Unfolding 117 Years of History with the Miami Herald

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The Miami Evening Record quickly became a vehicle for bold community advocacy. Within a year of its founding, Stoneman had successfully editorialized for the creation of a charity hospital which would serve Miamians regardless of how much money they made. He was also the only local newspaper editor to skeptically look at the 1909 plan to drain the Everglades.

The most defining feature of the Evening Records’ first few years was perhaps its fearless opposition to Henry Flagler, the Gilded Age railroad mogul who was largely responsible for the city’s founding less than ten years earlier. While Miami’s success and existence were largely owed to Flagler and his investments, there was a growing discontent among the community because of the monopolies he held in the city’s businesses and political life. Unlike other local newspapers at the time, the Evening Record railed against the nepotism, negligence, and corruption found within Flagler’s companies and political representatives. This was done at great personal risk to the newspaper’s prosperity, given that a large portion of the marketing income came from Flagler’s advertisements.

As Miami’s population grew, so too did the readership of the Miami Evening Record. In just a few years’ time, Stoneman and his partners were doing so well that they bought a two-story building at the southwest corner of what is now South Miami Avenue and Second Street. In 1907, they bought out a failing paper and merged it with the Evening Record. It was also in 1907 when the newspaper renamed itself the Miami Morning Record began publishing in the morning rather than in the evening. The paper was booming and so was the city.

However, it was in this slew of growth when the paper had incurred a heavy indebtedness to the East Coast Company, which was owned by Henry Flager. Its editorial potency began to wane and Miami’s economy turned towards a downward path, culminating in the Panic of 1909 which caused banks to fail and business to close. By the summer of 1910 the newspaper was in serious trouble. Not only had circulation declined, many of the advertisers were unable to pay their bills. With the newspaper paralyzed at the precipice of bankruptcy, a herald of things to come took the shape of a neatly presented man with thick-rimmed glasses named Frank B. Shutts.

Because of the reputation Shutts had gained as the receiver for Flagler’s bank, and perhaps because he represented their most important creditor, Stoneman and The Miami Morning News hired him to put the paper back on its feet. A deal was quickly brokered which resulted in Flagler purchasing the paper and paying off its debtors in exchange for lenient coverage of his business operations. This sort of fraternalization between the financing and editorial departments would later be TKVERB by the Knight brothers. Shutts was appointed publisher, and Stoneman was appointed editor and on December 1, 1910, the newspaper’s name was changed to The Miami Herald. Shutts, a man who never had any intentions of running a newspaper, fell in love with the newsroom and purchased the Miami Herald from Flagler two years later following a petty disagreement over the employment of a chauffeur. Henry Flagler passed away the following year, marking the end of an era.

The Herald, under new management, navigated its rebirth and experienced a new era of evolution. Its first major improvement came in 1911 when it became Miami’s first newspaper to receive the Associated Press’ worldwide news distributionCK*. As its circulation started to make a noticeable gain, so did its advertising. However, it was the Herald’s breaking coverage of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 that sparked new highs in its readership. The paper successfully editorialized for the creation of Tamiami Trail, the first road which connected Florida’s southern east and west coasts. In 1915, the Miami Herald hired its first woman reporter, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, starting to write for its society column but would soon go on to report from the streets of Paris during the first World War.

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the Herald was still a small-town paper in a small southern town. Miami and its writers were not immune to the influence of the moralist movement sweeping the nation, which advocated temperance, bible thumping and conservative moral values. The Herald was not insusceptible to the contemporaneous social climate, best exemplified by its printing of Sunday’s sermon on Monday and its habitual coverage of “come to Jesus” fundamentalists such as Billy Sunday. By 1916, however, the nation was growing prosperous from its trade with belligerents, and so was Miami, which in 1916 experienced a building boom. The newspaper began to move away from its fundamental values and even opposed the passing of prohibition in 1919.

In 1910, Miami’s population was 5,500. But by 1920, its population had rocketed to 30,000. However, this growth spurt was only a hint of the exponential evolution and innovation to come to both the city and Herald during the Roaring Twenties.

