Sand in My Shoes heaped hopeful ideas on dinner plates

A thousand Miamians assembled last week to honor the Knight Foundation’s Alberto Ibargüen got more than expected: it wasn’t the usual rubber chicken fundraiser, and his speech accepting an award wasn’t the usual pablum. It was nourishing – tasty, but packed with ideas.

It helps a meal go down if the thoughts are on point. They were seasoned to my taste.

The occasion at Jungle Island was the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s almost-annual Sand in My Shoes award dinner, certainly the chamber’s most popular event and most reliable fundraiser as it honors a person whose contributions personify Miami in spirit as well as in home address and who has led in building the community.

Mr. Ibargüen’s achievements clearly fit that mold, setting the pace. He was brought to Miami by the award’s 2021 winner and dinner co-master of ceremonies David Lawrence to run El Nuevo Herald, moved up when Mr. Lawrence left to run the Miami Herald, but made his indelible mark on Miami in his national role running the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a pivotal post for the community from which he is about to retire.

In that role he fine-tuned the foundation’s philanthropy, which earlier had been simply to support journalism and aid cities where the Knight brothers’ newspapers had been based. He focused at once more tightly on efforts that could leverage largesse and more broadly, selecting targets that could advance the original aims, giving out in the process, as he noted, $2 billion “of John Knight’s money.”

One of those new targets was arts and culture, as Mr. Ibargüen recognized via investments that the arts support key pillars of a community, counterintuitively embracing business and academia. A vibrant arts community becomes both a vital amenity for residents and a magnet for incoming well-educated residents and investments.

His other target was the confluence of technology, information, and the news teams that are vital to democracy and community. Knight’s efforts sought not only to sustain but to leverage news at the community level. He correctly assessed not only that democracy dies without news, but that without diligent and totally unbiased reporting of local government, business and civic affairs the sense of community that strengthens democracy withers. In strong communities the strident discord of national divisions is at worst muted, at best overcome.

Along the way so far – Mr. Ibargüen hasn’t announced a future after the Knight Foundation – he found the energy (in abundance) and the time to chair the board of PBS, the Newseum and the World Wide Web Foundation, sit on the boards of American Airlines, PepsiCo, AOL and Norwegian Cruise Lines, and serve elsewhere.

“I’ve had a chance to make a difference,” he told his audience without patting himself on the back, which he justly might have done.

He has also found time to reflect, and last week he made on-point observations.

One is that Miami has already become a connecting place for the globe. Aiding that, Miami is fueled by immigrant energy – arriving not just from abroad but from the rest of the nation.
As himself a son and husband of immigrants, he noted, “I am a lucky man to fit into this town.”

He posited that the adaptability of Miamians is key to our future: “They are the most successful because they are the most adaptable.”

The growth of our technology is also a key: “With the growth of tech we can go toe to toe with any community in the world” – if we spread the access to technology to all the community.

Because “all of this is ours to lose,” he pointed to well-known perils of rising sea level, shrinking middle class, lack of housing affordability – issues that require local reporting to spotlight.

But it’s not lack of information about what we face – “we have more information available to us” – but lack of impartial and credible reporting. Needed is “the good local coverage of what [is] happening at the base of the local community.”

Government in action or inaction, he noted, requires the checks and balances of the local press, and restoration of the now-weakened sense of community information and a common purpose. “Time will tell if we can fix the problem.”

He concluded with his most hopeful message: in maneuvering through these perils, young business leaders will save Miami.

Why not? So far, Alberto has been correct.