With its vibrant Cuban influence, vigorous international
tourism and commerce, steamy nightlife, and tropical postmodern architecture, Miami presents a cultural mix befitting a true Latin American capital residing at the southern
edge of the United States. The Miami Herald tried to capture
and reflect this diversity over the years but never quite got it
right. Finally, it started another newspaper. El Nuevo Herald
(1987–) traces its roots to a Spanish-language insert named
El Herald that began in 1976, and renamed El Nuevo Herald in 1987. It merely provided translations of some Miami
Herald stories. In 1998 the newspaper was transformed into
its own entity with its own stories, style, and viewpoint. As
the newly transformed newspaper’s first editor-in-chief, Carlos M. Castaneda, described his aim to Columbia Journalism Review in 2000, “I want stories that affect the pockets
and the hearts of people.” Alberto Ibargüen, who oversaw
both Knight-Ridder newspapers as chairman of the Miami
Herald Publishing Company, had been pushing to make El
Nuevo Herald more independent since he arrived in Miami
in 1995 as El Nuevo Herald’s editor. “We covered Miami,
Cuba and Latin America. Those were our three stories, in
politics, arts and sports,” he told the Harvard International
Journal of Press/Politics in 1999.
According to the 2000 census, about 57.3 percent of
2.3 million people living in Miami had Hispanic or Latino
roots. Only New York and Los Angeles had larger Spanishspeaking markets. It was not always that way. Only about
one hundred thousand Hispanics lived in Miami in 1960,
but with Fidel Castro in power in Cuba, thousands more
Cubans began streaming into Miami. Traditionally a liberal
newspaper, the Miami Herald was not much to the liking
of the conservative anti-Castro exile community. El Nuevo
Herald has been able to keep a tight focus on the Cuban
community. “It’s a different world that they cover,” Martin
Baron, the Miami Herald’s executive editor, told Nieman
Reports in 2001.
With a circulation of eighty-nine thousand in 2005,
El Nuevo Herald was among the largest-circulation U.S.
daily newspapers in Spanish. The National Association of
Hispanic Publications recognized El Nuevo Herald as the
best U.S. Spanish-language daily newspaper in 2005. The
journalism staff for El Nuevo Herald then numbered about
67, compared with 379 for the Miami Herald, which had
a circulation of about 312,000. The content of El Nuevo
Herald focused extensively on Latin American issues and
culture, covering Hispanic soccer stars and singers with the
style of a celebrity magazine; performers like Gloria Estefan and Ricky Martin were featured. Meanwhile, its local
news coverage centered heavily on the exile community
and the newspaper’s conservative, anti-Castro politics aim
to please. For example, Nieman Reports found that the coverage of the return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba in 2000 was
covered much differently in the two newspapers, with El
Nuevo Herald taking an anti-Castro stand in both its news
and op-ed pages. The day federal agents removed Elian from the home of his Miami relatives, El Nuevo Herald
featured a headline “Que Verguenza!” (“How Shameful!”)
and an accompanying photograph showing the boy with a
gun-pointing agent.
Further Reading
Clary, Mike. “Would You Create Another Newspaper to Compete
with Your Own? In Miami, the Herald Did.” Columbia Journalism Review 39, no. 1 (May/June 2000): 56–58.
Gutierrez, Barbara. “El Nuevo Herald Provides a Latin American Take on the News.” Nieman Reports 55, no. 2 (Summer
2001): 37–39.
McEnteer, James. “In Miami, Mañana Is Now.” The Harvard
International Journal of Press Politics 4, no. 3 (1999):
113–121.
Kris Kodrich