Miami Herald 1991 intern recruiting poster

Click here to enlarge.

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Almost 25 years ago, the Miami Herald tried to lure interns to South Florida with this slick poster, complete with a pitch from star columnist Carl Hiaasen.

Twenty-five years later, some things remain unchanged at the paper: advertising revenues are still declining and circulation still sucks.

On the plus side, Miami is still a great news town and the Herald now asks prospective interns to email their resumes instead of using snail mail.

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Postcards from the edge

By Carl Hiaasen
Herald Columnist

We know what you're thinking.

Any newspaper that can afford to hire a bunch of big-name artists to create original big-time artwork for a crummy intern recruiting poster - well that's a newspaper that must be wallowing in surplus revenue and spending money that grows on palm trees.

Dream on. The Herald is just as stingy and gloomy as any paper in the country these days. You know the story - declining advertising revenues, flat circulation, budget freezes, blah-blah-blah.

So don't even bring up the subject of money, OK? Don't even think about it. In fact, the only reason we bother to pay our interns anything is because it's the law. Or original plan was to give out citrus - big bags of fresh oranges and grapefruits, in lieu of a salary - but our whiny pinhead accountants said no way, it's gotta be cash. Fine, but it doesn't have to be very much.

You're probably asking yourself: So why do people work down there?

Well, just look at this colorful (and expensive) poster. We've got your year-round sunshine, your beaches, your tropical beaches, your Biscayne Bay, your giant mutant lizards, your exploding fire hydrants.

But most of all, what we've got down here is news - news that won't find anywhere else in the hemisphere, news that is so weird, wild and warped that you've got to be here to believe it.

There's drug-running, gun-running, alien-running, cultists who slice off the ears of dead men, anti-Castro warriors who train in the Everglades for the next invasion of Cuba, judges who stuff (marked) $100 bills under their robes, and one ex-general on trial, Manuel Noriega. He resides in his very own jailhouse Dictator's Suite, complete with Xerox machine and a law library. Only in South Florida could this happen.

Sure, there are plenty of other big city newspapers from which a bright young journalist can choose. Try Pittsburgh, for example, or Des Moines or Salt Lake City, and you could stack up perfectly respectable clips on clubby Moose, Elks and Lions, and be bored to a coma. Here you get sharks - and goats and chickens for animal sacrifices.

So, for the adventure of a lifetime, try Miami.

Mail a resume, a few clips and an extraordinarily articulate letter - or if you're an artist, designer or a photographer, some slides or prints - to:

     Maria C. Garcia
     Associate Editor/Personnel
     The Miami Herald
     One Herald Plaza
     Miami, FL 33132

The deadline: Nov. 1, 1991. Don't blow it.

Soon thereafter Herald henchpersons will tour academia.

The program runs year-round, $485 a week for 12 weeks, and all the mangos and malangas you can eat.