St. Pete Times and Miami Herald: a sign of the times? by gimleteye

Yesterday I lamented that readers of The Miami Herald miss important stories in our own backyard published by the St. Pete Times. The immediate example was the story about an environmental consulting firm, B.R.A., that was involved with providing "expert" testimony on federal litigation involving rock mining in West Miami-Dade.

The entire issue of "environmental consultants" in Miami-Dade should have been a focus of Miami Herald scrutiny, going back for years. I suspect it hasn't, because taking a close look at the business of permitting development in environmentally sensitive lands would bring Herald executives too close to the "environmental land use attorneys" and their lobbying practices; like Greenberg Traurig's which would have a hard time standing up to the light of day.

The St. Pete Times doesn't have the same trepidation. Along this line, a story sparks my interest-- that I had missed when it was printed two weeks ago in the Herald-- alerting readers the Herald and the Times are merging their Tallahassee bureaus.

Is this good news or not? I'm not sure. As it is, Herald readers have no clue what their own Dade delegation is doing during the legislative session much less the entire legislature. (The Herald blogs are a better source of news on this front, than the print paper. The annual scorecard on legislator's performance is very weak.)

In the Herald story (reprinted below), "Anders Gyllenhaal... said the team's emphasis will be on producing more enterprise and investigative stories for online and print. Future plans call for a website dedicated to ``issues of statewide importance.'' Perhaps.

It is not a good sign that the Herald's excellent series, "Borrowers Betrayed", failed to follow up the chain of responsibility for the mortgage foreclosure and financial crises engulfing Florida. Even today's story, on Florida's budget crisis and economic slowdown, reminds readers how little the Herald reported of the unsustainable development that engulfed South Florida before the housing market crash did.

It will be interesting to see if The Herald will be as hard-hitting at The St. Pete Times on issues that the Miami paper has been loathe to report; like environmental politics. This leads me to wonder: why stop at Tallahassee-- why not share coverage that of stories in its own backyard that The Herald will not report, but the St. Pete Times will?

Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times merge Tallahassee bureaus
BY BEATRICE E. GARCIA
BGARCIA@MIAMIHERALD.COM
In another sign of the changing nature of the newspaper business, The Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times will merge their staffs in Tallahassee to cover the state capitol and politics.

The newspapers said their goal is to improve coverage by increasing the size of the staff both newspapers can draw on, avoiding duplication and using resources more efficiently.

Anders Gyllenhaal, the Herald's executive editor, said the team's emphasis will be on producing more enterprise and investigative stories for online and print. Future plans call for a website dedicated to ``issues of statewide importance.''

By joining forces, ''we believe we can create a journalistic powerhouse to cover state issues and Florida government,'' Times Executive Editor Neil Brown said. ``Rather than . . . merely lament that there is less being written about the offices of power in Florida, we wanted to try a fresh, even bold, approach.''

Mary Ellen Klas of The Miami Herald and Steven Bousquet of the Times will alternate leadership of the bureau, which will eventually grow to six persons.

Gyllenhaal admitted the shared leadership between the two bureau chiefs is an experiment and its effectiveness will be evaluated as the partnership moves forward.

The two staffs will be combined in early December.

Traditionally, newspapers in similar markets view themselves as fierce competitors and avoid working together. But as the economy slows and more readers migrate to the Internet, they are increasingly trying new arrangements.

Both newspapers had been reducing staffs to cut costs; The Miami Herald's capitol bureau was cut from three to two reporters in July.

Already, The Miami Herald, Sun Sentinel and Palm Beach Post have a deal that allows them to share routine, breaking-news stories.

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