2008 Weblog Awards

Please take a moment to vote for McClatchy Watch in the 2008 Weblog Awards. Kevin Gregory, who runs that blog is a good friend of Herald Watch.

McClatchy to go private?

Newsosaur speculates that privatization of several newspaper companies including the Herald's parent McClatchy is possible. With the price of MNI shares as low as it is what Newsosaur says definitely makes sense.

New to the blog roll

I've added Miami Monthly to the blog roll under South Florida Media. A recent column by its editor Elena Carpenter is worth quoting here:

As 207 mayors from across the nation congregated downtown for the U.S. Conference of Mayors summit, the Sunday paper rolled off the presses with an article by the talented Edward Schumacher- Matos, the Miami Herald's ombudsman – a kind of internal watchdog that investigates reader complaints and analyzes their feedback in his weekly column. The article addressed staff cutbacks at the Herald and posed the question: "What to do with the Miami Herald?"

Well, firstly, perhaps an attitude adjustment would help....

Mind you – this doesn't mean that we should hide any of our problems, as many were openly discussed during the conference in order to benefit from the mayoral think tank.

I'm talking about rubbing unnecessary stuff in their faces...

The front page of the Metro section, with a headline of "Disparate voices converge," forced one to read eight paragraphs about protesters in the rain, then jump to the continuation page in the back, before the article offered any information about what the mayors were discussing during their many pertinent sessions...

On Monday, a story about two mothers' grief over the unsolved, 40-year-old kidnapping of two young girls, was large, front page and center, a timeless article if I've ever seen one.

The ability of the Miami Herald to find ways of not covering good news about Miami dumbfounds me....

So, to Mr. Schumacker-Matos [sic] and his question about what to do with the Miami Herald, I say: keep reporting the news, carry on with your quality investigative reporting, but please do not ignore the positive happenings in Miami. Minimally, you'll lose fewer subscribers and advertisers.

Even more bad news for McClatchy

Shares of MNI hit another 52-week low of $7.35 during trading today. This despite the announcement of layoffs and other policies that that company projects will lower expenses by close to $100 million. Newsosaur believes these reductions may not be enough and that further layoffs may be necessary. Wall Street seems to agree.

Thank you Miquis

For this.

Random Observations

A couple of months ago Herald Watch noted the Heralds had launched paid digital versions of their printed product with which users "can scan PDF images of each newspaper page, clicking on stories, photos and ads." Today I noticed that the competing Spanish language daily, Diario las Americas, offers a similar product for free.

Also I wanted to make a shout out to Alesh at Critical Miami for the unsolicited but very kind link today.