Fiedler named dean of B.U. Journo School

Editor & Publisher has reported that Tom Fiedler has been named as the new dean of the Boston University School of Communications.

The press release takes Fiedler's darkest hour and attempts to make it into a shining accomplishment:

"As the newspaper’s executive editor, Fiedler was a stickler for journalism ethics, particularly after reporters working for The Herald’s Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald, were caught moonlighting for a US-government-owned, anti-Castro news service in 2006," the BU release added.

As I documented here, the actual journalism produced during the "Marti Moonlighters" episode was shoddy, poorly investigated and poorly edited. It ended up causing Fiedler's boss his job and Fiedler himself left in the aftermath.

No word on whether the chihuahuas will follow him to his new post.

Marti Moonlighters, one year later

Today makes one year since the Miami Herald published an article alleging violations of journalistic ethics among several journalists of Cuban origin. The accusations were based on the fact that the journalists in question also freelanced for Radio/TV Marti, a U.S. government-run broadcaster that is a sister entity of the Voice of America. Herald Watch documented the saga in-depth and you can read the as-it-happened accounts from the scandal in the archives. But I wanted to highlight what has happened to all the major players in the story.

Radio talk show commentators Ninoska Perez Castellon and Paul Crespo continue to work on their respective shows for local Univision Radio stations Radio Mambi and WQBA respectively and Perez Castellon now also hosts a TV show on local Channel 8.

El Nuevo Herald reporters Wilfredo Cancio Isla, Pablo Alfonso, and Olga Connor were all fired and then re-hired (Connor was actually a freelancer and her arrangement was reinstated) after it was discovered that Carlos Castañeda, the late editor of El Nuevo Herald, gave his blessing to the freelance assignments and that the Miami Herald had run a story a couple of years earlier about Connor's work with Radio/TV Marti. Alfonso subsequently resigned his position, citing his disappointment with the lack of a public apology from the Herald. He now writes his columns for Miami's other Spanish language daily, Diario las Americas and is also working on TV for channel 41's news department.

Channel 23 Sports reporter Omar Claro was fired although his profile is still up at WLTV's web site. Claro recently authored a book about Cuban athletes called "Medallas de Oro y Rostros de Bronce" (Gold Medals and Bronze Faces) and is currently the sports director at Diario las Americas.

Syndicated columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner's columns never stopped running in the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald (except for one which in which he defended himself and the other journalists implicated by the Herald). Montaner was also given his own show on local TV, Pronósticos on channel 22.

Miami Herald Media Company Publisher Jesus Diaz resigned in the wake of the scandal which blew up in the paper's collective face. He became embroiled in a dispute over a column by Carl Hiaasen that he wanted to spike. That, and the rehiring of the El Nuevo Herald journalists made his position untenable.

Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler took an early retirement after calling members of Miami's anti-castro media "Chihuahuas" and refusing to accept the findings of the Herald's own investigation which was conducted by Clark Hoyt.

Oscar Corral, the author of the original September 8th article, worked on a series of articles alleging malfeasance among contractors that receive federal funds for free cuba activities. He was later taken off the Cuban exile beat, apparently because members of the community refused to talk to him anymore. On August 3, 2007, Corral was arrested for soliciting a teen-aged prostitute in the Flagami area of Miami-Dade county. Corral has not written since the arrest despite the fact the Herald once again stood by their man. Also joining in Corral's defense was Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party. There are unsubstantiated rumors that Corral's wife is seeking a divorce and that Corral will be assigned to a non-visible position at the copy desk in the Herald's Broward office.

All in all, it's pretty safe to say that the mud the Herald's decision makers attempted to sling at the Cuban exile community and the exile media hit the fan and came right back at them.

The Heralds' Counter offensive

It seems that the MHMC is trying to arrest plummeting circulation figures by wooing back the Cuban-American population. As I noted here, the recent coverage the Heralds are calling The Cuba Puzzle appears to be part of that counter offensive.

And tonight the big guns came out to be interviewed on A Mano Limpia, a local Spanish prime time TV show that covers Cuba almost exclusively. Present for El Nuevo Herald was Editor Humberto Castelló and for The Miami Herald was the Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal.

A wide variety of topics were covered, including whether or not MHMC would be attempting to open a bureau in Cuba. Gyllenhaal asserted that when "he dies" there would be interest but that under the current circumstances, foreign media bureaus are "controlled". Castelló recounted the fact that 3 foreign journalists were recently expelled from Cuba.

Then Oscar Haza put Gyllenhaal in the uncomfortable position of having to defend columnist Ana Menendez' vitriolic attacks on the exile community in Miami. Gyllenhaal attempted to justify her comments by saying she only used the words "Miami Mafia" for effect to make a deeper point but that readers focused on those words and the greater point was lost.

