Legal Commentary

The Miami Herald Is Boring

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

It still boggles my mind that the Miami Herald can be so boring when there's so much talented state and local coverage online.

Today's Herald front page gives most of its real estate to a large, competent, story on property taxes. (“As market values plummet, tax bills still rise.”) Yes, it has some take-home value. But it doesn't say anything I haven't read in the Herald before.

The Herald routinely gives prime placement to predictable columnists such as Myriam Marquez (motto: “boring and conventional since 2009”), while burying on an inside page one of its few remaining, Fred Grimm Today's Grimm column was typical — a solid double. In Nut preacher hits jackpot in digital age makes the somewhat predictable point that Terry Jones is a cheap publicity hound, but illustrates it with person experience from growing up in 50's West Virginia in an “unpainted, plumbing-free clapboard house where I lived with an aunt and her hard-preaching husband.”

Worse, the political coverage just isn't even close to being all it could be. The Herald could save itself it would just buy in some talent from online. Where — other than the soon-departing Beth Reinhard will you find anything to equal The Reid Report or Eye on Miami? How can the Herald stand to be so outdone?

Full post as published by Discourse.net on September 12, 2010 (boomark / email).