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Armando Martinez
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Miami New Times
Sep 25 2003
This Just In ...
We have unconfirmed reports that a major daily newspaper has reinvented journalism
By Tristram Korten
I wasn't going to say anything. Who wants to spoil a birthday party, even if it's the Herald's
ballyhooed 100th anniversary? No, I was just going to let it slide -- their endlessly selfcongratulatory
centennial, their costly new redesign, their coy suggestion that perhaps they'd
actually reinvented journalism. ("The next generation of news and information!" boasted
publisher Alberto Ibargüen, who should have used an exclamation point but didn't.)
And I wasn't planning on saying anything about the Herald's new partnership with public radio
WLRN-FM, in which Herald reporters get to talk about the stories they'd written for that day's
paper -- which, for any informed person, is simply redundant. Like many, I've been ambivalent
about the partnership. For years WLRN's local news reports have been monotonously delivered
rip-and-reads from the paper anyway; now they're just being up-front about it.
Then the anniversary celebration and the news partnership merged in unholy union. Last week I
woke up listening to a purported news story on WLRN. The subject? The Herald's redesign. So
important was this shocking development that it was repeated all morning in different
variations.Riveting. What's next? Breaking news about weekend classified ad specials?
Circulation gains in west Broward?
Later that week Joseph Cooper, the peppy host of the station's midday talk show Tropical
Currents, laboriously discussed the redesign with Herald executive editor Tom Fiedler, who
does a drop-dead Mister Rogers impersonation. Fiedler murmured fretfully about the "risk" that
the redesign might take "people outside their comfort zones." But he was quick to reassure that
when confused readers called the Herald in a panic, his staff was ready to talk them through the
trauma and "metaphorically reach out and hold their hand, and say, 'It's going to be okay.'"
Puhleeze! They changed some type fonts, stripped in some color, and added a digest page for the
attention-deficit-disorder crowd. (USA Today, watch your back!) But as far as I can tell, the same
people are still doing the same job. New coat of paint, same old jalopy. Even the touted daily
tabloid insert, "Tropical Life," is the erstwhile "Living" section by another name printed
sideways.
Shameless self-promotion is nothing new to the Herald. But when it's tarted up as news and
drilled into our heads on the local National Public Radio affiliate, it becomes something else -- a
deception. Not unlike the paper's makeover itself, which is a marketer's attempt to cover up with
snappy graphics the damage done by years of staff cuts inflicted by Tony Ridder in his relentless
drive for ever-higher profit margins. Ibargüen and Fiedler can hype the redesign all they want.
The truth still lies in the numbers, and the numbers don't lie. Since 2000 Herald total average
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