When asked about the state of relations between the two newsrooms, Castelló affirmed that the relief should be evident in his face. That Gyllenhaal has breathed a new life into the relationship and that he arrived with new ideas and good will. What went unsaid was that those new ideas and good will were not present in the previous Executive Editor, Tom Fiedler.

Also covered on the show was the issue of important stories that are covered by one paper and not by the other (or covered days later). Gyllenhaal said that in the past the two papers were not communicating as well as they should have in many cases and chalked the other cases up to logistical problems.

Overall I got the impression that Gyllenhaal wanted to come out and demonstrate that there's a new sheriff in town and that he knows where the problems are. Hopefully, that will be the case, but I think he's still in denial about the Herald's columnists and how their constant belittling of Cubans is affecting the papers' readership.

Fiedler interview transcript

The complete transcript of the Rebecca Wakefield's interview with Tom Fiedler is available here.

Wakefield: Fiedler had no vision he could articulate

Rebecca Wakefield has written a column for the Sun Post about outgoing TMH executive editor Tom Fiedler. Some excerpts:

Widely considered a nice guy (I’ve always thought he sounded a bit like the host of a children’s show), Fiedler was, in his 33 years at the Herald, good at a number of things. He was a great reporter, a good political editor, a decent editorial page editor and, ultimately, so-so as executive editor.

There was a feeling in 2001 and now five years later, that Fiedler was a caretaker, the guy the bigwigs at corporate could rely on to keep the estate in good condition while they managed its lucrative decline.

“I try to resist thinking that the golden age of journalism is behind us,” Fiedler told me this week. “I think it’s simply that things changed. Clearly what drove the change was the readership, when our circulation began to dip and readers began to indicate they were no longer interested in the kind of journalism we all treasure.”

Fiedler points to the death of the beloved Tropic magazine, a weekly Herald supplement that allowed for in-depth exploration of the issues and general weirdness of South Florida. “It didn’t die for no reason,” he says. “It died because it lacked support, a lack of advertising and mass readership. The same was true in general of the coverage we valued in the 1980s.”

Similarly, the Herald closed most of its bureaus all over the state because Miami advertisers didn’t much care about readers elsewhere. “As the economic imperatives came to fruition, we had to start shrinking our reach, pull in our net,” he says. “I wish it were different, but wishing doesn’t make it different.”

“I’ve tried to remind people at the heart of all this, quality journalism matters and that’s what we’re all about. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded on that. But I do think the Miami Herald newsroom is still pound for pound the best newsroom in the country. It makes Miami a better place than it would be.

Whomever or whatever we hate, we can find it in the paper, either in what is written, or what is not.

That is one reason why the daily newspaper is absolutely vital to Miami. As imperfect as it is, as rudderless, bogged-down and lacking in stones as its management has often seemed, we need the Miami Herald.

The problem with Fiedler, in my opinion, is that his essentially good qualities as a person and a reporter didn’t translate well to management. He’s a stand-up, almost painfully earnest guy; a team player, a believer in the institution even when the walls are crumbling. But he didn’t have a vision you could articulate in any specific, actionable way.

Fiedler became a symbol of, and an apologist for, the disconnects between the Herald and the communities it serves, the business and editorial missions.

“Anders [The incoming Herald Executive Editor] has credibility and respect in the Herald newsroom,” Fiedler says. “And he has credibility with McClatchy. So he’s in a better position than I would have been.”

I don't know Fiedler personally but what Wakefield says makes sense. I mean several observers including former Herald columnist Jim Defede have characterized Fiedler as a "company man" and Fiedler's own remark about incoming editor Anders Gyllenhaal having more credibility with McClatchy tells us his company was Knight Ridder.

The thing that strikes me most about the piece is that Fiedler seems to blame everyone else for the Herald's decline but the Herald itself. The readers don't appreciate the "type of journalism we all treasure" and the "advertisers didn't care". As I've mentioned about Fiedler before, I think there's a lack of introspection in him that would be necessary to lead a newspaper through this period of time where the future role of traditional fishwraps is highly uncertain. You can't just keep trying to do the same old things and lament the fact that people don't want or need the same old things. I know that there has to be tension between what sells and what's journalistically proper, but like the proverbial tree falling in the solitary woods there is a question of whether a newspaper without readers makes a sound.

Regardless of who made the decision, Fiedler's moving on is probably best for the paper's new owners, the paper itself, the readers and the community.

Fiedler "Retiring" from Herald

The Sun Sentinel has published an Associated Press article stating that TMH Executive Editor, Tom Fiedler, is retiring at the end of February. How much of his retirement is voluntary remains to be seen.

Fiedler's replacement will be Anders Gyllenhaal, a former Herald reporter who most recently was editor and senior vice president of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Embattled would be a euphemism for Mr. Fiedler's current status. It's probably best for him, the newspaper, the readership, and the community that he's stepping down.

H/T: Stuck on the Palmetto