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| Question: Why are these people laughing? Answer: Because their mission to destroy what's left of the Miami Herald is nearly complete. |
"Anything worth doing, is worth doing right." -Hunter S. Thompson
It's been a little over a year since the Miami Herald announced it would start charging readers to access the paper's website.
In an email to staffers, Herald publisher David Landsberg outlined the reasoning behind the paywall:
Why are we doing this? The world of news and information keeps changing. Technological advances provide us with the convenience of mobile phones, tablets and social media channels. We have transformed our business to become 24/7 information specialists, with the ability to deliver breaking news through a variety of digital platforms in addition to our print newspapers. These changes have resulted in a new business model, whereby the cost of producing our news coverage is spread across the various channels we provide.When I first read Landsberg's line about the Herald delivering breaking news on a 24/7 basis, I actually believed him. (Anyone want to sell me a bridge in Brooklyn?)
The Herald's paywall went up on Dec. 18, 2012.
I'm no mathematical genius, but by my calculations, it's been almost a year since the Herald started charging to access the website.
So how's that plan to deliver "Breaking News 24/7" working out?
Answer: It's not.
Sometime Saturday night, 4 women were shot in Liberty City. Two of the women died from their wounds.
The Herald's 24/7 Information Specialists finally got around to posting something on the shooting at 10:57 this morning.
You don't need to follow the news all that closely to know that these kinds of violent crimes are occurring all too often in Miami-Dade.
Here's an incomplete list of last month's crime-related headlines:
And just yesterday, in a story the Herald hasn't yet copied and pasted from CBS4, a man and two teen boys, carjacked a Miami Gardens man at gun point.
Most of those stories received scant, or minimal coverage on the Herald's website, and if they made it into the paper, more often than not, they were buried deep inside the local section.
Crime has reached epidemic proportions in Miami-Dade. But you wouldn't know it from reading the Herald.
What stories are more important than crime to those in charge at the Herald?
An art museum.
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| Miami Herald, Dec. 1, 2013. |
Abortion in Haiti. (A two-parter than ran on page 1A both days.)
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| Miami Herald, Nov. 24, 2013. |
When will the Herald start covering crime the way it should be covered?
Probably when it starts affecting the paper's two top managers.
As far as Herald managing editor Rick Hirsch is concerned, there is no crime problem. At least not in his neighborhood. He lives in a half-million dollar condominium on Belle Isle in Miami Beach.
And the Herald's current executive (absentee) editor - and former People Magazine Miami bureau chief - Mindy Marqués, doesn't even live in Miami-Dade. She lives in Broward County.
Today I'm offering Rick Hirsch and Mindy Marqués this challenge: For the next year - starting Jan. 1 - how about covering crime in Miami-Dade as if it were occurring in your cloistered neighborhoods of Belle Isle and Davie?
In other words, cover crime as if it were affecting you the same way it affects people in Liberty City, Overtown, Opa-Locka and Miami Gardens every goddamned day of the year.
Cover and analyze every violent crime that occurs in Miami-Dade for a year.
Explore how violent crime impacts young children. How does it affect them developmentally?
Try to explain how high-powered weapons end up in the hands of young thugs.
Try to learn why 15 and 20 year-old men seemingly have no moral compasses. Report all that and explain it to your readers.
Stop chasing that Pulitzer in Haiti that you'll never win, and start covering things in Miami-Dade that actually impact the lives of your readers. In case you've forgotten, your readers are the people who buy your paper, patronize your advertisers and pay your salaries.
Are you up to it?
We shall see.
