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The man who 'was the Miami Herald' to many resigned abruptly last week. He declined to give a reason for the departure. The publisher of El Nuevo Herald has replaced him.
MIAMI HERALD PUBLISHER David Lawrence Jr., who in nine years in south Florida became a larger-than-life newspaperman and community leader, resigned abruptly last week.
Listening in what the Herald described as "stunned disbelief," several hundred of its employees heard Lawrence, 56, announce he was resigning, saying, "I frankly yearn for the opportunity to decide what I want to do with my life."
Four months ago, Lawrence sparked a controversy among the same employees when he announced he had agreed to meet with the state's top Democratic leaders to discuss a possible run for governor. Days later, he withdrew from those talks, saying he felt such an action would be "disloyal to the newspaper."
FOUR PULITZER PRIZES
During his tenure, Lawrence's editorial staff won four Pulitzer prizes, and he earned a reputation as a champion of that staff, fighting to protect it against cost-cutting measures increasingly demanded by the parent Knight Ridder chain. "We have cut a lot of other things, but we have not cut the newsroom staff, and we have not cut the (news hole) space," he noted proudly in an ESP interview last week. But in recent months, Lawrence faced powerful new pressures from Knight Ridder Inc. to further increase Herald revenues - or downsize. The demand became more intense as its advertising came under increasing pressure from competitors and a March audit found circulation down...