The Miami News

The Miami News was the dominant evening newspaper in Miami, Florida for most of the 20th century, its chief concurrent competitor being the morning-edition of The Miami Herald. The paper started publishing in May 1896 as a weekly called The Miami Metropolis. The Metropolis had become a daily (except Sunday) paper of eight pages by 1903. On June 4, 1923, former Ohio governor James Middleton Cox bought the Metropolis and renamed it the Miami Daily News-Metropolis. On January 4, 1925 the newspaper became the Miami Daily News, and published its first Sunday edition.

Cox had a new building erected for the newspaper, and the Miami News Tower was dedicated on July 25, 1925. This building later became famous as the Freedom Tower. Also on July 25, 1925, the News published a 508 page edition, which still holds the record for the largest page-count for a newspaper.

The News was edited by Bill Baggs from 1957 until 1969. After that, it was edited by Sylvan Meyer until he was fired in 1973, when he removed his name from the masthead the day an owner-ordered endorsement of Nixon ran. Its final editor was Howard Kleinberg, a longtime staffer and author of a comprehensive history of the newspaper.

In 1973 the News moved in with Miami's morning paper, The Miami Herald at One Herald Plaza, sharing its production facilities while maintaining a separate editorial staff. The Miami News ceased publication on December 31, 1988. Many of the newspaper's staff and all of its assets and archives were moved to nearby sister publication The Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach.

Notable former employees include Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Don Wright, Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker, the late columnist John Keasler and best-selling author Dary Matera, who served as a general assignment reporter from 1977 until 1982.

Pulitzer Prizes

• 1939 - public service, for its campaign for the recall of the Miami City Commission
• 1959 - national reporting, Howard Van Smith, for a series of articles that focused public notice on deplorable conditions in a Florida migrant labor camp, resulted in the provision of generous assistance for the 4,000 stranded workers in the camp, and thereby called attention to the national problem presented by 1,500,000 migratory laborers.
• 1963 - international reporting, Hal Hendrix, for his persistent reporting which revealed, at an early stage, that the Soviet Union was installing missile launching pads in Cuba and sending in large numbers of MIG-21 aircraft.
• 1966 - editorial cartooning, Don Wright, for "You Mean You Were Bluffing?"
• 1980 - editorial cartooning, Don Wright

References

• Muir, Helen (1953). Miami, U.S.A.. Cocoanut Grove, Florida: Hurricane House Publishers, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-8981.
• Miami Chronology: 1500s to 1900 - URL retrieved June 30, 2008
• Miami Chronology: 1900 to 1920 - URL retrieved June 30, 2008
• Miami Chronology: 1920-1940 - URL retrieved June 30, 2008
• Miami Chronology: 1960 to 1980 - URL retrieved June 30, 2008
• "Guide to the Miami News Photographs". Historical Museum of Southern Florida. http://www.hmsf.org/rc/guides/1989-011.htm. Retrieved September 4, 2009. 

External links

• Miami Metropolis, freely available with full text and full page images in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library
• Daily Miami Metropolis, from 1904-7 freely available with full text and full page images in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library
• Miami Daily News, from 1929 freely available with full text and full page images in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library
• History of The Miami News, 1896-1987, by Howard Kleinberg. Centennial history of The Miami News, written by its last editor.
• Sylvan Meyer and the Miami News