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The Register is perhaps not an automatic choice for the top ten, but as a monopoly newspaper it has resisted the temptation to laziness. It has targeted its resources to achieve national impact. And perhaps the best measure: it is trusted deeply by the people who read it every day.
Los Angeles Times
As sprawling as the city it covers, the Los Angeles Times is known to local wits as the "gray whale." Fired with ambition to have their product regarded as equal in scope and weight to the New York Times and Washington Post, Times editors appear to have all but given up on editing: stories go on seemingly forever. Southern California's prosperity, which was reflected in a nation-leading total of 154.4 million lines of advertising last year, has ballooned the paper to an average of 111 pages daily, vs. 96 for the New York Times. Each edition is chockablock with lovingly crafted explorations, of subjects ranging from the education of a TV anchor to the buying patterns of Hispanic migrant workers, that jump confusingly from page to page after page. At its best, the Times can be as informative and interpretive as any daily in the English language. At its worst, it seems to reflect a mistaken notion that readers want to spend all day with it.
The paper's editorial staff numbers 668 full-time journalists, and the Times maintains 13 U.S. bureaus and 22 abroad. It also produces eight local zoned editions. Eight reporters were assigned to the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses; ten writers and four photographers were sent to the scene when a sniper attacked children at a Los Angeles elementary school. But the Times has room for individual stars. Interestingly, for a paper with a heritage of partisan Republicanism, some of them are candidly liberal. Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson leads a savvy staff; Editorial Cartoonist Paul Conrad is a blunt critic of U.S. foreign policy.
Under Editor William Thomas, 59, the Times has become known as a desirable place for writers to work. But it does not always seem to be put together with readers in mind. When the Times was ranked in the ten best list a decade ago, TIME said: "It gives the impression of just falling short of its great potential." In some ways it still does.
The Miami Herald
There might seem to be more than enough news in south Florida to occupy any newspaper: a restive black community, an assertively bilingual Cuban population, an infestation of gun-wielding drug dealers, banks that accept large deposits in cash, a police department that seems prone to provoking charges of brutality. The Miami Herald covers its parlous territory as thoroughly and fearlessly as any other city daily, whether in exposing racial discrimination in housing or in probing terrorist acts by anti-Castro Cuban exiles. But it does more. Its reportage of Latin America, aided by bureaus in Rio de Janeiro, San Salvador and, soon, Managua, is among the very best in the U.S.