Yahoo levels Miami

The Herald blew it ... bad.
The story was in the front yard, and the Herald blew it into the back yard.
Lousy journalism. Lousy management. ... Lousy everything.

 

Another issue is that this dude was convinced to scrap his book project and cooperate on this deal with Yahoo Sports.

The reporting on this was obviously exceptional. But the first major break was earning this dude's trust and convincing him to cooperate (presumably exclusively) with Yahoo Sports.

 

Fair points. I'd just reply that once you're in a story like this, you're all-in, and we all know newspapers are about resource allocation these days. As an aside, not to impugn anyone at the Herald (because I don't know anyone there and I don't know who would have been assigned this story), but do they have a reporter anymore who has the skill to take on a story like this?

 

There is another issue here, and maybe somebody else has brought it up so forgive me if I'm repeating.

Yahoo has no fan base. They don't cover a team, they don't have business relationships with that team's sponsors, they don't have to sell their product exclusively in the community where they just destroyed a civic institution. Is that chicken-shit? I don't know. But I do know newspapers are much more sensitive about keeping all revenue streams available. So is it worth it to win a Pulitzer and lose the accounts of three car dealerships?

None of those business concerns worry Yahoo in the slightest.

 

The Arizona Republic and its stories earlier this year on the Fiesta Bowl. There's one. And, not to reignite the stupid debate again, it was an initiative out of the news side. So it can be done, IF editors choose to devote time to them.

 

That's a good example, but I think there's a difference between a bowl -- do the people of Phoenix really take pride in it? -- and a team that has such a strong following where hundreds of thousands of people are emotionally invested.

Columbus Dispatch did excellent work on Tressel, and maybe that's as far as I need to look to see that it can be done and the Herald took the chicken way out, I don't know.

 

When I last covered a college football beat, a someone big administrative story (that was not really a scandal, at least in this respect) was clearly brewing. I told my boss I needed someone to help with the daily grind of the beat (compiling notebooks, filling out our big Saturday previews, writing an occasional feature) and he gave me basically as little help as he could. Still, it made a difference, and I was able to get a few decent smaller scoops on the story (though, admittedly, I was beaten on the biggest scoop by the Big City Paper's excellent colleges writer, who wasn't tasked at all with the minutiae of the beat).

I don't have the books on the Herald's finances. But I do know they're paying out the ass for a few of their sports columnists. I know that they went all-out for this last Heat season. And they may stand by those particular expenses. But for them to write that story a year ago and simply let it drop is poor judgment. They could have afforded to punt one of their smaller beats entirely if doing so produced something even close to this quality.

I also know that there are sports editors who simply don't value that kind of reporting. Not all of those sports editors are bad journalists. There are simply those who figure it's not worth barking up the wrong tree when you're not assured of finding anything. There are others who want to focus on being the best day-to-day section and think that's a more valuable route than pushing big projects.

I despise that mentality, but I used to work for a boss exactly like that. He was spineless; he would pore over any story that had any bit of controversy in it. He would run basic stories by legal and drain all the interesting, factual details out of them. I didn't write for him much, mostly handling desk duties, but he created a culture that constantly left reporters wondering if doing a big project or touching on a controversial subject was worth the hassle. He sapped the excitement out of doing real journalism.

I don't know anyone at the Miami Herald, but this dismissive attitude hardly surprises me. It still upsets me, though. We should be better than that. We need to be better than that if we have any hope of surviving.

 

These days, the Canes writers at The Herald sometimes have to fight tooth and nail with management to get $100 to pay a stringer to cover a road game, let alone the cost to travel to some of the games the management thinks can be skipped. I can just imagine what the response would be if they asked to go to New Jersey and spend 100 or more hours interviewing Shapiro.

Maybe they could have done some work on their own dime if they really wanted to break the story, but that could be tough considering all the reporters at 1HP that didn't get laid off took pay cuts.

Last fall, the No. 1 beat writer had to skip an ACC football game because the bosses made him help with the Heat coverage. I have suspicion that management would have preferred let this scandal slip through the cracks than miss a LeBron James' sneeze. It's hard to imagine them sending somebody over to help out on UM coverage when the No. 1 guy is getting pulled away to help with other things.

Yeah, they got their ass kicked. So did the other big South Florida papers that cover the U, but it's not because any of those beat writers don't want to cover the beat the right way. They are trying to do what they can and hoping they aren't the next ones laid off. All the South Florida papers could have done better, but couldn't have done anything close to what Yahoo! did. Until the bosses start caring about this stuff in the months before Yahoo! breaks the story it's hard to see that changing, and it sucks.

 

No doubt, Yahoo Sports has become a credible player, especially on the college scene. Well done by them...again.

 

I am enjoying the journalism portion of this discussion, but I truly do not see how this has any effect on newspapers' survival. In fact it's the exact opposite: In dollar terms, it's a story that is guaranteed to cost a lot in expenses and not bring in any new revenue. The implications on "surviving" are a non-starter.