The Best Papers Under the Sun

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

In Florida, competition breeds quality, not cheap sensation

America's sprawling geography has not lent itself to the development of national newspapers, except the specialized Wall Street Journal. Yet there has been a vigorous tradition of dominant statewide papers: the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky, the Des Moines Register in Iowa, the Minneapolis Tribune in Minnesota. In the past that list would have featured the Miami Herald, which offered home delivery through most of Florida. But in the years since 1973, as the Herald became even better and Florida grew substantially more populous, circulation of the "state" paper rose a modest 4%.

The Herald has been challenged in market after market by lively, news-hustling papers with just half, or sometimes little more than a tenth, of its circulation--though it is still thriving editorially and financially. The competition has bred quality, not cheap sensation. Paper after paper in Florida is graphically vivid, diligent in pursuit of local news, quick to dispatch reporters on breaking stories and dedicated to muckraking. Says David Burgin, a veteran of the New York Herald-Tribune, Washington Star and three newspaper chains, who was named six weeks ago as editor of the Orlando Sentinel Star: "When you assess the quality at every level, including the weeklies, this is the best newspaper state in the country. Even the bad papers are good."

Florida's excellence has been aided by four traits peculiar to the state. First is its geography. As Burgin notes, Florida is "long and skinny, and nobody is very far away from somebody else." Almost every publisher faces a rival whose territory stretches to within a town or two of his own. Second, many of the new arrivals are affluent and thus are enticing to advertisers; many others are elderly and loyal, lifelong readers of newspapers. Third is the tourist trade, which in smaller markets can augment circulation by as much as 30%. Fourth is a tradition of operating papers as public institutions, not just money-making machines, set by the late owners of the two biggest and best Florida dailies, John Knight of the Herald and Nelson Poynter of the St. Petersburg Times.

In the past two

decades, eight Florida papers have won Pulitzer Prizes, more than in any other state. When asked to rank the state's best newspapers, Florida journalists usually cite, in order:

> Miami Herald (circ. 400,000). The Herald's editorial staff of 450 is almost twice as big as any other in the state; it produces zoned editions for city neighborhoods and suburbs, a daily version translated into Spanish, and a special Latin American edition distributed to 40 cities in 31 countries. The Herald covers Latin America and the Caribbean as well as any paper in the U.S. Says Executive Editor John McMullan: "If you don't put out a good newspaper in Florida, somebody else will."

> St. Petersburg Times and Independent (combined circ. 257,000). So quirkily liberal in a sleepy, conservative town that it has been called by readers "the St. Petersburg Pravda," the Times probably does more with a dull, no-news setting (31% of residents are over 65) than any other paper in the country. Even so, the lead local news page is sometimes given over to routine weather stories and reports of accidental shootings with BB guns. Owner Poynter believed passionately in independent local ownership, so he willed a majority of stock in the paper to a journalism institute that he founded; voting control for life went to Editor Eugene C. Patterson, who is also entitled to transfer that power to his choice of successor. Free to assess and meet editorial needs, Patterson has a news staff of 250 and an editorial budget of $9 million. He spends it in enterprising ways. For example, the paper has no foreign bureaus, but sends its foreign editor for weeks at a stretch to trouble spots around the world.

> Orlando Sentinel Star (circ. 192,000). Dull and unaggressive when it was bought by the Chicago Tribune Co. in 1965, the Sentinel was transformed starting in 1976 by Editor Jim Squires, who left last year to become editor of the Chicago Tribune. He fought to keep outlying circulation territory, pushing disgruntled city-room reporters into small-town bureaus, while also demanding tough and thorough coverage of government in Orlando. The editorial staff is about 235, the budget a surprising $7.9 million. The Sentinel finds it hard to be revelatory on one subject--the image-conscious Walt Disney World and the other nearby Disney holdings--in part, says Executive Editor Steve Vaughn, because getting such stories is "like trying to break into the Kremlin." Nonetheless, the paper has reported Disney hotel and parking-lot robberies and a monorail accident.

