A NEW HERALD

 Our job as reporter and recorder, historian and gadfly of the REGJB, Miami's criminal courthouse, has morphed and expanded over the years, mostly because of the lack of intelligent insight and commentary on Miami events and world events. We report about culinary trends, books to read, vaccines to take, politicians to hate, and of course, judges to mock. Along the way you might learn a bit about cosmology and epistemology and be the better off for it. 

During this time the country has seen the collapse of the print media, not unlike the collapse of the honey bee population. Both events place our country and our world in a precarious position. 

Nothing keeps politicians and government on track and accountable to the populi like a vigorous and skeptical media, buzzing around potential corruption like bees pollinating  crops.  While Watergate is the most commonly cited example, local newspapers across the country have broken countless government scandals with reporters, wearing trench coats and pencils stuck behind their ears,  digging in the trash of county commissioners and finding motel receipts expensed to the county. 

Digital platforms of all sorts have been the death knell of the print media. If people get their news on line, they do not buy newspapers. When people do not buy newspapers, circulation goes down, ad revenue plunges, and @Davidovalle305 cannot get that well deserved raise. More importantly, when the Miami Herald and other newspapers cannot afford to pay reporters to cover politicians, judges, cops and government, then stories go unreported and accountability fades into the nebula of on-line news, the real and fake kind alike. 

All of this is a prelude to the announcement by the new executive editor of the Miami Herald here that the Herald is being ....wait for it...."reimagined!" 

Imagine that. No, wait. Reimagine that. 

Here is part of what she wrote: 

Success at the Miami Herald requires a newsroom with strong community connections. It is consistent journalism excellence through accountability and public service reporting. It is the recognition and awareness of our rich local diversity and culture, and it is acknowledging that we are community and collaborative partners in diversity, equity and inclusion. It is meeting readers where they are with the content that they need. And, it is us being here to inspire and entertain.

These are not just words I cobbled together on the back of a napkin. These are the markers and expectations that I believe the Miami Herald must build its success on.

That is all well and good and we wish her and her staff luck. But maybe the Miami Herald needs just a bit more. Some person with their finger on the pulse of the city. A polymath able to expound on the federalist papers, a new restaurant in south beach, the Biden infrastructure bill, and the Delta variant - and do it all in one intriguing  post. 

Hmm...where would the Herald find such a sui generis character of upstanding character? Where would they find a writer of such extraordinary talent that their blog has been cited by local federal courts*, and credited in their own newspaper multiple times for breaking stories? Where would they find someone who would work for the pure joy of writing, and ask that his payments be donated to full time journalists? Maybe they can put an investigative reporter on the matter and see what she digs up.

* See e.g.,  Ranck v. Rundle, 08-22235-CIV, 2009 WL 1684645, at *2 (S.D. Fla. June 16, 2009) ("On May 5, 2008, Plaintiff made public the Memo by posting it on a blog he created and sending a link to his posting to the Justice Building blog, a well known public forum used by lawyers practicing criminal law in Dade County. [DE 1, ¶ 44].).