Miami’s boom was largely funded by real estate and development. So too was the Herald’s growth in the 1920s: For every home or building that was built, a barrage of beautiful, full-page advertisements would find its place in-between the pages of the Miami Herald. The era bred a culture that revolved around property, development and speculation. Americans from across the country flocked to South Florida to bask in the sun and get rich quick selling real estate. In the summer of 1925, new editors and reporters came to the Herald almost daily, sometimes only working a week, seldom longer than a month. Most resigned to become real-estate salesmen.

Regardless of its quick employee turnover rate, for thirteen months in 1925 and 1926, the Miami Herald was the largest newspaper in volume of business in the world, toppling the great papers of London, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It set a world record in 1925 with 42.5 million lines of advertising, 12 million more lines than any newspaper had ever carried in a year’s time. The Herald realized it needed to update facilities to keep up with the boom-time demand. In 1925, construction began on a new four-story building behind its Miami Avenue headquarters. Refusal to advertise the KKK as another social club.

As a boom-time newspaper in a boom-time city, the Miami Herald became the city’s advocate throughout the 1920s. It did everything it could to stoke the flames of Miami’s growth, running editorials encouraging development, reporting on the city’s successes, and rarely strayed from its positive messaging. The paper sang the city’s praises but was cautious to report on topics might stifle investment and development. However, the newspaper’s compulsion to report on the good and downplay the bad came to a head as the decade did.

While the first half of the 1920s marked one of the Herald’s golden ages, the latter half marked some of its most trying times. Signs abounded that this boom was approaching its bust, though one would never have known from reading the Miami Herald. As much as Miami benefitted from the Great Florida Land Boom, its infrastructure began to prove inadequate to support this massive period of growth. The Florida East Coast (Miami’s lifeline to rest of the country put an embargo on the city after large volumes of imported lumber led to train-station employees being unable to unload as fast as they were receiving, which backed up the entire line. To make matters worse, a ship capsized in the harbor, rendering the port inaccessible for almost six weeks.

This hurricane, later called the Great Miami hurricane, acted as a catalyst, popping what was left of the real-estate bubble and violently shoved Miami into the doldrums of the Great Depression three years before the rest of the nation. After the 1926 storm, the fortunes built on speculation would vanish and Miami would lose nearly half of its boom-time population. Readership for the Herald would also decline, its volume in advertising becoming a dim shadow compared to the boom years.

As the Great Depression swept the nation, South Florida saw a small pick-up in its population due to disenfranchised workersCK* migrating from the north. There was a saying that if you were going to starve, you might as well do so in comfortable weather and in a beautiful environ. The end of this era of unchecked growth gave birth to a new one: the Age of Radio.

The radio began to pick up in popularity in the late 1920s and throughout the Great Depression, culminating in over 60 percent of Americans owning a radio by 1934. It marked a time when newspapers were not only having to compete against other newspapers, but against different mediums.

A resilient institution, the Miami Herald stabilized its circulation in the 30s and, once again, began to experience steady growth in readersCK*. It reoriented itself, doing away with the sensationalist, “everything’s great” headlines which characterized the 20s, and adopted a more dependable and serious front page. The paper turned its eyes to towards the overcrowding and obscene living conditions in Overtown (then called “Colored Town”) and editorialized the expansion of resources made available to Miami’s black community. These efforts eventually culminated in the creation of Liberty Square, the first public housing project in the southeastern United States.

Shutts, nearing his mid 60s, began to show less and less interest in the news and editorial content published in the Miami Herald. Stoneman also began to demonstrate a certain amount of waning himself, not delivering the same potency as perhaps a few years before. The Herald, a ship without an impassioned captain behind its helm, could have almost been considered adrift before John and James Knight joined the voyage.

