Former Miami Herald Publisher To Join Uf As Childhood Development Scholar

November 9, 2001

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — David Lawrence Jr., former Miami Herald publisher and University of Florida journalism graduate, will join the UF faculty in January as the University Scholar for Early Childhood Development and Readiness, Provost David Colburn announced today.

Lawrence, 59, who retired from the Herald in 1999, is president of The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation. He chairs the Children’s Services Council of Miami-Dade County and co-chairs that community’s School Readiness Coalition. Gov. Jeb Bush named him to the Florida Partnership for School Readiness board, which he chairs, and he is a board member of the Foundation for Child Development in New York.

“David is a major national figure in the movement to strengthen the nation’s commitment to early childhood development and readiness,” said Colburn, to whom Lawrence will report. “His decision to join the University of Florida greatly strengthens our interdisciplinary commitment to children’s issues on this campus. David will work with our faculty group from several colleges who are spearheading our program on children. He will also continue to head up The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation in Miami. I know that David will be a great asset to the University of Florida.”

During Lawrence’s tenure as publisher of The Miami Herald, the paper won five Pulitzer Prizes. Before coming to Miami in 1989, Lawrence was publisher of the Detroit Free Press and also served as that paper’s executive editor. He came to the Free Press in 1978 from the Charlotte Observer, where he was editor. He joined then Knight Newspapers (now Knight-Ridder) in 1971 as assistant to the editor of the Philadelphia Daily News.

“That I have a special affection for the University of Florida should surprise no one. It is the place that gave me the most important part of my education,” Lawrence said. “It is also a place of a great range of academic and research excellence in the early childhood arena, and I am thrilled to be working with so many good people who care so much about school readiness.”

Lawrence graduated from UF College of Journalism and Communications in 1963 and was named Outstanding Journalism Graduate. He graduated from the Advanced Management program at the Harvard Business School in 1983. In 1988, he was honored with Knight-Ridder’s top award, the John S. Knight Gold Medal.

He was honored in 1980 as a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications and similarly in 1982 by the university. He received an honorary doctorate – one of nine honorary doctorates he has received — from UF in 1993.

Lawrence’s national honors include the Ida B. Wells Award “for exemplary leadership in providing minorities employment opportunities in journalism” and the National Association of Minority Media Executives award for “lifetime achievement in diversity.” His writing awards include the First Amendment Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation and the Inter American Press Association Commentary Award.

He served two terms as chair of the national Task Force on Minorities in the Newspaper Business, was the 1991-92 president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the 1995-96 president of the Inter American Press Association.

His board activities include The Miami Art Museum and United Way, each as chairman; the New World School of the Arts; Phoenix House; NCCJ; and the University of Florida Foundation. As a member of the Governor’s Commission on Education, he chaired the Readiness Committee. He also was the local convening co-chair of the 1994 Summit of the Americas and is the co-founder of a nonprofit vocational-technical school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Lawrence and his wife, Roberta, live in Coral Gables, Fla., and have three daughters and two sons.