There’s no “U” without The Miami Hurricane. Since 1929, the student newspaper has brought award-winning coverage of national and local events to students.
Ninety-six years later, the paper has evolved from a weekly four-page broadsheet in the traditional newspaper style to a 16-page biweekly tabloid-style paper. Along the way, TMH picked up its raunchy sex and gossip column, V’s Take, an Instagram account and hundreds of awards.
In 1929, when UM reestablished a ten-member board of regents chaired by the University’s first president, Bowman Foster Ashe, The Miami Hurricane was founded.
“Incredible relationships were forged in that newsroom, and there are so many people who will recall their time working with The Hurricane with such fondness,” said Megan Ondrizek, University strategic communications assistant vice president and 2007 TMH assistant news editor.
1940s
Most editions in the early 40s were four to eight pages long with five to seven news columns. It cost students $1.25 for an annual subscription. Editorial positions during this time included the editor in chief, business manager, managing editor, associate editors, news editors, copy editors and sports editors.
Columns of the 40s frequently spoke of the war, including the “delivery of Adolf Hitler, ‘alive, unwounded, and unhurt’” for a $1,000,000 prize offered by the Samuel Harden Church. In the October 10, 1940 issue, a notice was printed urging all men aged 21-35 to register for the selective service. In 1942, the US Army, Navy and Marines came to campus to speak to men in a mandatory rally.
Tuberculosis was another issue of the 40s, with the April 24, 1941 issue advertising TB testing to all students and faculty. Athletic rivalries were among other big topics covered in the paper, including the rivalry between UM and the University of Florida.
By 1948, the paper was, on average, 16 pages long and featured many more photos than ever before. Front pages of these papers were reserved for photos, a table of contents and major headlines, with the actual news beginning on page two.
1950s
The aesthetic of the late 40s stayed until 1958. The first issue of 1950 covered the 1950 Iron Arrow tapping and a controversial ruling on a discrimination-based bill from the UM senate. There was a notice put in the paper for “ex-prisoners of war” in “German prison camps” to give their names to a professor if they wished to get together.
Tuberculosis screenings happened on campus in April of 1951 and 3,000 students were scanned for TB on campus by getting their chests x-rayed. The nameplate was changed in June of 1951 when The Hurricane was again shortened to 4 pages.
The Korean War was the topic of a 1951 poll on campus, with results revealing students were in favor of a truce.
1960s
By the 60s, the average issue of TMH was eight to ten pages long. It featured news and sports sections, with editorials in amusements, music, radio-tv, theater, artist and intramural sections.
According to TMH reporting, the University of Miami welcomed around 30 black students for the first time ever in the summer before the 1961 school year. This news made the front page of the June 23 edition. Time Magazine praised the university for “the first lowering of the color bar at the largest independent school in the Southeast,” according to a news brief published by TMH the following week.
Dr. Lucille B. Strain was the first black educator with “full faculty status,” which was reported in the August 4, 1967 edition of TMH.
1970s
A story that broke in 1976 dealt with Iron Arrow Honor Society and the enforcing of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. Title IX states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program.”
Iron Arrow is the highest honor one can achieve at UM, and from its inception in 1926 until 1985, it only allowed men to be tapped in. Because of this, the society was forced to move its ceremonies off campus while fighting its removal in the Supreme Court.
1980s
In 1983, TMH covered when the Supreme Court upheld the decision, requiring Iron Arrow to allow women to join or terminate the society. It was not until February 28, 1985, that Iron Arrow came back to campus, this time allowing women to be tapped, which made the front page of TMH on March 1 of that year.
Also in 1985, Bruce Garrison became senior advisor for TMH. As advisor, he helped lead his staff to publish two print editions per week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
“I tried to be an advocate for the staff to find resources for our work. It was also my duty to make sure we had section editors and senior editors in line for the next year,” Garrison, who now serves as a professor in journalism and media management, said. “I was very fortunate to have well-prepared and hard-working editors each of the years I advised the newspaper.”
For its print editions, papers were produced at The Miami Herald offices in Biscayne Bay. Students would go to the Herald’s production department and assemble each issue, and when it was ready, it was printed and brought to UM’s campus.
Beginning in the 1980s, TMH began publishing larger editions of the newspaper over summer break, known as First Impressions.
1990s
The first ever website for The Hurricane was created in 1994 under Garrison. He was the advisor for 10 years until 1995, when major stylistic changes were made.
“We had a staff of about seven or eight editors, a handful of reporters and a couple of photographers. I completely redesigned the newspaper after I became editor,” said Bill Wachsberger, editor of The Hurricane in the fall of 1995, who is now the design director of the Baltimore Sun. “I think the biggest story we wrote was about how the law school newspaper had an editor get his hands on private papers from the law school trying to expose something wrong he did.”
2000s
During the globalization of the World Wide Web, The Hurricane transitioned from broadsheet style editions to tabloid style, similar to the current look of TMH.
“Digital news was really in its infancy I think, especially on college campuses, and it was just a lot of fun,” Ondrizek, who acted as assistant news editor in 2007, said.
Ondrizek had been on the staff for two years as a news writer and also as a writer for “Edge,” a section that is now the Arts and Entertainment section, before her promotion. At the time, she was also a print journalism major.
She says that her position on the paper helped her make connections for the job she currently has as assistant vice president of strategic communications for UM. As a reporter for TMH she covered in her final years was about the demolition of the Orange Bowl and the football team’s new home at Hard Rock Stadium in 2007.
2010s
In the 2010s, UM Libraries began digitizing TMH archives. Today, students can reference every edition of the newspaper from 1927-2015 on the UM Libraries website, and every story written since 2015 on themiamihurricane.com.
Typical editions in the 2010s were 12 pages long, featuring news, opinion, edge and sports sections. A big story of 2012 was a student government trial for violation of campaign rules. In that same week, TMH covered both presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama visiting campus.
“We had to figure out what was protected as public speech versus what we couldn’t share,” said Matthew Bunch ‘09, a former TMH editor in chief.
This decade also saw a shift in readership from primarily print-based to primarily online. The daily “grind” of covering Student Government, administrative decisions and campus happenings had to evolve to become more instantaneous, Bunch said.
2020s
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought a unique set of challenges to the paper.
“We did stories from all over the country,” Tsitsi Wakhisi, associate professor at the School of Communication and then-faculty advisor, said. “[We] spread our journalistic wings in terms of figuring out how we can still get these stories done, despite the adversities that were out there.
Wakhisi also noted that her writers “courageously” covered Greek Life COVID policy infractions, the controversy of the day, with a “truth-seeking spirit.”
In honoring the legacy of the countless editors and writers who came before us, The Miami Hurricane’s 2025 staff remains committed to chronicling the University of Miami.
“The fact that The Hurricane has endured, for so long now, in changing technological environments, is a testament to its resilience and echoes the resilience of the University as a whole,” Bunch said.