Miami family donates $2.5 million to fund investigative journalism. ‘Future is in peril’
As journalism feels the pressure from the political and business worlds, civic leaders Ron and Charlene Esserman and their family are making a countermove.
“We want to galvanize people to stand up for change, and that’s what a free press does,” Charlene Esserman said.
So the Essermans have pledged $2.5 million to help fund investigative journalism in South Florida.
On Monday, the Miami couple behind the Esserman automotive dealerships established The Esserman Family Fund for Investigative Journalism at the Miami Foundation.
The Esserman gift, combined with largess from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will help fund an annual $10,000 top prize and two $1,000 honorable mention prizes for South Florida’s “best accountability” reporting. The Essermans’ gift will also support a $50,000 annual, yearlong investigative reporting fellowship at the Miami Herald for early-career reporters. Additional fellowships will eventually be offered to other news organizations in South Florida.
“We are extremely grateful for the generosity of the Esserman family and their commitment to the critical role of local journalism,” said Aminda Marqués González, Miami Herald publisher, president and executive editor. “Thanks to their gift, we will be adding the first reporter for our Investigative Journalism Lab, expanding accountability reporting of underserved pockets in our community.”
Miami Herald Investigative Journalism Fund
In October, the Miami Herald announced its partnership with the Miami Foundation to launch a Miami Herald Investigative Journalism Fund to boost its current five-member investigative team.
The Essermans’ $50,000 gift for a fellowship is one step toward the Herald’s goal to ultimately double the size of its investigative team.
In a column, Marqués González said the goal for the Herald’s Investigative Journalism Fund was to raise $1.5 million for its reporting efforts spread over three years.
The fund, she said, would help add two full-time reporters, a data visualization specialist, a videographer and an editor to its existing team.
“We will launch the Investigative Journalism Fund when we reach $500,000 in support,” she wrote in a column about the collaboration between the Herald and The Miami Foundation.
“This relationship allows the investigative team at the Miami Herald to focus on the journalism that will expose corruption, identify fraud and seek solutions to problems that affect the quality of life in South Florida,” Marqués González wrote.
Investigative reporting doesn’t come cheap.
In addition to staffing costs, the Miami Herald spent more than $100,000 just on legal fees and access to files and sealed court documents to put together writer Julie K. Brown’s and visual journalist Emily Michot’s Perversion of Justice series on the federal immunity deal given to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Esserman family philanthropy
The Essermans have a long philanthropic relationship with South Florida since moving to Miami from Chicago in 1968.
Many of their donations have gone to arts organizations because, as Charlene Esserman said, “Music has been a part of all of our lives. All of our children are musicians.”
Among their beneficiaries: Zoo Miami, the Deering Estate Foundation, Miami City Ballet, the Florida Grand Opera and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami.
Today, the family champions accountability journalism, Esserman said.
The family recognizes that the free press is imperiled in a culture not solely because of the business challenges to compete digitally and in print, but also because journalism is under attack.
This is a modern era in which the term “fake news” has become weaponized to attack the credibility of professional — and costly — reporting.
The endowment, to attract young, probing investigative journalists and to enable staffing at the Herald and other South Florida publications, is a glimmer amid the gloom.
“I think this is more important now than ever with what is going on in the world for journalists,” Esserman said. “The future of local journalism is in peril. We need the free press to focus on accountability, and that is how journalism plays such a crucial role. So many of these journalists are courageous and come up against many difficult issues exposing injustice and corruption.”
Esserman said her family hopes that the $2.5 million investment serves as an inspiration for others to step up.
“We hope the fund can provide resources to ensure South Florida’s tradition in investigative journalism lives on, while encouraging other donors to join in with additional support.”
For the Essermans, lifelong readers of their local newspapers, the endowment is a family affair.
Daughter Laura Esserman, a breast cancer oncologist in San Francisco and 1974 Miami Herald Silver Knight General Scholarship winner, used her experience on several boards to help pull the pieces together, her mother said. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2016 for her pioneering health research.
The couple’s three other children — Lisa, Susan and James Esserman — were also unified behind the idea to help fund a journalism initiative, Charlene Esserman said. Grandson Clifford Marks was a summer intern at the Miami Herald in 2009.
“That was so meaningful to him. He learned how to talk to people and it was delightful for us because he lived with us at the time,” Esserman said from her home in Coconut Grove.
“My husband wanted something that all of our children could meet once a year and do this and perpetuate it because it’s something we knew would be necessary. Not for just a fellowship at the Herald but also a prize in journalism to keep this focus going and to help galvanize people to stand up for change,” Esserman said.
“I have a granddaughter who works for Mother Jones,” Esserman said, referencing the public affairs magazine, “and she was given a fellowship there.” Esserman called such arrangements a win-win for the media and their communities. “She said it was a wonderful experience because she got to work with experienced reporters and was mentored by them and not just thrown into a pool. And they got to learn from a younger generation different things.”
Joins other journalism prizes
The Esserman gift is the latest prize allocated to accountability reporting that also includes the nationwide Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism and the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, said Alberto Ibargüen, president of the Knight Foundation and a former Miami Herald publisher. (The Knight Foundation will provide $250,000 to administer the Esserman-Knight prize.)
“People like the Essermans really believe in journalism and wanted to recognize a job well done,” he said.
The timing is critical, Ibargüen said.
“The rate that we are withdrawing consistently reliable information from an informed citizenry is dangerous to a democracy that depends on an informed citizenry,” Ibargüen said.
“I’ve known the Essermans for maybe 25 years,” he said. “I’ve known of their commitment to this community. Known of their support of investigative journalism and, frankly, their appreciation for the job, specifically, that the Herald has done over time.
“I am thrilled that there are people that are willing to put their own money behind important journalism and that the Essermans chose to do it in a very localized way by offering a significant prize,” Ibargüen said.
How to apply for prize, fellowship
The Esserman-Knight Journalism Prize is accepting applications for accountability journalism produced in 2019.
The $10,000 top prize and two $1,000 honorable mentions will be given annually to the best reporting that has had a major impact and improved the lives of the people in South Florida.
Journalists from all news outlets producing work in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties are eligible to apply. Applicants can learn more and submit work through the Miami Foundation at essermanjournalism.org.
The Miami Herald will recruit applicants for the Esserman Investigative Journalism Fellowship. The position will be the first for the Miami Herald Investigative Journalism Lab.
This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 6:00 PM.
