In Miami, Mañana Is Now

Doing business in Miami is so convenient. It’s so close to the United States.

—Latin American software executive

The view from Alberto Ibargüen’s office at the Miami Herald faces east across Biscayne Bay toward the proud towers of a renascent Miami Beach. Ibargüen, chairman of the Miami Herald Publishing Company since January 1, became the paper’s publisher August 5, 1998, the first Hispanic to hold that position in the Herald’s ninety-six-year history. From his executive aerie, Ibargüen oversees the operations of Miami’s venerable English-language daily and its much younger Spanish-language offspring.

Miami, “the one major city in the United States where Hispanics dominate numerically, politically and economically,” is unique. ¹ More than half of Miami’s 1.4 million Hispanics are of Cuban origin. The others come from a variety of Caribbean and Central and South American nations (Strategy Research Corporation 1999). But the Miami mediascape may well augur and influence how the politics of language and the economics of culture—especially Hispanic culture—play out elsewhere in the United States. Alberto Ibargüen is both steward and beneficiary of the current dramatic process of change.

Ibargüen arrived in Miami in December 1995 as the editor of El Nuevo Herald, a Spanish-language insert within the Miami Herald. He hit the ground running, initiating changes that led to the publication in January 1998 of El Nuevo Herald as a separate, independent newspaper. Before and since the paper’s emergence from inside the Miami Herald, Ibargüen forged local, national, and international media alliances, extending the influence of El Nuevo Herald far beyond Miami. Ibargüen, a youthful, energetic fifty-four-year-old, clearly relishes the possibilities for expanding the reach of his Spanish-language news operation outside Florida.

“I think the market is there for Spanish,” he said, holding out mock-ups of newspaper sections bannered “Houston” and “Filadelfia.” “These prototypes could be El Nuevo Herald inserts inside the Houston Chronicle or inside the Philadelphia Inquirer. Because of the technology, I can do it overnight. The back page of the Houston mock-up is about the Rockets. The Inquirer insert is all local to Philadelphia.” ²

Would other Knight-Ridder newspapers, such as the Inquirer, or Hearst newspapers, like the Chronicle, really pay for Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald translations of their own news?

“Not yet,” said Ibargüen. “But we just signed a contract with Newsday. We’re going to provide them, in effect, a Spanish-language news service for their new Spanish-language newspaper.”

Newsday owns 50 percent of the new Spanish-language newspaper Hoy, to be published Monday through Friday in the New York City region. According to the New York Times, “The establishment of a Spanish-language newspaper would be Newsday’s first major initiative since the failure of New York Newsday, its New York City edition, which ceased publication in 1995 after a decade of multi-million-dollar losses.” ³

Ibargüen knows all about New York Newsday. He spent ten years there as executive vice-president for operations. Had Times Mirror kept their New York City paper going, Ibargüen would not now be selling them news in Spanish.

When Times Mirror closed New York Newsday in July 1995, “We had a new company to invent. And 876 people had to be ushered out.” That experience, which Ibargüen called “emotionally draining,” influenced his style as publisher in Miami.

“Had we believed Times Mirror might shut us down, I think we would have driven the paper harder,” Ibargüen told a Miami journalist. “And had we driven it harder, the paper might still exist.” Ibargüen said he ran El Nuevo Herald “as if we are desperate for additional readers, as if we are desperate for additional revenue.” ⁴

Well before Alberto Ibargüen thought of moving to Miami, a Harvard Business School professor and newspaper industry consultant named Jeffrey Rayport investigated the idea of separating the Spanish-language paper from the Miami Herald. In 1994, he started teaching the case at Harvard and at management seminars with newspaper executives. His study outlined a basic conflict. Niche-marketing El Nuevo Herald to Miami’s Hispanic population might well be “more responsive to the[ir] information needs.” But—as Herald publisher Dave Lawrence opined—a newspaper had “obligations . . . not solely to make money, but to make a difference in the community.” ⁵ Lawrence feared further polarizing a Miami already politically, ethnically, and linguistically divided.

Rayport’s business school students could not fathom Lawrence’s objections. Market segmentation was an obvious, familiar strategy. Less familiar was Lawrence’s point that newspapers are not just profit engines, but also a public trust, part of the glue that holds a community together. At one of his executive seminars, not long after writing up the Herald case, Rayport met Alberto Ibargüen. From the Harvard professor, Ibargüen learned that while Herald management had opted to keep the papers together, all of Rayport’s classes had voted to separate them. ⁶

Pushing toward independence from the start, Ibargüen quickly gave El Nuevo Herald a new look and a new emphasis. “We covered Miami, Cuba, and Latin America. Those were our three stories, in politics, arts, and sports.” He also forged a “media partnership” with WLTV-Channel 23, the local Univision station. WLTV enjoys the highest ratings in Miami for its 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts and is “the only Spanish-language station in the United States to top its English-language competitors.” ⁷ Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish television network, maintains its news operations “and about 50 percent of its production facilities” in Miami. ⁸ News from El Nuevo Herald has the potential to reach national television audiences.

