Okay, it looks like that Sacramento Bee story I mentioned in the post below has (or had) been shitcanned. I got an e-mail from Bee managing editor Joyce Terhaar saying the newspaper never had a story about the downfall of Miami Herald in the works. I knew differently, since I'd been interviewed for it by reporter Dale Kasler and he told me he was working on a story about the decline of the Herald as it mirrored the downfall of Knight Ridder. The entire interview was on that theme -- and I even wrote him an e-mail after the interview offering more on the "decline of the Miami Herald." (It was a quickee about the 1998 closing of Tropic Magazine, which I think was a big step toward quotidian mediocrity for the newspaper). I'm sure Kasler must have interviewed others on the topic, too.
So I told Terhaar about that. She wrote back:
"I talked to the reporter and he said your blog completely mischaracterized the interview. Dale was exploring a way to do the final sale of Knight Ridder through a different angle, the perspective of one of the KR papers. He looked at Miami and Kansas and ultimately decided on a completely different angle for the story. Your characterization of the story simply is wrong. While it might make for a snarky take for the alternative newspaper, it's factually incorrect."
Okay, first of all, my blog doesn't mischaracterize anything -- I do. But in this case, as snarky as I may want to be for my weird and subversive alternative newspaper, I didn't mischaracterize a thing. The Bee was doing precisely the kind of story I described. What is obviously true from Terhaar is that, at some point, the newspaper "decided on a completely different angle for the story."
The story idea was killed, possibly by the reporter himself (who did have this article on the subject today). There you go.
And since I've been forced to concern myself with that darn newspaper again, I thought I'd steer you to the Bee's website. Anybody who complains about the Herald site should spend a few minutes there. Then, if they're still awake, they'll have an idea how dull and mind-numbing a newspaper's electronic home can really be.
