Edward Schumacher-Matos, a former editor and reporter with The New York Times and Wall Street Journal with extensive experience in Florida and Latin America, writes occasional pieces taking up issues in the news, answering questions from readers and critiquing how The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald handle topics of significance.
If you have a suggestion or concern about coverage in The Miami Herald or El Nuevo Herald, please send an e-mail to ombudsman@MiamiHerald.com.
Marián Prío, a reader from Key Biscayne, was upset. She had just read a column in El Nuevo Herald, the newspaper of record for the substantial segment of South Florida that is Spanish dominant.
Join the crowd if you're confused by widely varying polls indicating who is leading in the race for president. Sen. John McCain appeared to be closing on Sen. Barack Obama in recent days, according to the Rasmussen and ''traditional'' Gallup daily-tracking polls in The Miami Herald. The margin Thursday was three percentage points; it had been seven percentage points earlier in the week.
John McCain and Sarah Palin seem to be running against the ''media'' as much as they are against Barack Obama. The coverage has been pro-Obama, they charge in heated rallies.
In a major move for the two When readers recently recommended overwhelmingly that a slimmed down Miami Herald should reposition itself with more local news, many of them pointed to the Neighbors sections.
More local news, more investigations, a conservative local columnist, more on Latin America -- these are some of the trends that have emerged as readers continue responding to my question of what The Miami Herald should emphasize.
Many of you clearly care about The Miami Herald. Nearly 175 of you responded thoughtfully to my request for ideas on what content the paper should emphasize in an era of staff cuts. I can't reprint all of your responses, but following are representative excerpts. I hope the writers will understand that I edited their excerpts for space. All letters are being shared in full internally. Let's keep talking.
Wealthy sports stars such as Jason Taylor aren't like you and me, but that doesn't mean The Miami Herald can take license in writing about who they are and what they think.
One of the most treacherous stories for The Miami Herald to cover is Israel, not because of the wars and terrorism there, but because of the passions among readers here.
The different photographs that The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald ran this week of a Vietnamese girl with a massive facial tumor raise questions of when a picture is exploitive of its subject or offensive to us as readers.
It is to many readers a mystery, maybe even a conspiracy: Who gets their letters to the editor published, and why? In recent weeks, I have received complaints that the letters seem to reflect a political bias, or favorites, or are anti-Cuban.
The Miami Herald now appears to be encouraging people to steal. Then again, maybe many of us are guilty -- including me. A first-person article by Elaine Pasekoff, which ran this past week in the Tropical Life section, gleefully detailed how she traveled to New York's Chinatown and was taken by surreptitious guides into three secret showrooms where she bought counterfeit handbags. ''I quickly complete my mission,'' she writes, 'by selecting several bags that are close matches to the ones on my list...
Most of us reading this newspaper have a mortgage, own our home or want to buy one. So, when The Miami Herald writes about housing, it is affecting a major source of our net worth. As the value of our house goes, so goes the value of our savings, retirement and credit.
You might not normally link Sean Taylor and Benjamin Franklin, but the two are linked in ignominy with part of The Miami Herald's website. Of the three, only the murdered football player comes off well.
Most of us wish the Iraq War would just go away. In one way, you might think it slowly has: the pages of The Miami Herald.
The Miami Herald has made a financial contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. As readers or supporters of other candidates, have you and I just been defrauded?
Is The Miami Herald guilt-ridden with white man's burden, soft on crime or just muddle headed? These are among the questions raised by some readers about what they see as The Herald's squeamishness in writing about . . well, that's the issue. Are they illegal aliens? Undocumented workers? Or as some say in South Texas, just plain wetbacks.
How can even the most hardened editor not go warm and fuzzy over the Gomez brothers?
The two boys were detained to be deported to their native Colombia when student friends intervened to save them, launching an online campaign, raising money and going to Congress. They won the family's release, at least for the moment. The Gomez boys, 18 and 19, were popular students, and the younger Juan was a star. He had near-perfect grades and has just entered the honor's program at Miami Dade College.
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