Gyllenhaal has been the Miami Herald's executive editor since 2007.
Under Gyllenhaal's leadership, the most recent figures show that over the past six months the paper's daily circulation is down 16% and Sunday circulation has fallen 13%.
The Herald's Sunday circulation, which used to be the largest in the state, has fallen to 5th behind the St. Petersburg Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel and horror of horrors, the Tampa Tribune!
And under Gyllenhaal's guidance, the paper has so drastically decimated its local reporting staff, that it now has to rely on local bloggers to bolster its online community news coverage.
Gyllenhaal, it seems, will try anything to revive the paper's declining circulation.
So desperate that he'll print anything. It's my firm belief that if he thought that printing fart jokes on the op-ed page would increase circulation, he'd start tomorrow.
But on Saturday he did something equally ludicrous.
The Herald printed the first of three excerpts from former "humor columnist" Dave Barry's new book, "I'll Mature When I'm Dead."
It's a safe bet that Gyllenhaal, as the executive editor, approved of the placement of Barry's piece on the front page of the paper.
But I'm wondering if he, or anyone else at the paper, actually read the excerpt before it was published. It wasn't funny.
In the piece, Barry regurgitates a favorite and tired theme of his: "Tourists, be careful when you come to Miami because you might get shot." Hahaha! Judging from what I read Saturday, Barry's book promises to be a real knee slapper.
Barry uses moldy old news stories from the bad old 80's and 90's to prove that Miami can be dangerous. Sure, he's writing humor. But in order for humor to succeed it has to draw on reality. He fails by using 20 year-old news stories that have no connection contemporary Miami.
That comes as no surprise to some who discovered a long time ago that Barry really isn't very funny.
He's a guy who has trouble recognizing real humor.
Granted, Barry has a lot of fans.
According to his web site, he's written 30 books.
So somebody must be reading his crap, and in the process, making him very wealthy.
But as H.L. Mencken once said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
And consider these lines from his web site...which I assume were written by Barry:
In 1988 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Many people are still trying to figure out how this happened.Note to Anders: Sounds to me like Sophie and Rob have a firm grasp on reality.
Dave has also written a total of 30 books, although virtually none of them contain useful information.
Dave lives in Miami, Florida. [...]
He has a son, Rob, and a daughter, Sophie, neither of whom thinks he's funny.
Perhaps you should have talked to one of them before greenlighting the publication of their dad's front page piece.
Absolutely! We no longer shoot TOURISTS. We might run them down with our cars, but only if they get in the way of the other natives we're actually trying to kill.
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