Gene Miller, 76, a legendary newspaper reporter who won two Pulitzer Prizes and inspired generations of journalists with the motto "There is no substitute for news," died of cancer June 17 at his home near South Miami, Fla.
Mr. Miller crafted stories at the Miami Herald for 48 years, officially retiring in 2001 but continuing to work there as a contractor and coach, teaching interns, journeyman writers and editors the beauty of short sentences, careful interviewing and dogged reporting.
He won his first Pulitzer in 1967 for investigations that helped free a man and a woman who had been wrongly convicted in separate slayings. His second Pulitzer, in 1976, was for articles that helped free two men from death row; his reporting was over an eight-year period.
He worked long but wrote short. "It is sometimes said at the Herald that he writes as if he were paid by the period," said writer Calvin Trillin in a 1986 New Yorker article. In a typically telegraphic and funny self-written obituary published on the Herald's Web site, Mr. Miller noted that he was in "excellent health -- except for a fatal disease."
Mr. Miller's long years as a reporter in one of the nation's most news-rich regions led him to cover "everything from the JFK assassination to Elián [Gonzalez] with the presidential follies in between, Nixonian Watergate to Clintonian Starr Report . . . some of which seemed important at the time," he said.
Judy Miller, the Herald's managing editor, called him the "soul and conscience of our newsroom."
"I can't tell you the depth of sadness in this newsroom and in newsrooms around the country today, where Gene planted journalists, some of the best in the country," she said. "He came in my office practically every day he was here, saying, 'Toss me a story.' "
With a trademark short laugh and a bark of praise -- "Good copy, champion!" -- that rang out across the newsroom when he deemed a story worthy, Mr. Miller reveled in the work of ferreting out the news, then telling it simply and clearly.
Mr. Miller came from a time when working at a newspaper was seen as a trade, not a profession. In 1995, he told the American Journalism Review: "I get up, I come to work, I have a good time, I work good stories. But things are different. [Miami Herald owner] Knight Ridder's terribly schizophrenic -- they speak of quality and they talk of profits. They're so interested in money, and that's not why I became a newspaperman."
He wrote in a 2003 article, during the Herald's 100th anniversary, of modern management's obsession with "customers" instead of readers. He did it by telling about a dramatic sentencing of a notorious multiple murderer.
"Judge Edward Cowart asked the defendant to rise. As Cowart sentenced him to death in the electric chair, the defendant pivoted, pointed his finger at me and denounced me for my sloppy coverage.
"His name: Ted Bundy. For sure, a dissatisfied customer."