In three broadcasts each morning, a Miami AM radio station, Radio Unica, “the nation’s first 24-hour Spanish-language radio network,” broadcasts El Nuevo Herald news reports. Radio Unica, one of fifty-three stations in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Australia, also radically amplifies the power of the “local” newspaper. ⁹

Ibargüen entered into news exchanges with fifteen Latin American newspapers, such as La Nación in Buenos Aires, El Tiempo in Bogotá, and El Universal in Caracas. They agreed to share each other’s stories. “I couldn’t possibly have bureaus in all these places. And it gave us, in a sense, borrowed credibility.” Recent Latin immigrants saw that El Nuevo Herald had stories from newspapers they knew and respected. “And our circulation started going up nicely,” said Ibargüen. His media alliances reflect Ibargüen’s oft-repeated assertion that “anyone who thinks he’s going to win on his own is nuts. That’s just not the way it’s going to work.”

Ultimately, the financial argument persuaded Knight-Ridder to grant the Spanish-language paper independence. It was “roughly a $4 million decision,” according to Ibargüen. “Two million savings on newsprint and ink alone, by not producing what people didn’t want to buy,” papers in English for readers in Spanish and vice versa. “One million dollars net increase in circulation revenue by charging for a newspaper we used to give away. And another million—though this is really soft—from advertisers buying the more targeted vehicle.

“As far as Dave Lawrence’s objections went, I said to him, I can’t help you assimilate or cope with this community unless I can get my newspapers in people’s hands.” El Nuevo Herald lacked visibility, buried inside another paper in another language. Many new arrivals did not know the paper existed, according to Ibargüen. El Nuevo Herald readers also include wealthy Latins with second homes or condos in Miami. Does the paper really address Dave Lawrence’s concerns? Fifty thousand subscribers receive both dailies. One can imagine double-Herald households in which first-generation Latins read the news in Spanish, their children read it in English, and their postassimilation grandchildren read the Weekend supplement or nothing.

Seven months after Ibargüen persuaded him to reverse his policy of holding the papers together, Dave Lawrence resigned. The New York Times reported that “Mr. Lawrence’s departure combined with a note last month that asked the staff ‘If you were starting this place all over again, what would be your “blank slate”?’ have prompted widespread speculations in the newsroom that there are plans for cutbacks.” ¹⁰

The Hispanic community celebrated Ibargüen’s accession. One national magazine featured him on their cover, declaring him one of the hundred most influential Hispanics (Hispanic Business 1998). A few critics accuse him of being Knight-Ridder’s “hatchet man,” appointed to improve the corporation’s profit margin from 18 percent to at least 22 percent by making cuts and compromises for which Dave Lawrence had no stomach. Fans of the paper’s Sunday magazine, Tropic, felt their worst fears realized when the Herald announced its closing, after thirty years, to save an estimated $2 million annually. Tropic editor Tom Shroder left to be the Style section editor at the Washington Post, among many other defections from the Herald newsroom. ¹¹ Ibargüen points out that he did “not drop $2 million to the bottom line, but invested most of it back into the paper” in extra pages and sections. ¹²

Hispanic Panic at Fort Herald

University of Miami professor Gonzalo Soruco calls Ibargüen’s appointment “the falling of the last rampart” in the long-running feud between the Miami Herald and Miami’s Hispanic community. ¹³ For the past thirty years, the relationship between Miami’s Cuban leaders and the city’s largest newspaper “has been anything but cordial. More often than not it has been controversial. In some instances, it has been adversarial” (Soruco 1996:74).

In 1960, when the Cuban exodus began, only one hundred thousand Hispanics lived in Miami. By 1965, their number had reached a quarter of a million and was quickly growing. The Miami Herald, a “moderately liberal newspaper,” found it difficult to reach the exiles. “The barrier separating the Miami Herald from the Cubans was neither English-language proficiency nor literacy; most Cubans had enough skills in both. It was politics” (Soruco 1996:41).

In 1976, the Herald began to carry a Spanish-language insert called El Herald, with translated stories from its sister publication and from the wires. But well into the 1980s, through the conservative Reagan years, the Herald kept to its liberal course, angering exiled Cubans who thought the paper too soft on Fidel Castro and too ready to label anti-Communist Cubans right-wing kooks. The Herald’s circulation dropped as Anglos moved out of Dade County to escape the changing political, economic, and ethnic circumstances. Isolated in “Fort Herald,” out of touch with many in the community, the paper attempted to respond.

