Parting Ways
As He Heads Off Into the Sunset, Tom Fiedler Shares His Journalist Views and Newsroom Regrets

“I try to resist thinking that the golden age of journalism is behind us. I think it’s simply that things changed.”

By Rebecca Wakefield

When Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler announced his retirement last week, it came as no surprise. He’d been seeking a way out for at least the last year or two. With a new corporate owner, a new publisher in place and fresh turmoil, now seemed a good time.

Fiedler was tapped to lead the Herald newsroom after star Editor Marty Baron left for the Boston Globe in 2001. Widely considered a nice guy (I’ve always thought he sounded a bit like the host of a children’s show), Fiedler was, in his 33 years at the Herald, good at a number of things. He was a great reporter, a good political editor, a decent editorial page editor and, ultimately, so-so as executive editor.

There was a feeling in 2001 and now five years later, that Fiedler was a caretaker, the guy the bigwigs at corporate could rely on to keep the estate in good condition while they managed its lucrative decline. It’s an industry-wide trend with particularly devastating results for America’s most tumultuous immigrant city.

Fiedler, a self-described “incurable optimist,” disagrees, sort of. He says that despite all the budget and staff cuts, redesigns, circulation shrinkage and technology changes that have assailed the newspaper in the past decade or so, the Herald is still a vital force.

“I try to resist thinking that the golden age of journalism is behind us,” Fiedler told me this week. “I think it’s simply that things changed. Clearly what drove the change was the readership, when our circulation began to dip and readers began to indicate they were no longer interested in the kind of journalism we all treasure.”

Fiedler points to the death of the beloved Tropic magazine, a weekly Herald supplement that allowed for in-depth exploration of the issues and general weirdness of South Florida. “It didn’t die for no reason,” he says. “It died because it lacked support, a lack of advertising and mass readership. The same was true in general of the coverage we valued in the 1980s.”

Similarly, the Herald closed most of its bureaus all over the state because Miami advertisers didn’t much care about readers elsewhere. “As the economic imperatives came to fruition, we had to start shrinking our reach, pull in our net,” he says. “I wish it were different, but wishing doesn’t make it different.”

Fiedler argues that despite all this, the Herald’s still a rocking good paper. “I’ve tried to lead the newsroom at a time when things are changing so fast none of us knows where the end is, or what the right way or wrong way is,” he says. “I’ve tried to remind people at the heart of all this, quality journalism matters and that’s what we’re all about. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded on that. But I do think the Miami Herald newsroom is still pound for pound the best newsroom in the country. It makes Miami a better place than it would be.

“When we engage in stories and issues, we engage just as we always do,” he continues.

Unfortunately, the Herald, with some notable exceptions, has not engaged much in years. A complaint I’ve heard often from a number of people is that although the newspaper employs some excellent journalists (Debbie Cenziper, Scott Hiaasen, Oscar Corral, to name a few of many) who do great work, as a whole, it’s a pretty thin enterprise. Why bother with the “5 Minute Herald” summary of the news on the back of the metro section, some gripe, when the paper itself rarely exceeds that level of detail?

“That’s ill-informed,” Fiedler responds. “Somebody who would say that clearly isn’t reading our paper. It’s a phony intellectual kind of a statement, trying to be dismissive.”

Well, yeah. If Herald-bashing were a sport, Miami would have no problem getting a stadium built for it. In a town short on substance, the Herald is our civic symbol of self-loathing. Who or what can we look up to? The Marlins? Sure, just until the latest player fire sale. The Heat or Dolphins? Maybe once every 20 years. Can you think of a single unifying force, local politician, civic leader, cause?

We are unified only, and only briefly, when attacked from the outside. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo did wonders for our esprit de corps, for about five minutes. Castro sneezes, and we all rejoice.

Our dissatisfaction with the Herald is in part a reflection of our frustrations with living in Miami, among rude, greedy, plastic, corrupt people to whom we often can’t connect. Who are these people? Everybody but us. Whomever or whatever we hate, we can find it in the paper, either in what is written, or what is not.

That is one reason why the daily newspaper is absolutely vital to Miami. As imperfect as it is, as rudderless, bogged-down and lacking in stones as its management has often seemed, we need the Miami Herald.

The problem with Fiedler, in my opinion, is that his essentially good qualities as a person and a reporter didn’t translate well to management. He’s a stand-up, almost painfully earnest guy; a team player, a believer in the institution even when the walls are crumbling. But he didn’t have a vision you could articulate in any specific, actionable way. Individual reporters and editors drove the occasional blockbusters the paper produced. Fiedler became a symbol of, and an apologist for, the disconnects between the Herald and the communities it serves, the business and editorial missions.

Case in point was the controversy between the Herald and El Nuevo Herald, which blew up earlier this year when Herald reporter Oscar Corral wrote about local journalists, including some working for El Nuevo, being paid by the U.S. government for anti-Castro propaganda. In short order, the journalists were fired, then rehired, then the publisher resigned. A lot of that wasn’t Fiedler’s fault, but he gamely took the hits.

In 2005, when Miami City Commissioner Art Teele shot himself in the lobby and star columnist Jim DeFede was fired for taping one of his last phone calls without permission, Fiedler received an enormous backlash from fellow journalists and the community. Fiedler says he regrets that he and then-publisher Jesus Diaz handled the matter poorly, but he would have made the same decision even after deliberation.

“I would have ended up in the same place,” he reflects. “It was so contrary to our ethics … that had there been something short of termination, people would have seen it as no punishment at all. I regretted it happened with Jim. I had high regard for him.”

You get a sense of the personal angst Fiedler feels in these situations as he continues. “I would say Jim was my friend, although Jim might throw up if he heard me say that. Maybe it’s the guilt I feel, but I’m delighted to hear his radio show and TV show. He’s such a talented journalist.”

Fiedler’s replacement, expected to take over in the next couple of months, is Anders Gyllenhaal, editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He worked at the Herald from 1979 to 1991, and seems to be well-regarded in the industry. If a will exists to return on some level to “the journalism we treasure,” Gyllenhaal and new publisher Dave Landsberg will have a moment of traction. “Anders has credibility and respect in the Herald newsroom,” Fiedler says. “And he has credibility with McClatchy. So he’s in a better position than I would have been.”

I asked Jim DeFede for his thoughts and he said that the challenge for Gyllenhaal will be to focus the paper’s resources on the things that make the paper still an occasionally great one.

“Having a strong Miami Herald is critical in a community like this one,” he says. “In a town that has this large an immigrant population, the best civics lesson new people get every day is that newspaper. It’s a huge role to fill.”

No argument there.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.