20th century In 1903, Frank B. Stoneman, father of
Marjory Stoneman Douglas, reorganized and moved the
Orlando Record to Miami. The first edition was published September 15, 1903, as the
Miami Evening Record. After the recession of 1907, the newspaper had severe financial difficulties. In December 1907 it began to publish as the
Miami Morning News-Record. During the
Florida land boom of the 1920s, the
Miami Herald was the largest newspaper in the world, as measured by lines of advertising. During the
Great Depression in the 1930s, the
Herald came close to
receivership, but recovered. On October 25, 1939,
John S. Knight, son of a noted
Ohio newspaperman, bought the
Herald from Frank B. Shutts. Knight became editor and publisher, and made his brother,
James L. Knight, the business manager. The
Herald had 383 employees.
Lee Hills arrived as city editor in September 1942. He later became the
Heralds publisher and eventually the chairman of
Knight-Ridder Inc., a position he held until 1981. The
Herald was also involved in its first
First Amendment Supreme Court case,
Pennekamp v. Florida 328 U.S. 331 (1946), in which it and one of its editors, John D. Pennekamp for whom
John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park is named for, were held in
contempt of court by the
Dade County Circuit Court for two publications it made on November 2 and November 7, 1944, both of which were critical of the court's operations. The Supreme Court sided with Pennekamp and the
Herald, and ultimately held that under the facts of that case, "the danger to fair judicial administration has not the clearness and immediacy necessary to close the door of permissible public comment, and the judgment is reversed as violative of petitioners' right of free expression in the press under the First and Fourteenth Amendments."
The Miami Herald International Edition, printed by partner newspapers throughout the
Caribbean and
Latin America, began in 1946. It is commonly available at resorts in the Caribbean countries such as the
Dominican Republic, and, though printed by the largest local newspaper
Listín Diario, it is not available outside such tourist areas. It was extended to Mexico in 2002. The
Herald won its first Pulitzer Prize in 1950, for its reporting on Miami's
organized crime. Its circulation was 176,000 daily and 204,000 on Sundays. On August 19, 1960, construction began on the
Herald building on
Biscayne Bay. Also on that day,
Alvah H. Chapman, started work as James Knight's assistant. Chapman was later promoted to Knight-Ridder chairman and chief executive officer. The
Herald moved into its new building at One Herald Plaza without missing an edition on March 23–24, 1963. The paper also won another press freedom case in
Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974). In the case, Pat Tornillo Jr., president of the United Teachers of Dade, had requested that the
Herald print his rebuttal to an editorial criticizing him, citing Florida's "right-to-reply" law, which mandated that newspapers print such responses. Represented by longtime counsel
Dan Paul, the
Herald challenged the law, and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court unanimously overturned the Florida statute under the Press Freedom Clause of the
First Amendment, ruling that "Governmental compulsion on a newspaper to publish that which 'reason' tells it should not be published is unconstitutional." The decision showed the limitations of a 1969 decision,
Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, in which a similar "
fairness doctrine" had been upheld for radio and television, and establishing that broadcast and print media had different Constitutional protections. The first African American woman to work as a reporter at the
Miami Herald was
Bea Hines, starting on June 16, 1970. Hines was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for columns which included topics like police brutality and profiling. Publication of a
Spanish-language supplemental insert named
El Herald began in 1976. It was renamed
El Nuevo Herald in 1987, and in 1998 became an independent publication. The
Miami Herald and
El Nuevo Herald quickly took diverging editorial directions, sometimes leading to tense relations and conflicting information about the Hispanic community in the USA. In 1997, the
Miami Herald assigned the first national reporter charged with covering
LGBT news. Reporter Steve Rothaus, who had been with the paper since 1985, was assigned to this post. After more than 33 years with the paper, Rothaus retired in 2019 as part of a buyout offer made to 450 employees.
