Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Miami Herald's horrible website exposed again

Continuing with my post yesterday, exposing more self-evident flaws in the the Miami Herald and its website
Today is Wednesday September 12th, 2007. The following "Correction" appeared last Friday for a story that had run the previous day, the 6th, a date well within the Herald's own rules for keeping a story on its website for 7 days before sending it to archives.
(There, of course, you get to pay for the privilege of finding it. Minus the photos, graphs and other helpful info you'd be able to see if you were looking for a story on the Baltimore Sun's website, for example.)
Unlike the corrections that run on the website of the New York Times, and on p. 2A of the actual paper, the Herald's website doesn't provide a link back to the original story with the appended correction. It's a small thing, but lile so much with the Herald, its speaks volumes about its inherent reader unfriendliness.

http://www.miamiherald.com/461/story/228480.html
Miami Herald
September 7, 2007
An article on Page 3B of the Metro & State section Thursday wrongly attributed a quote from Miami-Dade School Board member Evelyn Greer to another member. The article should have noted that Greer said: "It's a very interesting phenomenon in this state. People don't want to pay taxes, but they want the best in services."

So, if you had wanted to find the original story on the Herald's website, the subject of the correction, which appeared in the paper only 5 days old before, you'd get the following: it's disappeared.
What follows is exactly what appears on the website after I typed in my query.

Recent News
Keywords: "Evelyn Greer"

Pub Date: Past 7 Days Wed, Sep 12, 2007 Tue, Sep 11, 2007 Mon, Sep 10, 2007 Sun, Sep 9, 2007 Sat, Sep 8, 2007 Fri, Sep 7, 2007 Thu, Sep 6, 2007
We didn't find any News containing "Evelyn Greer". Please refine your query and try again.

Suggestions:
Check your spelling
Try different words
Try words that mean the same thing
Try fewer words


http://pd.miami.com/sp?aff=101&keywords=Evelyn+Greer&pubDate=&submit=search
So, I tried it again but the original Sept. 6th article that the Herald made their mistake in, NEVER appeared on the page.
Don't think that the Herald's own reporters don't know how bad the website is -they hear it from people everywhere they go.

Draw your own conclusions!

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