Alumnus accidentally stumbles into a career in journalism

By: Stephanie Castro /Staff Writer

Former Panther and current Miami Herald Neighbors editor Steve Rothaus says he didn’t know he wanted to be a journalist.

Born in New York, Rothaus moved to North Miami Beach with his family when he was fifteen years old. After high school, Rothaus attended Miami Dade College, but wasn’t sure about what he wanted to do, so he decided to sign up for a few classes – one of them being Journalism 101.

“I said ‘well, that looks interesting’ and I ended up really enjoying the class.”

Rothaus’ professor and advisor for the student newspaper, The Falcon Times, quickly took notice of his talent and natural ease with writing and offered him a staff writer position writing for the paper. He quickly worked his way up and became the editor.

After graduating with his associates degree from Miami Dade College, Rothaus transferred to Florida International University where he says he wasn’t very involved in journalism activities.

“I wanted to be a journalist, but at the time I needed to work” said Rothaus.

What started off as a job in retail to help put him through school began to take over his life.

Rothaus worked for several department stores, including Lord & Taylor, where he was promoted to department manager. From there, they hoped to make him a buyer and send him to New York to launch a career in retail, but it wasn’t what he envisioned for himself.

“I ended up calling in sick one day, got in my car, went to another mall, and ended up getting a part time job at the old Jordan Marsh store,” said Rothaus. “I told them I wanted to go back to school and said I could only work part time.”

Rothaus resigned from his job at Lord & Taylor and began working part time at Jordan Marsh while attending FIU as a full-time student. Before he knew it, Rothaus heard about a job opening at the Miami Herald.

An entry-level clerical job labeled “police desk monitor” where Rothaus would come in at 5 o’clock in the afternoon and stay until 2 in the morning, five nights a week monitoring police radios.

“I found out that the professors at FIU had actually told two other students about the job, but they didn’t have any interest in it because of the hours,” said Rothaus. “I knew it was my foot in the door, so I jumped at the opportunity.”

At the time, there was a hiring freeze, so the person Rothaus was replacing couldn’t get promoted for three months until the freeze was lifted, so they made her a city desk reporter one day a week.

Rothaus was told to come in on Sundays, part-time from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to relieve her, so she could cover festivals on Sundays.  

For the first three weeks, Rothaus went to work and sat in an office by himself listening to the police radios.

“I was very unhappy and I thought this was such a big waste of time, but my partner at the time told me to keep doing it because something would come up,” he said.

On his fourth Sunday on the job, Rothaus received a call at the police desk. It was a P.I.O. from Miami Dade Fire who wanted to tell him about a story.

Rothaus’ job was to get information from these phone calls and tell the reporters on the city desk about them, so they could write the stories. Around 9 a.m., an editor came in and Rothaus told him about the story.

The story was that Miami Dade Fire had gotten a call about an overdose in South Dade. When they had gotten to the house they were greeted by a man who was on drugs saying that his wife was passed out in the bathroom.

Three paramedics went into the bathroom and found her naked, sitting on the toilet, passed out.

When the paramedics finally lifted her off the toilet they discovered that she had given birth and the baby was in the toilet bowl still attached to the umbilical cord, so they called the air rescue helicopter and they saved the baby’s life.  

The editor told him that Joan Fleishman, the afternoon police reporter, would be coming in to work at 1 P.M. to cover the story. Shortly after, Rothaus received a call from Fleishman.

“I told her about the story and she asked “what do they want me to do?” I told her they wanted her to write the story,” said Rothaus. “She said okay don’t do anything I’ll be there soon.”

By the time Fleishman had gotten to the Herald, Rothaus had written the story. The story went to the top of the page and Rothaus’ shared the byline with Fleishman who he remains close with.

The following week, Rothaus was handed his next story.

After the hiring freeze was lifted, the Miami Herald made a deal with Rothaus – he would become a reporter the moment he got his bachelor’s degree. Rothaus became the Miami Beach Neighbors reporter as well as the LGBT Issues reporter.

Rothaus became one of the first reporters at a mainstream newspaper to talk about the LGBT community in a regular news beat.

“Back then I had my fair share of harassing letters and phone calls, but I ignored it because I knew that came with the territory,” he said. “You have to have a thick skin to be in this business and to cover a beat like this, you have to have an even thicker skin.”

One of his most popular stories was about a transgender woman from Idaho who died suddenly from an aneurysm. At the funeral, her father laid her to rest in an open casket with her hair cut short, dressed in a suit, and presented as a man because he couldn’t accept that she was transgender.

“I called the funeral home and they told me what happened. They said that this was what the father wanted,” said Rothaus.

Rothaus wrote the article in thirty minutes and went back to work. That same night, the article had received over half a million views on the Herald’s website. Within two days, it had gone viral with more than a million page views.

“The reason why it was so highly read was because I was the only source for information. After I spoke to the funeral home the family shut them down and told them not to talk to anyone else,” said Rothaus.

As a result, the story was picked up by websites all over the world which linked back to Rothaus. It ended up becoming the most-read single story, not just on the Miami Herald web page, but the entire McClatchy Company for that year.

“Ultimately, you have to be a good journalist. There’s no room for people who can only do one thing.”