“For Us, This Is the Biggest Story There Is”
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“South Florida’s media kicked into overdrive today as the news that hundreds of thousands of listeners, viewers and readers have been waiting for 47 years appeared close to breaking,” the Miami Herald reported today.
“Telemundo’s WSCV-TV 51, the first on the air with the video from Havana, went into continuous coverage mode throughout the night on Monday into this morning and repeated that from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. today.
“WTVJ-TV NBC 6 extended its noon newscast to an hour today.
“Hundreds of callers jammed the phone lines at Spanish-language radio stations today, eager to espouse their theories about the situation on the island.
”’Cuban radio is abuzz with every sort of conspiracy theory you can imagine,’ said José Cancela, who was a stand-in host of a morning program on WQBA-AM. `But everything is speculation. There’s no information.'”
As for the print media, “Today, newspapers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are working overtime to cover a story that many of their readers have been anxiously awaiting for years,” Sarah Weber wrote today in Editor & Publisher.
“‘For us, this is the biggest story there is,’ said Rick Hirsch, the Herald’s managing editor of multimedia. ‘We are in overdrive already, talking about how this could be a story that goes on for days or weeks or months.’
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“The Miami Herald is devoting major resources to the story. Today, nearly half of the MiamiHerald.com front page was allotted to Castro’s declining health. Stories included local reactions from state politicians and Cuban exiles, blogging reports from the Miami area, and many video and multimedia reports showing the reactions of Miami locals as well as those in Havana. The Herald is also bringing out its prepared coverage for revision, including Castro’s prewritten obit.
“‘We have done a lot of planning over the years for how we will handle and cover Castro’s death,’ Hirsch told E&P. ‘It’s something that we revise every year.'”
“Sharon Rosenhouse, the managing editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, noted that her paper also had Castro-related stories on most of its front page this morning under a banner headline that read ‘Castro Yields Powers,'” the E&P story said.
“‘We scrambled last night because it broke late,’ Rosenhouse said, ‘but I think we had pretty good hustle.'”
“‘It’s a very big story here,’ she added, ‘and we’re going to do everything it takes to emphasize it and give it the space that it requires. I wouldn’t rule anything out.'”
Humberto Castello, editor of El Nuevo Herald, which naturally gave extensive coverage to the developments, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Ivan Roman, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, told Journal-isms from Puerto Rico that he found the coverage there to be balanced. “They’ve had live coverage. They’ve also interviewed Cuban exiles and people from the Puerto Rican Independence Party, the socialist party, and people who have strong ties to the Revolution. What they have not done is have local politicians on; they’re letting the federal government be the spokesman.”
Roman, who has worked both in Miami and in Puerto Rico, said of the story that of course, “in Miami, it’s bigger than anywhere else in the States. There are so many people who’ve been in Miami for so many years whose situation is a direct result of Fidel Castro.”
In Havana today, “A senior Cuban official insisted Castro’s final moment was ‘very far away,’ despite his handing over power to his brother after surgery,” as the Associated Press reported.
“The coverage is going to be tricky,” Roman added, “because the information is so tentative. Covering something like this is more difficult than covering something you know.”
