When I pulled the blue wrapper off Sunday’s paper, my memory was jogged by the top of the fold, front page paean to the Neighbors Section, 30 years old, “For the past three decades, Neighbors has chronicled the tidal wave of change that has transformed Miami-Dade.”
Not exactly.
The Neighbors section addresses “local” concerns to its subscribers in different sections of the county. Many of these concerns, especially related to the costs of growth, deserved to be featured for the entire subscriber base of the newspaper.
To say that Neighbors has “chronicled the tidal wave of change” is inaccurate.
The most relevant feature of Neighbors is its letters to the editor section. That’s where important stories go to be buried while acting “as a tiny release valve” to let off community steam.
My thoughts ran back to a blog I wrote nearly a year ago, “To know which stories The Miami Herald editor and publisher know are important, but not important enough to warrant tough coverage that would threaten advertisers, just read the letters to the editor section closely.”
Today’s story offers a revisionist history of The Miami Herald: as though the pain and turmoil of the rampant overdevelopment of the county was adequately chronicled in the Neighbor’s section.
Any subscriber who reads Florida newspapers closely, over the years, knows that The Miami Herald is not even close to the top of the hardest hitting newspapers in the state when it comes to reporting on the costs of growth: the St. Pete Times, Palm Beach Post, Naples Daily News, and even the Stuart News have been more courageous.
To suggest that the Neighbors section “chronicled” these stories is mostly wrong. Where it is true, the stories belonged in the A section for the entire readership, not Neighbors (and certainly not buried as they often area in the B section of the paper.)
The flaw is not the reporting or the work of the journalists. The flaw is the editorial vision of the paper that is chronically five or ten steps behind the “costs of growth” curve.
Today, that curve is catching us all up in a great wave of an economic recession. (for new blog readers, read our archive on The Miami Herald and housing crash.)
The complaints of citizens about the costs of growth, that often appeared only in the Neighbors letters to the editor section, were rarely used as the basis for real stories. They told you so.
On this blog, nearly a year ago, I wrote regarding the executive leadership of The Miami Herald: “Take some ownership! Put your reporters to work with regular and lengthy investigative reports that cut to the quick, instead of sitting on your hands with the “Neighbors” section covering your butts.”
It was true then, and it is true now.
7 comments:
i was thinking, as i read the Herald this morning, is it too late for it to turn itself around? It was a sinking ship. Today I was actually reading a lot of the paper...Haggman, neighbors etc. but how are all those that jumped ship a year or more ago going to know that it is getting better?
I am the only one I know who still reads the Herald. When I think of how the cow tow to the big advertisers I am unhappy. Then I think- suppose I buy the Herald, the entire company, what then. Would I print all the hard hitting facts and lose my income? I think I would have to bury the big stories or else lose my investment and my paper. I do not know the answer. Perhaps we should do all we can for the little papers so that they can print the truth and we help them stay in business. Again I do not know the answer. Hopefully some one out there will have an idea.
Neighbors has had some lame before and after pictures. Could you sponsor a before and after page? No digital pics in the 70s but maybe something can be scanned. Is it my imagination or was Brickell once on human scale, leafy and spacious? The Grove has gone through many iterations before Mayfair set it off the point of no return. Downtown Coral Gables was once low rise. Yes there were cows by 87th, the back of beyond. I only started taking “before” pictures after Katrina. Paul George does walking tours, but every thing he mentions is “virtual.”
S
Great comments, gimleteye! I agree 100% about the Miami Herald. If the Herald was a hard-hitting newspaper with a crack team of investigative journalists then we wouldn't have had scads of corruption cases wasting millions of taxpayer dollars in Dade County.
The Neighbors section is generally a waste of paper and newsprint, and for the Herald to praise it like they did is asinine. The Northwest section of Neighbors has yet to learn where Miami Lakes is because they continue to identify places miles from Miami Lakes as being in Miami Lakes. I suspect they assign interns to Neighbors because if these are full-fledged reporters I'd be ashamed of what they put out.
Yes, they assign their newest interns to neighbors. I have talked to many of them and have at times helped them out. The sun Post which is delivered free to my house does do what I expect a real newspaper to do. They seem to bang a lot of criminal behavior although I feel there is a lot more still hidden.
Many interns at the herald get helped along by the community members. They are naive when they start. But, when the Herald finishes educating them, they know what the herald has done to the reporters that left. They aren't so naive any longer.
Neighbors had a little note today on how to find other neighborhoods online. They want to be responsive. They must have read your piece.
S
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