After the Knight takeover, the newspaper began to diligently cover local corruption, most noticeably in the Herald’s role in exposing a political scandal in 1937. Herald reporters helped break the story of City of Miami commissioners attempting to collect a bribe from the president of Florida Power & Light (FPL) in exchange for agreeing to a power rate that would save the utility company millions of dollars. The newspaper would again report on City of Miami corruption in 1939. It was over, of all things, milk: A herald reporter led an editorial campaign over the sale of unpasteurized milk in Miami, which was becoming a serious health crisis resulting in over 1,000 cases of undulant fever a year. No other campaign in the paper had had ever been given so much space. Miami mayor E. G. Sewell, who very much preferred his milk unpasteurized, was so offended by the pasteurization movement that he declared, “Who is John Knight to insist upon an ordinance of milk?” The Herald’s efforts were largely successful and nearly everyone in Dade County stopped buying unpasteurized milk. The undulant epidemic came to an end. It was one of the first times the Herald had sunk its teeth into a story and refused to let go.

Four years after the Knight takeover, the United States entered World War II. The war did much to reorient Miami and the Herald. Miami, whose tourism economy faltered at the onset of war in Europe, found itself alive again: streets were flooded with thousands of soldiers whom had come from all over the country to train before fighting abroad. Hundreds of vacant hotels were transformed into military training facilities and soldiers were conducting marching drills up and down Biscayne Boulevard. The Herald changed too. Not only had the paper regained the circulation it lost during the early part of the war, it had become a vital source of information regarding price controls, rationing, dim-outs and other wartime activities. It had become a public-service newspaper, acting with a newfound sense of civic duty. Due to wartime rationing and shortages, the Herald was often forced to run a small, seven-page paper that left little space for advertisements, news and editorials. The Herald would, sometimes for weeks, publish a paper with no paid advertisements to leave space to cover important news stories to those in Miami with family in the war.

Then on September 15, 1945, soon after the war ended, a hurricane hit Homestead. During the storm, the Richmond Airfield base caught fire and its enormous airplane hangars burned down—signaling the end of Miami’s wartime era. When the editors, who were holed up at the Herald during the storm, heard about the fire they sent a reporter and photographer to cover the scene. A car was filled with thousands of pounds of Linotype to make sure they wouldn’t blow away. The Herald’s coverage of this hurricane was its first attempt at doing all-out reporting on an incoming storm and the damage it left behind. This was in sharp contrast to pre-Knight policies that discouraged storm coverage because it caused “undue alarm” and portrayed the city in a bad light. (The Herald would continue to produce a culture of storm reporting ultimately leading to its 1992 Pulitzer Prize for its humanitarian effort after Hurricane Andrew.)

While the 1960s can be characterized as a period of increased riches and development, it can also be remembered as an era of racial violence, cultural traumas and hard-fought activism. The Miami Herald embodied the changes sweeping the city. As its staff continued to grow throughout the 1960s, so did its diversity. More and more opportunities for advancement were being extended to more employees (not just the white men) and the newspaper was on its way to becoming a more inclusive and representational publication.

After Fidel Castro was released from prison in Cuba in 53, he came to Miami to raise funds for an invasion army that he would train in Mexico. He came to the Herald and ask that they run a story. Nobody took the man seriously, as political unrest had become common place on the island-nation and a throw-away blurb was published deep within the folds of the newspaper. The series of events following Castro’s grab at power would take priority in headlines across the nation for years to come. The Cuban story would perhaps be the largest local story ever covered by the Miami Herald. It was an odyssey that would involve the arrival of Cuban refugees in Miami, the breaking of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After the Cuban revolution, 100,000 refugees immigrated to Miami believing they would return to Cuba after Fidel was thrown out of power. When it became clear that nobody was going back to Cuba anytime soon, many Cubans starting settling in and finding entry-level jobs at places like the Miami Herald. Roberto Suarez, an exiled Cuban lawyer, found work inserting flyers into the paper and would eventually rise to become the president of the Miami Herald and later publisher of el Nuevo Herald.

