Herald newsroom debates Glen Rice coverage

Interesting debate here within Miami Herald newsroom. Btw, what's up with Rice's first name being misspelled.

http://randompixels.blogspot.com/2011/09/sarah-palin-glen-rice-sex-story-divides.html?m=1

 

The political reporter's response is to equate Yahoo! Sports with the National Enquirer. Riiiight.

 

That thread of e-mails is why, or maybe a symptom, of the decline of the industry.
A) The thread should have never been made public.
B) I think the difference between the Hurricanes story and the Palin story is that one of them will likely have consequences affecting the Herald's circulation area - the other one won't and doesn't.
C) I noticed no managers jumped in and put a kibosh on the discussion. No problem with the discussion - but that wasn't the place for it.
D) Paper's are desperate for web traffic - THAT (and too a much lesser extent Rice's tenure with the Heat) was why it was on the front of the web page.
E) It's an interesting tidbit to be sure - I think news managers like to call them "talkers" - but there is nowhere for the story to go. I imagine some editor will pen a column about it for Sunday explaining it - justifying putting it up there by quoting the web hits, noting the discussion in the newsroom etc - but I think if you looked at the Herald's web pages you'd find similar stories, only they are about actors, models and singer so nobody pays them any mind.

 

People who know Armando Salguero's work are getting a big laugh out of his lofty stance, since a great deal of his material is unsubstantiated or worse. During the lockout this summer he wrote, "Every shred of evidence (and it is rare evidence, I grant you) coming from the Bengals is they might actually be inching toward the idea of trading Carson Palmer." Hmm..... haven't seen that pan out yet.

 

He also buffers that idea with plenty of "this is my opinion" and "most people think this is ridiculous" statements. But you know, whatever: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/dolphins_in_depth/2011/04/yes-i-am-still-on-the-carson-palmer-trade-bandwagon-laugh-if-you-want-ive-been-there-before-folks-mocked-when-i-was-all.html

But back to the topic, anyone know if someone at least tried to call Rice before the post went up? That was Salguero's best question, and he weighed it down with other less-important points.

 

The Miami Herald ombudsman called out Salguero a couple of years ago for saying Jason Taylor was lying when he said he wanted to return to the Dolphins. Salguero wasn't really wrong, but he handled it pretty poorly (especially given his apparently high standards). Salguero tried to be cute in a blog by writing that Taylor lied and then doing a strike-through of the word "lied" and putting in "stated."

The ombudsman's post at the time said:

By using the word "lies" in strikethrough, Salguero explains, ''I was trying to communicate that Jason Taylor, some of what he said, was indeed dancing with the truth, was indeed fudging."

But Herald ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos says that's not good enough ... If Salguero can demonstrate that Taylor lied at the press conference when he said he hasn't requested a trade, he should do so. If he can't, he should acknowledge he was wrong to call Taylor a liar.

 

Did I miss the Herald debates on the "Jon Gruden to coach Hurricanes" stuff they published?

 

The Herald also reported that Michael Vick was working out for the Patriots (not) before signing with the Eagles.

But this is a more simple matter of one-upsmanship: Armando trying to show he is smarter than the ombudsman who jabbed him in the past.

 

Without knowing his thinking, I would agree that Salguero was wrong -- as is anyone who does the strike-through thing with the belief that if they're called out or proven wrong, it doesn't count because the key word (still visible) has a line through it. That little trick by bloggers is getting old and one day a judge in a slander case is going to call bullshit on it.

 

I'm put off by Salguero's holier-than-thou preaching, but he (badly) broaches an interesting subject we're stuck with.

Salguero is right that the Rice-Palin story is of questionable news value in some sense, and taking the Enquirer's word is questionable.

But the political reporter correctly points out that Rice-Palin is also being talked about all over the place -- it was in Doonesbury yesterday, for God's sake.

So that's where we are: Does a news organization ignore (or tread with care on) a news story that we're uneasy about, or do we have to wade in simply because the STORY (regardless of its merits) is being discussed by everybody? Is the story about the story what's important? (But, of course, by reporting on that story, you're putting it out there, too, blah, blah, blah.)

We waited 36 hours on this story before it went up in one of our blogs. The catalyst was, again, Doonesbury in some sense.

This is happening all the time now: Having to address distasteful, questionable stories not because of the story itself, but because it's causing a shitstorm, and everybody is going to want to find it with your news organization.

 

The tone of the initial makes it pretty clear that Salguero doesn't care at all about the journalistic rules and is upset only that his princess is seen in a less-than-flattering light.

 

The Big Lead has something that said that some other Miami paper New Miami Times or something like that, said that Salguero is a huge Palin fan.

I don't know if that's true or not, but it made me laugh out loud.