20th century
In 1903, Frank B. Stoneman, father of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, reorganized and moved the Orlando Record to Miami.[11] The first edition was published September 15, 1903, as the Miami Evening Record.[12] After the recession of 1907, the newspaper had severe financial difficulties. In December 1907 it began to publish as the Miami Morning News-Record.[11] Its largest creditor was Henry Flagler. Through a loan from Henry Flagler, Frank B. Shutts, who was also the founder of the law firm Shutts & Bowen, acquired the paper and renamed it the Miami Herald on December 1, 1910. Shutts, originally from Indiana, had come to Florida to monitor the bankruptcy proceedings of the Fort Dallas Bank. Although it is the longest continuously published newspaper in Miami, the earliest newspaper in the region was The Tropical Sun, established in 1891. The Miami Metropolis, which later became The Miami News, was founded in 1896, and was the Herald's oldest competitor until 1988, when it went out of business.[13]
During the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the Miami Herald was the largest newspaper in the world, as measured by lines of advertising.[14] 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 Herald's 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.[15][16] 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."[17]
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.[18]
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[19][20][21] 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).[22] 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.[23] 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."[24] 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.[23]
The first African American man to be a reporter at the Herald was Thirlee Smith, Jr. in 1967.[25] The first African American woman to work as a reporter at the Miami Herald was Bea Hines, starting on June 16, 1970.[26] Hines was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for columns which included topics like police brutality and profiling.[27]
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.[28]
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.[29] After more than 33 years with the paper, Rothaus retired in 2019 as part of a buyout offer made to 450 employees.[30]
21st century
In 2002, the Miami Herald launched its own Home & Design magazine (created by Sarah Harrelson).[31] 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 Herald's 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.[32] 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 Herald's 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.