In 1986, the Herald hired its first Latin managing editor and other Hispanics as reporters and mid-level managers. The elevation of inexperienced Hispanics angered the predominantly Anglo staff, who scorned the paper’s strategy as “the Hispanic panic.” In 1987, El Herald was replaced by El Nuevo Herald and began to acquire a more distinct identity. Then, as now, El Nuevo Herald had no editorial board and published few, very mild, unsigned opinions. The Herald’s moves to placate its growing Hispanic constituency included an editorial shift to the right.

Dave Lawrence, imported from Detroit to be publisher, made community conciliation his goal. He tried to steer a centrist course. But in 1992, Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the Cuban American National Foundation, slammed the paper in op-ed pieces for its “biased” coverage of his foundation, its “softness on Castro,” and its criticism of Cubans who refused dialogue with Havana. He demanded Lawrence’s resignation and initiated a campaign of billboards and bus placards reading, “Yo no creo en El Herald” [I don’t believe the Herald] (Soruco 1996:43–45, 75). Early in 1998, Lawrence was courted by the Democratic Party to run for governor. He ultimately declined, but the very overture, in the words of Mario Diaz-Balart, an Hispanic Florida state senator, gave “segments of the community the feeling that the Miami Herald is an arm of the Democratic party” (Cardwell 1998).

Born in Puerto Rico of a Cuban father and a Puerto Rican mother, Ibargüen was raised in a New Jersey suburb of New York. His wife, Susana, is from Argentina. “I’m representative of what this place is becoming,” he said. For him, Miami is “logical” and “comfortable.” Ibargüen believes that current Anglo-Hispanic relations in Miami have attained “a fairly positive state.”

“Hispanics have come to dominate the politics, so that’s no longer much of a contest. People seem to be adjusting to a more rational relationship. Also, Hispanics are gaining more seniority in the state legislature, more integration into an overall Anglo scheme of things in Tallahassee, which is after all the capital.

“The political power of the Cubans here is no longer centered around opposing Fidel. It’s centered around power and money, like anyplace else. I’ve talked in recent weeks with probably a dozen legislators who are Cuban-American. The subject—the name—of Fidel Castro did not come up once. The issues are education, transportation, social services—issues any legislator deals with on behalf of his or her constituents.”

Nor is Ibargüen concerned that Miami, predicted to be two-thirds Hispanic in twenty years, will be culturally isolated from the rest of the state or the country.

“The largest single group of Miami Herald readers are Hispanic, in English,” said Ibargüen. “Second- and third-generation Cuban-Americans look and sound every bit as American as everyone else. So while that two-thirds figure may scare some people, it doesn’t make someone who is not Anglo any less American.”

Bravo Mundo Nuevo

Emblematic of the Miami Herald’s new cultural political alignment was its 1998 gubernatorial endorsement. Breaking with its tradition of backing Democratic candidates, the paper chose Republican contender Jeb Bush over Democratic lieutenant governor Buddy MacKay. Explaining its choice, the Herald appeared to value the ethnic sensitivities of the candidates as much or more than their stands on particular policy issues.

The Herald editorial acknowledged that “Mr. MacKay, 65, has been an exemplary public servant—first in Florida’s House (1968–74) and Senate (1974–80), then in Congress (1983–89) and finally, since 1991, as lieutenant governor. As a lawmaker he courageously battled special interests and voted his conscience.

“Moreover, of the six men who have served as Florida’s lieutenant governor in the modern era, Mr. MacKay arguably has been the most effective. Gov. Chiles has consulted him on policy matters and used him repeatedly as a troubleshooter” to lead, among other actions, “the state’s effort to rescue the city of Miami from fiscal calamity.”

The Herald observed that “Mr. Bush and Mr. MacKay differ on several key issues, notably school vouchers and abortion. And the Herald’s positions on those issues and several others—including gun control and Everglades restoration—are inarguably closer to Mr. MacKay’s.” But the Herald shrugged off its disagreements with Bush because “on issues such as abortion and vouchers, the federal courts rather than governors are likely to have the final say.”

Despite MacKay’s distinguished career and amenable policy positions, the Herald backed Bush, who had never held elective office, for two reasons. First, the son of the former president had cleaned up his act since his failed 1994 race for governor. “Mr. Bush’s transformation is evident in comparing his 1994 and 1998 visits with the Herald’s Editorial Board. Missing this year [was] 1994’s glib rhetoric.”

The Herald also favored Bush because of his cultural awareness. Married to a Mexican, Bush worked in Venezuela and used his Spanish-language ability to good effect in the campaign. Or as the Herald put it, “He knows the territory. He’s bilingual. He’s bicultural. And he has a vision of the unique opportunity that Florida has in serving as a hemispheric hub of exchanges in commerce and culture.” ¹⁴

Should the ethnic sensitivity of a gubernatorial candidate really count as much or more with the Herald—or the community or the state—as his or her positions on the environment or the death penalty or education?