> Tampa Tribune and Times (combined circ. 201,000). Saddled with outdated letterpress equipment, the Tribune often produces muddy pictures in a state full of crisp photo-offset newspapers. Reporting by the 225-member editorial staff is plodding yet thorough. When an official of the paper's parent company, the Virginia-based Media General Inc., remarked that Virginia did not experience the kind of scandal that the Tribune was reporting in Tampa, Managing Editor Paul Hogan retorted: "Is it that you do not have it? Or that your newspapers just do not dig it up?"

> Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel (combined circ. 162,000). A listless operation when it was bought by the Chicago Tribune Co. in 1963, the Fort Lauderdale papers hold their own against the Herald on turf less than an hour's drive north of Miami. Reporters have probed dubious investment schemes and challenged the managerial competence of companies that violate pollution laws. Among weaknesses: unimaginative feature sections and overreliance on wire-service copy.

The state's other big-circulation newspapers are in Jacksonville: the Florida Times Union and Jacksonville Journal (combined circ. 199,000), owned by the Seaboard Coast Line railroad, now CSX Corp. The papers once avoided any mention of, say, a sports team flying rather than taking a train. Cracks one Florida editor: "They used to print stories about cars running over trains." Nowadays the paper hires tougher reporters and is making a creditable effort at improvement.

Nipping at the heels of the big papers is a pack of smaller dailies and even a few weeklies that compete editorially. Probably the most respected is the Fort Myers News-Press (circ. 61,000). "We don't have the resources of the Herald or the Times," says News-Press Executive Editor Ron Thornburg, "but we can make little guerrilla raids." The News-Press and the slightly larger but less ambitious Cocoa Today are owned by the giant Gannett chain. The Lakeland Ledger (circ. 50,000) has probably surpassed the Gainesville Sun (circ. 42,000) as editorial leader of the six dailies owned by the New York Times Co. Perhaps best of the tiny dailies is the Vero Beach Press Journal (circ. 15,000). The top weekly is almost surely the Naples Star (circ. 10,000).

The virtue shared by leading papers of all sizes is stern pursuit of wrongdoers, aided by Florida's open-government laws. A Miami Herald probe of drug smuggling in the Florida Keys last year resulted in the resignation of a state attorney. The Fort Myers News-Press disclosed that a $1 million road plan benefited only the would-be developer of a housing tract; the road project was canceled. In an unusual joint venture, the Herald, St. Petersburg Times and Orlando Sentinel Star are spending $75,000 to computerize records of every contribution of $50 or more to candidates for Congress, the governorship, the legislature and elective state cabinet posts.

The papers are equally good at nongovernmental digging. Lucy Morgan of the St. Petersburg Times was a runner-up for a Pulitzer Prize this year for tracing the flow of drugs into two rural Florida counties. So was Ken Wells of the Miami Herald for reports on drought and water management. Herald Reporter Gene Miller won Pulitzers in 1967 and 1976 for exonerating individuals convicted of murder.

On big stories, such as the Miami riots or the influx of Cuban and Haitian refugees, papers large and small send squadrons of reporters, publish special sections and--equally important--follow the story after the furor dies down. The major dailies send reporters to the national political conventions and on presidential campaigns, and at least two dispatched teams to cover the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

Florida papers have some failings.

Their buckaroo journalism is better at exposing a corrupt county commissioner than at exploring the consequences of a commission's zoning plans. Only belatedly have the papers seen the ecological risks of overdevelopment, and the failing has been greatest in such boom towns as Orlando and Fort Myers. Further, the all-out coverage after eruptions like the Miami riots does not make up for a lack of reporting about tensions as they build.

Frustrated by lower salaries than those at big dailies up north, by a shortage of Washington and foreign assignments and by the lack of urgent local news in much of Florida, able young reporters often leave. Indeed, Andrew Barnes, managing editor of the St. Petersburg Times, has acknowledged to his staff that the paper is "an academy" from which the best and the brightest are likely to "graduate."

That is a boon to readers in the rest of the U.S.: these are emigrants from the best journalism academy in the land, and papers elsewhere could profit from their lessons. -- By William A. Henry III. Reported by BJ. Phillips/ St. Petersburg

With reporting by BJ. Phillips/St. Petersburg

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