How 'bout them Marlins? Can you believe how Jeff Loria screwed us over? What a pr*ck!
Must be especially galling for you guys at One Herald Plaza. You went to bat for him and ran all those editorials in favor of a new taxpayer-funded stadium and he pays you back by pulling a sleazy stunt like this. You must be pissed.
Anyhoo, I read your email today. You know, the one you sent to the newsroom about how the Herald's going to start charging readers for access to online content?
It's about time. I was wondering when you guys were going to wise up and start getting paid for what you do. Even the lowliest Biscayne Blvd. hooker knows enough to charge for her services.
By the way, I loved that line in your email where you said "We have transformed our business to become 24/7 information specialists." I was like all ROTFLMAO when I read that, Dave!
The Herald's going to start providing "Information 24/7," Dave? Weekends, too? What's the launch date for that, Dave?
With all that out of the way, I thought I'd re-post a few suggestions (below) I made back in July when word first leaked out that the Herald would be erecting a paywall. I hope you'll take the time to read them and act upon them. Because if you don't, you won't be getting any of my money.
Sincerely,
Bill
P.S.: Only 18 followers and ZERO tweets on Twitter, Dave? Really?
You can start by assigning real reporters to cover the news. I'm not about to pay to read semi-literate crap like this: "Betancourt was assaulted and stricken at the head, enough to crack the front and side of his skull and bruising the brain on the opposite side of the impact."
Re-design the website. What you have now is a complete disaster. And while you're at it, perhaps you can hire someone to come up with a site design that allows photographs to be displayed in a size that doesn't require viewing them with a magnifying glass.
Hire someone who knows how to cover Breaking News. This person obviously has no clue how it's done...so get rid of her. And, I'd like to see more news about Liberty City and Miami Beach and less about Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Once you start covering Miami-Dade adequately instead of the current haphazard way it's done, then you can move on and fix the problems of the Caribbean's failed states.
Do away with, or completely revamp the current story comment system. I'm not about to pay my money to read a constant, never-ending stream of hate speech written by Internet trolls. You don't allow it in the pages of your paper, so why allow it online?
Priorities. Why is it that the paper that once employed Edna Buchanan no longer has a full-time, experienced reporter covering the cops? But that same paper still has a full-time dance critic?
And finally....
If the Herald wants to make money online, they have to elevate their game, give people a reason to go to their website repeatedly throughout the day. Right now, it appears they have no idea how to do it....
ReplyDeleteThe Miami Herald was once a respected newspaper led by real journalists and not pencil pushers. The news coverage mattered more than the advertising and because of that, people bought it and advertising practically sold itself.
ReplyDeleteIn recent years, it's become an embarassment to many of the remaining employees. If it weren't for the sports section, polical cartoons and a few columnists, it would cease to exist.
It's website has little, if any monitoring. It's Breaking News often consists of day-old news or outright nonsense, like Kardashian updates. It's 2012 and Herald management has yet to take the power of the Internet seriously. Poorly written, unedited copy are a common find on miamiherald.com, because no one at One Herald Plaza is minding the store and, even worse, no one seems to care. Now, they want to charge readers for the privilege of reading its worthless content. It's a joke, a really bad joke.
I only read the Herald because they DO have a full-time honest to god theatre critic. Hell, they're the last South Florida media outlet covering the arts. When those critics go, so will I.
ReplyDeleteAnd the reason I will go is that when they leave, the paper will no longer be providing insightful coverage of local events at all.
The point is that The Herald should be covering ALL local stories, and it should have great reporters writing those stories. Otherwise, there's no point to it.