“I think it mattered a lot to the community,” said Ibargüen. “I think that’s one of the reasons why [Bush] was so enormously popular in Dade County. I think the editorial also talked about a man who gives international issues and international trade issues the prominence that, from the world view of Miami, it deserves—as opposed to a North Florida perspective, which is more what Buddy MacKay had. On balance, Bush struck us as the one to endorse. There’s no question that his affinity for things Latin makes him an unusually comfortable member of this community.”

Months after Bush had won the election, certain beneficiaries of the Miami Herald’s endorsement strategy became known, but only to readers of El Nuevo Herald. On a day when the Miami Herald covered King Hussein’s funeral and Monica Lewinsky on page 1, El Nuevo Herald featured a huge color photograph of Governor Bush, surrounded by the faces of men and women identified as “Los latinos que hablan al oído de Jeb Bush” [Latinos who have the ear of Jeb Bush]. Bush was quoted (in Spanish) as saying, “They’re a very diverse group of people: the one thing they have in common is that they believe in me and I believe in them.” ¹⁵

The Miami Herald pushed for increased Hispanic influence in Tallahassee during the campaign. But when signs appeared that such influence was indeed being felt at the highest level, the paper chose not to mention it. Only El Nuevo Herald saw fit to celebrate the new Hispanic access for its readers, whose unambiguous ethnicity ensured an uncritical reception. A majority of Miami Herald readers may be Hispanic, but the paper is also read across Florida by many whose only language is English, not all of whom are happy about the changing demographic complexion of their state.

In 1998, El Nuevo Herald opened bureaus in Palm Beach, Orlando, and Tampa and began to publish statewide editions to reach the nearly one million Hispanic Floridians outside Miami. The rise of Hispanic influence will become a national issue. The Census Bureau estimates that by 2005, the number of Hispanics, the fastest-growing U.S. minority, will surpass that of American blacks. ¹⁶ Governors like Jeb Bush and his older brother, George W., of Texas, a state with many more Hispanics than Florida (6.2 million to 2.3 million) may be able to capitalize on being simpatico for Hispanics. And the influence of papers like both Heralds may grow commensurately.

Ibargüen’s successor at El Nuevo Herald, Carlos Castañeda, vowed to turn El Nuevo Herald into “the most important newspaper in the hemisphere within the next two years, ‘indispensable source material in every decision center in the region.’” ¹⁷ According to the Standard Rate and Data Service, El Nuevo Herald outsells New York’s Spanish-language daily and is quickly closing in on Los Angeles (1999). With its radio and television partnerships, its Spanish-language news service—which Ibargüen hopes to expand in both North and South America—and its strong circulation, El Nuevo Herald is a strapping infant, already bounding toward greater parity with its parent.

Is it a special-interest organ masquerading as a general-interest daily? Although El Nuevo Herald covers Miami’s Hispanic community and Latin America, missing is news of other Miami minorities—Haitians, Jamaicans, African-Americans, Brazilians—that Miami Herald readers get.

“That’s true,” Ibargüen conceded. “Of course, those groups read about themselves in English, not Spanish. But it is an incompleteness of a newspaper that does not treat the whole community. And I think that is an issue for El Nuevo Herald.” Though Ibargüen sees no “major tension” between Hispanics and Anglos or Hispanics generally and blacks, he does see it between blacks and Cubans. “Because I think blacks have been displaced from second to third place politically and economically. So there is a great amount of resentment in the black community.”

El Nuevo Herald is traversing tricky terrain, serving a segment of Miami’s Hispanic majority in a language non-Hispanic minorities do not understand, acting as if those minorities do not exist. Giving emigrants an unrealistic, deracinated picture of Miami serves no one, as Dave Lawrence might agree. Ethnic sensitivity cuts both ways.

Presiding over an expanding Spanish-language news operation and a contracting English-language Herald, Ibargüen seeks the precise bilingual, bicultural balance for maximum overall viability while avoiding political schizophrenia. The two papers need each other. Only the Miami Herald has the recognized prestige to endorse a gubernatorial candidate or promote the interests of its predominantly Hispanic readership in English to policymakers in Tallahassee and Washington. But only El Nuevo Herald can reach the huge non-English-speaking market in Florida and throughout Latin America as a conduit for news and market data from North to South and vice versa. When hurricanes or erupting volcanoes menace Latin America, El Nuevo Herald may respond more aggressively and emotionally, but the Miami Herald has far greater power to draw donations and to organize the relief effort.

Some days, the papers mirror each other. Other days, they appear to be covering different planets. Both papers reflect and alter what Gonzalo Soruco calls “the cultural laboratory” of Miami, where North meets South and the future is already present. The new millennium holds no trepidation for Alberto Ibargüen. It arrived early in Miami. He’s living and working in it every day.