Today's is a thought-provoking edition of the Miami Herald. Columnist Ana Menendez wonders about the future of print journalism and declining subscriber base. The internet (ie. bloggers and so forth) has scrambled the journalism business model.
Ms. Menendez is right: no blogger could have written the Herald’s “House of Lies” series. We need strong print journalism. People will pay for what they depend on. But the news has to be dependable: with readers, it is a two-way street.
For example (and almost as a response to Ms. Menendez' column), there is the front page story of the Carnival Performing Arts Center which the Miami Herald has supported unconditionally and to which the Knight Foundation (based on the family newspaper fortune) has contributed millions.
Now we've been around the block, long before the Performing Arts Center gripped anyone’s tax dollars up to the amount of $500 million. Paint it red.
The revenue model for the Performing Arts Center was based on sheer speculation verging on fraud. Kind of like the housing bubble. These are stories subscribers will pay to read. If you were paying attention, you knew this was the case and the Herald wasn't reporting it.
Stories, lead to others: for instance, where is the audience for a self-sustaining Performing Arts Center going to come from? Or, a professional baseball stadium in downtown Miami: from West Kendall for an afternoon or early evening game? (The other night, we were passing the Biscayne Blvd. exit off MacArthur Causeway at just the time that traffic was trying to exit for the Center and, also, a Heat basketball game. The operative word "trying". It is a very narrow audience that will pay $100 for a seat to an event and have to wait an hour to park and maybe as long to retrieve their car? Will the $1 billion "tunnel" solve that problem?
The internet fills an important gap: on blogs like this we get to talk about stories that are important to us but which we don't read or hear in the mainstream media. We may not rise to the threshold of journalism standards, but we have seen often enough how the scrutiny to detail can be a way to avoid the assignment of more important stories.
Who failed to anticipate additional security costs for the site? Who in the private sector is going to invest in this beast of a deficit machine, when as the Herald reports, there is already a $14 million deficit in anticipated private contributions?
In some ways, it is easier to report “The House of Lies”: no one’s ox is gored about poor people getting screwed again. It is different when the paper’s own real estate assets are in play, as they were, adjacent to the Performing Arts Center.
But we want to be optimistic, too: it is a new day at the paper.
McClatchy is in town and according to the front page, the American crocodile is back. Today's editorial, “Politics and County Hall shake-up: Dismissals send a message about accountability”, is terse, right on spot, and to issues raised (which we also noted in our blog).
An in-depth report on beach erosion is improved from a past version. We wonder what is the equitable division of cost to pay for sand that gets washed away (at least $500 million over the past couple of years in South Florida) by storms or sea-level rise. We think property owners on the coast should pay, through a special tax, starting right now.
So add to the sales tax increase by the Florida legislature, a special tax on coastline property subject to erosion and "hardening" measures. Paint our beaches, red too.
All in all: a good edition of the paper. Stories we want to read: why are big farmers trying to kill the South Miami-Dade Watershed Study, why are county commissioners going to listen and do what they say, and what is the possible benefit of moving the Urban Development Boundary, that one developer is proposing, during a housing market crash? Oh, and subprime mortgages and Alt-A credit: what local banks in Miami-Dade have been making those loans, what percentage of their portfolios do those loans represent, and what relationships do they have, through ownership, to local production homebuilders?
For those stories, we buy the Miami Herald.
8 comments:
You missed one, in “Commission blasts PAC, approves new loan” the following - ''Everybody and their brother was in the front row, and they sent us to the back, the audacity, the lack of respect,'' bellowed Commissioner Natacha Seijas. ``How dare they. . . . When it comes to giving us the respect, we're second-class citizens, third-class, fourth-class citizens.'' And “Chimed in Commissioner Audrey Edmonson: ``When we went to eat, we were in a corner somewhere. I want that message to get back because I'm sure there will be a day when they have to come back to us.''”
Just who do these people, yes people not royalty, think they are? I’m sure they were not treated as well as the many benefactors that gave their personal or corporate money to the center. They just gave them “our” money and feel that they should be treated special and rewarded because they did.
The Commissioners (with the exception of Commissioner Sorenson) are all criminals always on the take lining their on pockets.
Excellent anaylsis, good to see that you are not Herald bashing all the time. The paper came together very well today.
what does anyone out there think of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce... I'm thinking of joining.
last anonymous:
I was a member for sevral years.... I think as a small business person it was a waste. Too large of group and too much $$$$ floating around for the non-wealthy to join in the activities. Barry the Pres is a super duper person though.
The Herald should do a "House of Lies" series on the Carnival Center. I bet a few Carnival board members would end up indicted.
No watch Bicentennial Park get eaten up by the two museums as the taxpayers get taken for another ride...for $600,000 Mil this time...
You know, Lincoln Center wasn't operating in the black for its first 8 years or so. It's expected of centers like this, but it serves a great purpose in a community and in an advanced society.
Lincoln Center has a potential audience of millions, within a few subway stops. No one told us to expect a decade's worth of deficits. Shouldn't that have been written into the business plan?
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