Herald On All Sorts of Death Lists

By Kyle Munzenrieder Mon., Mar. 9 2009 at 4:23 PM

Categories: Media Watch

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When will we ever hear good news of any significance again? Not like "yes, my favorite band is coming to town" good news, or "Oh, I heard your cousin just got the cutest lil' puppy" good news, but like "human civilization has been brought back from the brink of destruction" good news.

It is one depressing little fact, list, or statistic after another now, until we all swirl down the toilet known as total demise. And unlike a traditional toilet, it's the paper that is going down first.

About two weeks ago, Real Clear Politics put The Miami Herald at number four on their newspaper death-watch list. The top two on that list, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocky Mountain News, have recently gone online only or ceased to exist completely.

Time updates the status today with its own list, and The Herald came in number three. Time notes what we've all heard before: local advertising sucks, needs money, and the paper is up for sale with no buyers. Their prediction:

"There is a very small chance it could merge with the Sun-Sentinel, but it is more likely that the Herald will go online-only with two editions, one for English-speaking readers and one for Spanish."

I'd find it hard to believe that the Herald would go directly online only without trying a partial print schedule (cut Mondays; only print Sundays; etc. Maybe they could experiment with El Nuevo Herald first, or maybe it makes more sense to scale back the English edition).