Once the flagship of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, the Miami Herald in recent years has struggled with both the same challenges as other big daily newspapers and also the internal dynamics of Knight Ridder, including the relocation of the company's headquarters from Miami to San Jose, Calif., in 1998.

The Miami Herald is turning its attention to its core market.

Now the question is: Will the sale of Knight Ridder to Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy Co. signal a change of course, and fortunes, for the Herald?

McClatchy has acquired a paper eager to put a difficult year behind it. Last July, veteran Miami politician Art Teele, facing federal corruption charges and embarrassing media revelations of his personal life, committed suicide in the paper's waterfront headquarters. Black leaders urged a boycott of the Herald in protest, and journalists around the country were angered by the firing of columnist Jim DeFede, who tape-recorded a phone interview with Teele immediately before his suicide.

McClatchy considers Miami a growth market, although the paper's circulation has dropped by more than 8% on Sundays and nearly 6% on weekdays for the 12 months ending last March. Publisher Jesus Diaz, barely a year on the job, says the paper is retrenching and putting a greater emphasis on its "core market." Last November, the paper scaled back its international edition, dropped its state edition and suspended delivery outside Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties. A month later it reinstated "Miami" to its Broward edition, ending its 12-year competition strategy to compete there with Tribune Co.'s South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Diaz says McClatchy is known for valuing quality journalism. Indeed, newsroom veterans say they are thrilled by the sale. "I think everyone here recognizes that this is the best possible outcome," says Diaz. McClatchy, he says, has "obviously done some things right, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can learn from them."