herald stares in the face, every day, of what is fundamentally wrong with the county commission system of government, yet won't give that issue the coverage it deserves.
Meanwhile, Herald executives and editors put puff pieces on A1, like the story yesterday how other parts of the nation are “jealous” of what we have, in response to the tide of bad national press we have received.
By failing to report stories that are of real importance to Miami residents, the Miami Herald has reinforced the self-fulfilling prophecy of declining readership.
So advertisers become more important to the bottom line. Some of those big real estate interests fund political action committees and candidates who support subverting the democratic process.
The Miami Herald has a chance to correct the “target creep” in its mission by printing on A1 what is happening in Hialeah with the Seijas recall and the strong mayor referendum.
Miami Herald, o where are thou?
3 comments:
Combined readership of the Miami Herald
and El Nuevo Herald is 857,700 daily. Miami Herald has a daily circulation of about 300,000. They figure a lot more people read it than buy it. Here are their staff stats:
Newsroom Staff:
Reporters: 119
Editors: 72
Critics: 6
Editorial Specialists: 30
News Assistants: 19
News Researchers: 7
Paginators: 10
Total Journalist Staff: 379
How many reporters with investigative training?
How many of the reporters who know how to write the big stories have the time or back office support to allow them to do it?
No one seems to have the time to dig into the dirt. They go after the easy stuff, the things that are chump change (catch the employee on an extra break, while someone in the office makes off with a million $) ...because that pleases their bosses need to fill whote space.
Do you know what is wrong with the Herald - they have too many reporters doing fluffy, feel good, chamber of commerce-like reporting.
The Neighbors reporters should all be done away with. In fact, let's get rid of the Neighbor's section. Neighbor's is a waste of ink. With the money they save they can start doing some real hard-hitting reporting and earn some more readership.
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