Love Fest - The Royal Ballet in Cuba - part sept / Dear New York Times:

Haglund hopes that the Public Editor at The New York Times, Clark Hoyt,  will get to the bottom of the paper's refusal to cover the story of The Royal Ballet's historic trip to Cuba:

Dear Mr. Hoyt:

Please investigate the apparent censorship  by The New York Times of one of the greatest culture stories of the year:  The Royal Ballet's historic trip to Havana, Cuba.

 

The Washington Post, NBC News, Reuters, CBS News, Associated Press, Financial Times, BBC News, Sacramento Bee, Gary Post Tribune, Miami Herald, MSNBC, San Francisco Chronicle, MSN Malaysia News, CCTV, Arab Times, and others covered this important cultural-diplomatic story from many angles.

 

According to the Cuban-American National Council, 84% of all Cuban-Americans live in four states: New York, New Jersey, Florida, and California.   [http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1b/5a/cd.pdf]

 

The New York Times invests wads of money trying to attract Latino readers and advertisers.  Why should the Latino community consider NYT as a reliable news source when it delivers a slap in the face to Cuban-Americans everywhere by ignoring such important news?   Why should readers of all ethnic backgrounds look to the Times for culture and news coverage when it ignores such important news?  And lastly, it makes one wonder what other news the Times, which proclaims itself a national newspaper with a so-called global edition, holds back from its readers that it shouldn't.

 

It is truly shameful, and we hope that you will be able to make the paper's editors feel their shame.

Haglund's Heel
http://haglundsheel.typepad.com

Their autoreply:

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Comments

[Linda]

Your letter just expressed what many of us were thinking while beholding the silence maintained by the NYTimes and their arts/dance staff. Essentially every major newspaper in the world were covering the story (we posted on Twitter several articles from all over Latinamerica and Europe's main news outlets). I hope to see a reply to your letter.

Great blog by the way!

[Haglund]

Thank you so much for your support and kind words. The New York Times's Public Editor publishes a column twice monthly. So it may be a while before we see any explanation, if ever.

Be sure to catch more stories, pictures, and some very interesting Comments at the end of Tonya Plank's Swan Lake Samba Girl blog entry on Carlos Acosta.

http://www.tonyaplank.com/swan_lake_samba_girl/

[Jo Ann]

This cuban magazine also covered the story: http://www.lajiribilla.cu/
Jo

[Haglund]

Jo Ann –

Thank you for the link to La Jiribilla's coverage of this historic event. The pictures are glorious, especially those of the Manon performance!

Thanks again.

[mirta]

You might want to add that 5 of the dancers got swine-flu while in Cuba... That should definately be news worthy

[Haglund]

Hi Mirta.

You are so right that it was news worthy. Reuters picked it up right away and published it!