21st century in the
Arts & Entertainment District of
Downtown Miami; the paper moved from its waterfront headquarters in 2013 to a location in suburban Doral. The Herald building was demolished in 2014. In 2002, the Miami Herald launched its own
Home & Design magazine (created by
Sarah Harrelson). In 2003, the
Miami Herald and
El Universal of Mexico City created an international joint venture, and in 2004 they together launched
The Herald Mexico, a short-lived
English-language newspaper for readers in Mexico. Its final issue was published in May 2007. On July 27, 2005, former Miami city commissioner
Arthur Teele walked into the main lobby of the
Heralds headquarters and phoned
Herald columnist Jim DeFede, one of several telephone conversations that the two had had during the day, to say that he had a package for DeFede. He then asked a security officer to tell his (Teele's) wife Stephanie that he loved her, before pulling out a gun and committing
suicide. This happened the day the
Miami New Times, a weekly newspaper, published salacious details of Teele's alleged affairs, including allegations that he had had sex and used
cocaine with a
transsexual prostitute. The day before committing suicide, Teele had had another telephone conversation with DeFede, who recorded this call without Teele's knowledge, which was illegal under Florida law. DeFede admitted to the
Heralds management that he had taped the call. Although the paper used quotes from the tape in its coverage, DeFede was fired the next day for violating the paper's code of ethics, and he was likely guilty of a felony. Many journalists and readers of the
Herald disagreed with the decision to fire rather than suspend DeFede, arguing that it had been made in haste and that the punishment was disproportionate to the offense. 528 journalists, including about 200 current and former
Herald staffers, called on the
Herald to reinstate DeFede, but the paper's management refused to back down. The state attorney's office later declined to file charges against the columnist, holding that the potential violation was "without a (living) victim or a complainant." On September 8, 2006, the
Miami Heralds president Jesús Díaz Jr. fired three journalists because they had allegedly been paid by the
United States government to work for anti-Cuba
propaganda TV and radio channels. The three were Pablo Alfonso, Wilfredo Cancio Isla and Olga Connor. Less than a month later, responding to pressure from the Cuban community in Miami, Díaz resigned after reinstating the fired journalists, saying that "policies prohibiting such behavior were ambiguously communicated, inconsistently applied and widely misunderstood over many years." At least seven other journalists who did not work at the
Herald, namely Miguel Cossio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Juan Manuel Cao, Ariel Remos, Omar Claro, Helen Aguirre Ferre, Paul Crespo, and Ninoska Perez-Castellón, were also paid for programs on
Radio Martí or
TV Martí, both financed by the government of the United States through the
Broadcasting Board of Governors, receiving a total of between 15,000 and 175,000 since 2001. In May 2011, the paper announced it had sold of
Biscayne Bayfront land surrounding its headquarters in the
Arts & Entertainment District of Downtown Miami for $236million, to a Malaysian resort developer,
Genting Malaysia Berhad.
McClatchy announced that the
Herald and
El Nuevo Herald would be moving to another location by 2013. In May 2013, the paper moved to a new building in suburban
Doral. The old building was demolished in 2014. In November 2018, the
Herald broke the story that "in 2007, despite substantial evidence that corroborated [female teenagers'] stories of [sexual] abuse by Jeffrey Epstein|[Jeffrey] Epstein, the U.S. attorney in Miami,
Alexander Acosta, signed off on a secret deal for the multimillionaire, one that ensured he would never spend a day in prison." Thus, the full extent of Epstein's crimes and his collaborators remained hidden and the victims unaware of this arrangement. In July 2019, Epstein was charged with sex trafficking dozens of minors between 2002 and 2005; reporting at the time noted how the
Herald brought public attention to accusations against Epstein. On December 17, 2019, it was announced the
Miami Herald would move to a six-days-a-week format. On January 21, 2020, it was announced that the
Miami Herald would close its Doral printing plant and move its printing and packaging operations to the
South Florida Sun Sentinel printing facilities in
Deerfield Beach. The
Herald stopped printing its own editions as of April 26, 2020. In 2023, the
Miami Herald and
El Nuevo Herald laid off six workers, the worst round of job cuts to the newspaper's news staff since 2019. That same year, the
Miami Herald named Alex Mena the newspaper's executive director. He began working at the newspaper at the age of 19 and became the
Miami Herald's first immigrant executive editor. The average daily (printed) circulation of the Herald, which was 440,225 as recently as 1998, had fallen to 12,623 by August 2024. Paid digital circulation had reached 44,011, but fell to 30,840 in 2023. == Spelling Bees ==