Second in Miami; First on Cuba

Cuba kept on simmering, and the White House kept on patrolling the news with the same steely determination that had put a naval blockade in the Caribbean. But one U.S. daily seemed totally undisturbed by the specter of Government news control.

Without any handouts or help from Washington, where it does not even keep a reporter, the Miami evening News has been steadily producing some of the best Cuban coverage in the U.S. A full two weeks before President Kennedy alerted the nation to the presence of offensive Russian missiles in Cuba, the News had the story on Page One: SOVIETS BUILD 6 CUBAN MISSILE BASES. Hours before the White House response to this new threat, the News headlined--CUBA BLOCKADE IN THE WORKS? By 90 minutes, it beat a Defense Department statement that Cuba-bound Soviet ships were turning back. Where does the News get such intelligence? "Whenever anyone asks me that," said Editor William Calhoun Baggs last week, "I just say a little roseate spoonbill told us."

A Bunch of Individuals. For all its fast journalistic footwork, the News is undeniably Miami's second daily. The paper's circulation of 145,263, while steadily rising, is less than half that of Miami's dominant morning Herald (320,547). The News trails hopelessly in ad linage, 7,533,733 to the Herald's 21,376,317 (for the first half of 1962). It runs about 125 daily columns of news to the Herald's 200, musters an editorial staff of 100 to the Herald's 173. But such odds have only inspired the News to act as if it were the first, best, biggest and only paper in town.

Its self-confidence is very much the image of its deceptively easygoing editor. By newsroom standards, Bill Baggs, 40, makes an ideal boss. He keeps a brass cuspidor within reachable trajectory of his desk, shows visitors the bullet hole that some disgruntled subscriber drilled through his office window, and lets his staffers strut their stuff. "Hell. I don't have much to do," he says, and proves it by writing a daily column and occasional editorials, and by often accompanying his men on out-of-town assignments. "The best ideas that show up in the paper come from guys out in the newsroom. What we don't have is a team. We have a bunch of individuals."

Baggs is the most individual of the bunch. He is a Southerner by birth, son of a well-to-do Atlanta Ford dealer, but his convictions know no geography. His outspoken views on the race issue have antagonized Floridians from Jacksonville to Key West. "There is nothing much but anguish," wrote Baggs in a typical News editorial, "when you feud with so many of your readers and friends. But there are times when you have no other choice. Which brings us quickly to the practice of enforced segregation in the public schools of Florida. It is wrong." His opinions pull such a heavy poison-pen response from racists that Baggs requisitioned a rubber stamp to answer most of the letters. The stamp reads: "This is not a simple life, my friend, and there are no simple answers."

When Baggs took over as editor in 1957, the News was a rusty link in the six-paper chain founded by James M. Cox, onetime Ohio Governor and 1920 Democratic candidate for President. Compared to the powerful Herald, the News looked--and was--mortally ill. To save it, Publisher James M. Cox Jr., son of the chain's founder, reached deep into the paper's ranks, came up with exactly the right man.

A former B-24 pilot who joined the News in 1946. and worked up from reporter to political columnist. Baggs came on strong. He cleared the staff of deadwood, from managing editor on down, ultimately firing 15% of his staff. Of Cox, he demanded and got complete editorial command. He changed the paper's masthead slogan from "Today's News Today"* to "Best Newspaper Under the Sun." To staffers he said: "We're going to try to smuggle a little scholarly journalism into the paper too." Unequipped to compete with the Herald's news-gathering army, he focused sharply on the significant news, added interpretive stories and a Sunday news-review section.

Baggs once sent two staffers on a whimsical 3,000-mile round trip to Montreal just to examine some honest-to-goodness snow, but most of his decisions made sense. The Baggs pre-election inquisition is now a fixture of the state's political scene. One by one, candidates for office appear before a six-man News editorial board of examiners, and the candidates' performances determine the paper's endorsements. Impartiality is the inviolable rule. Although Baggs sits in on inquiries, the board once passed over a close personal friend of his to endorse another man for local office.

An Enviable Record. A realist, Baggs recognizes the uphill odds he faces against the Herald. "That big thing down the street,'' says he, "is a good newspaper." It is. Its Latin American coverage is superior to the News's, which gets along mostly on the hunches and the contacts of Latin American Editor Hal Hendrix, who almost never leaves Miami. In contrast, the Herald regularly sends men south of the border, often in teams, has a Latin American circulation (at $1 per airmailed copy) of nearly 5,000 that goes as far south as Chile. Although not quite as bold as the News on the race issue,* the Herald has an equally lustrous record of crusading. Its politics--Republican at the national level, usually Democratic at local level--goes down well with Floridians, who gave their vote to the Republican candidate in the last three presidential elections. The Herald has not endorsed a Democrat for President since Roosevelt.

Nourished by Baggs, the keen editorial rivalry between the Herald and the News has given Miami what few other U.S. cities of similar size can boast: two good dailies. Although the News may never overtake the Herald, Editor Baggs can at least stake claim to a record that other second-running papers might well envy. By almost any measure, Baggs's Miami News is the best second-best newspaper in the U.S.

* Also the slogan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch--which thought of it first.

* In the Herald, white cops are always "policemen"; Negro cops are always "patrolmen."

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