Wednesday, June 03, 2015

An open letter to the Miami Herald's executive editor and managing editor


An open letter to Miami Herald executive editor Mindy Marques and managing editor Rick Hirsch:

Dear Mindy and Rick:

Mindy Marques and Rick Hirsch.
Yesterday, Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA, resigned after failing in his efforts to distance himself from the controversy surrounding soccer's governing body.

And on Monday, Melvin Carraway, the acting administrator for the TSA was "reassigned" after reports surfaced that "airport screeners failed to detect explosives and weapons in nearly every test that an undercover team conducted at dozens of airports."

So, here's a question for both of you, Rick and Mindy: Why do you still have jobs at the Miami Herald
Like the TSA's acting director and the head of FIFA, isn't it time for the two of you to move on to something else?

On Monday, I picked up the paper and could find just two staff produced items in the "B" section that contained all of three pages of "local" news from the Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Bay Times, the Associated Press and Politifact.
The one piece with a Herald staff byline was just 5 paragraphs long.

The other, an explainer on 1B about the closing of the Venetian Causeway, carried this lede:



"One fewer way?" Really?

And in today's paper, there's a story - if you can call it that - on an absolutely horrific crime that occurred shortly after noon yesterday in Miami Gardens. But the best your staff could come up with was two paragraphs on 3B for the morning paper.



But for some unknown reason a story on an elementary school getting new windows is page one news.

Miami Herald, June 3, 2015, page 1A.


So, Rick and Mindy, here's a question for both of you: Aren't either of you the least bit ashamed of what you've done to this once great paper? Do you care?

Does anyone else at the paper even give a sh*t?

For the good of the paper - or what's left of it - I'm calling on both of you to resign and have someone put in charge who cares about the paper and its readers. Or at the very least, someone who understands what the first duty of a newspaper is: Report news.

Do it now before you completely destroy the paper. 





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