After 40 Years, Herald Says Good-Bye To Action Line

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - If you couldn't get the phone company to pay attention to your problem, or some billing snafu was being ignored by your credit card company, you could always turn to Miami Herald's Action Line for help. For 40 years, the newspaper had staff bulldogs get to the bottom of the problem and fix it, in one of the newspaper's most popular features. Sunday, that came to an end.

The newspaper announced to readers in Sunday's editions that the Action Line feature in that day's newspaper would be the last. The message said The Herald was still committed to helping report on consumer issues, but would no longer be working to solve their problems in a daily feature.

The announcement had been rumored at the newspaper for weeks, and those rumors grew stronger after The Herald announced it would eliminate 15 jobs and 36 unfilled positions amid a continued unfavorable climate for newspapers. It was not known if the decision to end the feature was directly related to the latest cuts.

At it's height, Action Line was a daily feature which solved the problems of dozens of consumers weekly. The newspaper touted the dollar amount recovered for viewers with the assistance of the Action Line team.

As the newspaper endured hundreds of layoffs, the feature was reduced to a few days a week, and then, to a Sunday feature with an occasional Action Line Extra. Left without it's long-standing team of researchers, the feature morphed into mostly a place to get general consumer news and recall information.

Sunday's final Action Line feature did help solve a problem a reader had with their pest control company.

CBS4 has a news and business relationship with The Miami Herald.