Internet hijinx at One Herald Plaza

Lately it seems like more than a few people at the Miami Herald are still grappling with the concept of Internet and how it works.

Back on January 14 someone took control of the Herald's Twitter feed and sent out this embarrassing Tweet.

This past Tuesday an editor decided to redact a paragraph about mandated furloughs at the paper from a story that had already been posted on the Herald's website. Whoever made that call apparently doesn't know that once something's on the Internet, it's there forever.

And now we've learned that a Herald staffer posted a bogus story today about cat pictures on the Internet - complete with a cheesy byline - to the paper's website that stayed live for 7 hours before anyone in the newsroom noticed.

Some readers thought the website had been hacked.

One source tells me the "story was definitely up by 915am and was pulled around 430/5pm when me and a few other people started posting about it on Facebook and Twitter."

The Herald's tech editor Bridget Carey stepped up and explained the goof on a Facebook page: "No one hacked the Herald. We're learning a new publishing system this week and someone who was in a training class accidentally hit the button to publish live to the site."

(Here's Google's cache of the page.)

Click to enlarge.

When weather geeks come unhinged

Weather geeks are different than you and me.

A little lightning, a thunder clap or two and they're peeing their pants.

Check out this video of the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore coming unglued the other day after "two–yes TWO–consecutive claps of thunder and lightning during a snowstorm" in Chicago.



But sometimes all it takes to rattle a weather geek is a little, tiny bug!

Miami Herald writer to join Washington Post

Random Pixels has learned that Miami Herald staff writer Robert Samuels is leaving the paper later this month to join the Washington Post.

Samuels, a features and enterprise reporter at the Herald, will cover the education beat for the Post.

Samuels joined the Herald in 2006. He is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Other recent big-name departures from the Herald include investigations editor Ronnie Greene, political reporter Beth Reinhard, and staffers Jen Lebovich and Nirvi Shah.

Stuff we like

Stephen Colbert gives Sean Hannity a history lesson.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Comedy Central

Miami Herald gets some industry recognition for censorship

I'm sure if you asked anyone in charge at the Miami Herald if the paper favors censorship, the answer would be unanimous: "Absolutely not!"

And if you asked those same people if the Herald practices censorship, you'd get the same answer.

But what they say and what they do at the paper are two different matters.

Last night I posted a brief item on the fact that the Herald had apparently scrubbed some information about a new round of staff furloughs at the paper from a larger story posted on its website about the sale of land the Herald owns.

But as Jim Romenesko, who blogs about newspapers and the media for Poynter.org put it in an email to me, "Somebody there needs to learn about cached stories [on Google.]

Today, Romenesko shared the Herald's editorial trickery with a national audience of journalists in a post titled "Miami Herald decides it doesn’t want readers knowing about staff furloughs."

News from One Herald Plaza

from MiamiHerald.com

Ibargüen named to AOL board

Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the Miami-based Knight Foundation, has been named to the board of directors of AOL, the online media company.

"AOL's focus on the delivery and sharing of news and information in communities meets an enormous need in a democracy. The range of their experiments in the field will provide knowledge about what actually will work in the digital age, what will be sustainable and profitable as we adapt to changing technology and customer needs and uses," Ibargüen said in a release.

Ibargüen, a former publisher of The Miami Herald, has been president and CEO of the Knight Foundation since 2005.

There are a few more paragraphs on the Herald's website, but the story - which has no byline - leaves out some facts.

Here's what the Herald didn't post.

Each year, AOL will pay Ibarguen a cash retainer of $100,000 and equity valued at $150,000. Ibarguen will serve on the board's audit and finance committee.

It gets better. According to this story, Ibargüen will "probably only have four meetings or so per year, which suggests he's getting paid $62,500 per meeting."

Meanwhile, over at the Herald, where Ibargüen once served as publisher, staffers learned Monday that they are being forced to take another unpaid one week furlough this year. It will be the fourth unpaid week off since March 2009.

News of the furloughs appeared briefly on the Herald's website Tuesday as part of this story but was deleted later in the day. Here's the missing paragraph:

The deal's end comes at a time when McClatchy is pressed for cash. The Herald announced Monday it would require workers to stay home for one week of unpaid furlough during the first half of 2011, and other McClatchy papers across the country recently announced another round of staff layoffs.

(Here's a Google cache of the page before the paragraph was deleted.)

Before Monday's announcement, the last round of furloughs at the Herald occurred in Sept. 2010 when the paper also eliminated 49 staff positions.

Less than six weeks after those positions were cut, Herald executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal was rewarded with a promotion.

In case you're wondering - Gary Pruitt, the CEO of McClatchy, the Herald's parent company - makes almost $1 million a year. Other compensation puts his salary somewhere near $3,753,229.

The rich get richer and Herald staffers continue to get screwed!