Set against the backdrop of desegregation, the 1960s were part of a continued era of racial strife and activism in Miami. While Miami was a hotbed of sit-ins and protests, these issues were rarely covered on a day-to-day basis and were almost never featured on the front page. Issues facing black residents in Miami were largely unrepresented in mainstream newspapers. This led to the widespread popularity of other local newspapers such as the Miami Times, which was black-owned and employed black journalists who understood their community’s unique experience in Miami. The Herald had often led campaigns aimed at racial and social justice, first exemplified in the 1930s when they campaigned for the creation of Liberty Square. Continuing this legacy, investigative reporter Gene Harris won the Herald its second Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for reporting that helped save two innocent black men from execution. As the 1960s came and went, the City of Miami emerged reborn. It was transformed from a small southern city into the beginnings of an international city – one whose glimmering bay would serve as a beacon of freedom to those in South America and the Caribbean in the decades to come.

By the 1970s, the Miami Herald had grown so much that it surpassed the New York Times in space given to news coverage. Alvah Chapman, who had a very different managing style from the Knight brothers, had introduced the Herald to the computer age. He worked to modernize, streamline and improve production. The Sunday edition would often run over 400 pages and occasionally reached 500 pages. The rising cost of newsprint and ink in the middle of the decade, however, prevented newspapers from getting bigger and bigger. While the computer’s presence in the newsroom didn’t put writers out of the job, the production department was completely restructured. Many production workers, whose trades had been routine in newspaper making for almost a century, lost their jobs to automation and were forced to look for work elsewhere.

It was a decade that witnessed dramatic change in almost every area. Technically, it started with the successful 1990 launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, while the most popular achievement was the debut of the World Wide Web, and the explosion in growth of mobile phone services. The decade ended with a world anxiously watching at midnight on December 31, 1999, when, for the first time, the new year would start with the digit “2” – cheers went up when computers and associated technology kept running without a hitch. The wait had its own name – Y2K.

In Washington, the decade began with President George H.W. Bush, followed by Bill Clinton, who was re-elected in 1996. Clinton’s second stint was rocked by scandal when he was accused of having a sexual relationship with a 22-year-old intern. Clinton denied the affair, which led to his being impeached. After a 21-day Senate trial, Clinton was acquitted. However, the “people” story of the 1990s was unquestionably the trial of former football star O.J. Simpson, charged with the slaying of his ex-wife and an acquaintance. Aired live on television in its entirety, the nine-month trial received unprecedented world-wide publicity. So obsessed with the trial it was estimated the loss in U.S. productivity had been an unfathomable $40 Billion.

These stories were covered in-depth by the Herald, as were important local stories. In 1992 the entire county staggered from the destruction of Hurricane Andrew. The first Summit of the Americas was held in Miami, acknowledging Miami’s growth on the international stage, which was also reflected in the name change from Dade County to Miami-Dade County. The decade culminated with the 1999 opening of the American Airlines Arena, and the debut of the annual music festival, Ultra.

After 10 years, during which the Herald won 5 Pulitzers, Lawrence closed this chapter of his career. He left the Herald in a strong position as the new decade dawned.

If there was a decade that marked the onset of the challenges newspapers would eventually have to face, it would be that of 2000-2010, but for the Herald there were also rewards – and a plethora of important news to cover. Alberto Ibarguen, publisher of El Nuevo Herald, became the first Latin-American publisher of the Miami Herald.

It was a decade that saw phenomenal growth in the tech markets. Important for the newspaper industry was the 2000 launch of the first mobile news, followed by Multimedia Messaging Service. These on-demand, “instant” news services would present another significant alternative to how the world received the news. Another challenge was the proliferation of “all news” channels such as CNN and Fox News. Knight-Ridder, the Herald’s parent company, jumped into the digital age.

One of the most controversial events was the Elian Gonzalez affair, which further polarized US relations with Cuba. What started as a local story quickly became a major nationwide report. A year later, one of the most significant events in recent history occurred on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four planes, flying two into New York’s World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The Herald used every resource at their command to relay the story as it unfolded, as a stunned nation watched it unfold live on television. On its heels came an unprecedented suspension of civilian air traffic and the Anthrax attacks launched through the US Mail. Two years later, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry, killing all aboard, resulting in a 29-month suspension of the Space Shuttle Program, and the US invaded Iraq to fight an insurgency, with the deposed President Saddam Hussein being captured by US special forces.

Before its construction, Herald facilities were far from glamourous. The paper’s first headquarters was located in downtown on Miami ave and was an unassuming, dusty storefront. When business picked up, the Herald purchased and repurposed the building behind it to expand printing capabilities. Growth in circulation in the years that followed would continue to demand larger and larger facilities from the paper. In 1940 a new, more upscale downtown headquarters was built in streamline moderne style to keep up with increasing demand. The ashes of Frank Stoneman, founder of the newspaper, were poured into a concrete column in the newsroom during the building’s construction. While the headquarters reaked of liquor and offered no privacy, it was fondly remembered by employees.

By the 1950’s there were no signs that circulation growth was slowing down and it became clear that expansion would once again be required. Plans were drafted to purchase the building adjacent to its headquarters in Downtown Miami but were ultimately due to an exiled Cuban politician purchasing the building before them. James Knight, who was much more involved in the day-to-day operations than his brother was, took up the torch, turned his eyes to glimmering Biscayne Bay and dreamt of the beautiful newspaper building he would soon gift to Miami. Once Knight decided on the area between the McArthur and Venetian causeways, a plan was set in motion to acquire the land.

The site had previously been occupied by various night clubs that had been of immense popularity during the war and were demolished soon after. Just before the Herald purchased property, it was being used to display giant, neon-lit billboards whose lights would reflect onto the bay and would catch the eye of commuters going to and from the beach – It had been referred to as the Times Square of Miami.

After 7 years of secretly acquiring and consolidating 10 acres of property between the causeways, Knight convinced acclaimed architect Sigurd Naess to forgo retirement to design the building-to-be. Danish-born Naess had previously designed the acclaimd Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times buildings. Knight worked closely with Naess and an engineering firm calculate and predict the newspapers circulation in 1980 so that the building could be constructed to accommodate necessary growth over the following two decades. It was determined that the Herald would reach circulation of over a million by 1980 and would need to build accordingly.

Once plans were completed and John Knight was convinced by his brother that this ambitious, $30 million-dollar plant would not “do them in,” ground was broken on August 19,1960. After 3 years of construction, the Miami Herald Building opened its doors on _____ 1963 to over 10,000 guests for a tour of the building. Congratulatory letters and telegrams were sent by luminaries from across the nation, including President Kennedy , President Eisenhower, and countless others.

1 Herald Plaza was the largest building in Florida when completed and perhaps one of the grandest examples of subtopic modernism in the entire United States. It was essentially two structures sewn togther – an office building and a printing plant. Its modernist design was shaped by South Florida’s unique climate, demonstrated by its sun grills, eggcrate façade, and subtropic color palletes. The building’s main body was raised up one story to protect against flooding from the bay in the event of the hurricane. It featured external expressions of internal functions – a hallmark in the modernist movement sweeping the nation during the 1950’s and 1960’s.

The lobby was defined by grand, double-height ceilings and featured escalators which would lead to the second-floor business office, another expansive, double height-space with sweeping views of Biscayne Bay and Miami Beach. The press building, which was both massive and windowless, was situated at the north end of the structure. Many of the print machines from the old plant were disposed of in favor of some of the most cutting-edge print technology available at the time. A specifically designed airspace kept the vibration of the presses from interfering with office work and like other newspaper buildings Naess designed, the Herald building received paper for printing via barge.

The building sat at the hub of Miami’s wheel for over five decades and, following national trends which situated printing presses outside of the city’s center, the Miami Herald moved its headquarters and facilities to Doral. The site on which 1 Herald Plaza occupied sits vacant to this day, with no clear indication as to what its future holds.