How the meme account Only In Dade became a Miami media powerhouse

Followers supply much of the content — including sunsets and car wrecks, the sweet and the unsavory. “Only in Dade!” some aspiring contributors shout, as they pull out their phones to capture a real-life spectacle — a courtroom brawl, a truck swerving through traffic — that they’re certain will shoot to viral fame.

On a recent weekday at Only in Dade’s colorful headquarters, the staff piled onto couches and, hyped up on cafecito, buzzed about Lionel Messi’s latest performance with Inter Miami and whether Tekashi69 would be a guest on their new podcast.

Then the conversation turned to something much more serious: Police that week confirmed that the director of the Miami-Dade Police Department had attempted suicide, and a tipster supposedly had a video related to the emerging story.

“What do you guys think?” asked Lenny Carter, co-CEO of Only in Dade. “Should we get into this?”

“I think it’s too soon,” said Shanut Anaut, Only in Dade’s co-founder.

“It’s just a rumor at this point,” Carter concluded, after listening to the staff talk it through. Then he turned to one of the Instagram account’s managers, Jennifer Jensen. “Get the footage anyway, Jenny. But I say no.” In the end, the skepticism was warranted; the video wasn’t clear.

It sounded more like the kind of measured debate you might hear in a newsroom — and maybe not one you’d expect of a lifestyle Instagram account that regularly posts comedy sketches and interviews with tipsy partygoers.

And yet a funny thing happened in the course of Only in Dade’s rapid rise as the region’s hottest online time-killer: It inadvertently became a source of local news. Its wacky, endearing or alarming videos also get picked up by the local news, forming the basis of more traditional reports. And along the way, Only in Dade’s staff — a team that largely came up through marketing, digital production or comedy — have learned some of the basics of producing news. “There has been a lot of trial and error,” Carter said.

Now, what started as a meme page a decade ago has become a media company that inks deals with local hospitals, UFC fighters and colleges, and catapulted one staffer to “Saturday Night Live” fame. Last year, Emilio Estefan — the multimillionaire record producer known as the godfather of Miami — purchased half of the company with grand visions for expansion into film, comedy and live events.

So, could this be the future of local news?

A lot of communities across the country — D.C., Maui, New Orleans — have an Instagram account like this.

“They start as a joke account for people to make fun of or rant about things that frustrated them, or they’re bored and want to have fun,” said Nikki Usher, a University of San Diego media professor and researcher of social media and journalism. “And then they accidentally start to get credibility because they’re so authentic.”

They’re arising as newspapers disappear, television ratings decline and younger audiences tune out the news. And they’re cause for still more hand-wringing among journalism purists, and those griping about “bundles” — serious news organizations offering lighter fare such as games alongside news reports to lure an audience. What does it mean if reporting isn’t enough, that you also have to entertain?

But consider what newspapers used to be. They weren’t produced by professionals as we think of them today. Early American newspapers were mostly filled with dispatches sent by letter writers — the original “user-submitted content.” Postmasters who ran their own papers had a competitive advantage, because they had access to so many people’s letters; some would just print the contents.

It took a long time to get to the kind of sober, straight-down-the-middle media that came to dominate the 20th-century news market, produced by professionals and delivered in the voices of Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow and other people who were almost invariably White and male.

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But for centuries before all that, news wasn’t as polite, or as dull. Papers were hyperpartisan before publishers realized they could make more money by practicing “objectivity.” News included lighter fare, gossip or even made-up stories. (After all, people were paying to be entertained.) The platonic ideal of a newspaper (or news outlet) never existed. “Most journalism historians will say you can’t have this unbroken line of evolution up to the present. Instead, you have periods in the past where journalism of the period was distinctive for that period,” said David Sloan, professor emeritus at the University of Alabama and founder of the American Journalism Historians Association. Whatever upheaval society underwent — cultural, political, industrial — was reflected back in its news.

Understanding that history “helps you stay away from the view that the way we’re doing things today is the preordained, proper way to do things,” Sloan said. “And [that] the way we’re doing things will always remain like this.”

In some ways, meme accounts like Only in Dade have become vital breaking news sources because they embrace 21st-century chaos — lampooning it, gawking at it — without trying to impose order or sense upon it. If Murrow is spinning in his grave over this, well, get it on video or it didn’t happen.

We’re in the club on a Wednesday — a Wednesday! — and thumping reggaeton and rowdy bottle service nearby force comedian Carlos Hernandez to shout into his microphone.

A recent House committee hearing about extraterrestrial life dominated headlines, so Hernandez poses a newsy question to a scantly clad woman dressed in Barbie pink: “Where should an alien go if it came to Miami?”

“Oh, I believe in them,” she earnestly replies. “And I think they’re good. They would have destroyed the planet a long time ago if they had wanted to.”

Hernandez looks directly into Jensen’s camera — she’s filming this for a comedy segment — and raises his eyebrow, providing himself the perfect shot for when he later adds this clip to a montage.

Man-in-the-club interviews like this don’t directly make money for Only in Dade, but the account’s popularity translates into brand partnerships and events that do.

A mix of 10 part-timers and freelance contractors work for Only in Dade, which started as a Facebook meme page about a decade ago among friends. It soon morphed into an Instagram account that was as much about laughing about Miami as it was celebrating what made it special. “The good, the bad, the funny,” reads its tagline.

When Instagram Stories came along, people began tagging the account in more newsy videos it would then repost. It received early videos of the devastating Surfside condominium collapse in 2021, and it did zanier stuff, such as highlighting pata sucia. (That’s when a woman takes her heels off at the club and walks around all night with dirty bare feet.)

The jokes and tone of the account conveyed a modern sense of authenticity, building trust among its followers. And the people running it truly love this place. “We are them. We are the community,” Anaut said. “They feel like they’re sharing it with their friends, and their friend is the one that’s putting it on the platform.”

Its videos of road rage incidents, rowdy airport passengers, car crashes and alligators spotted in unlikely places have gotten picked up by local media. The account became such a local fixture that the county council gave it a special recognition.

A couple of years ago, they snagged an interview with Miami royalty, Emilio and Gloria Estefan. It was around the time of the Grammys, yet afterward, Emilio kept hearing people telling him, “I saw you on Only in Dade!”

“Wait,” he laughed, “didn’t you also see me on the Grammys?”

Only in Dade’s headquarters is just a few blocks away from Estefan’s legendary Crescent Moon Studios. Once president of artistic development at Sony Music, Estefan helped introduce a new generation of Latin artists — Shakira, Marc Anthony and others — to American mainstream success. He and Gloria were among the first real “crossover” artists, and a lifetime of breaking ground has kept the 70-year-old interested in new ventures: restaurants, hotels, an NFL team, media.

He also loves to be a mentor, and he lit up when talking about Only in Dade. When he first met the team, he told them, “We’re on the same path.”

He saw Only in Dade appealing to the communities that made Miami distinct: Latino, Black, LGBTQ+ and others. “It’s not the Spanish market. It’s minorities. Only in Dade is about minority people,” he said.

Estefan also saw the grip the account had on the city — “We probably have 3,000 camera people sending us stuff” — and that traditional forms of media were falling out of favor with younger audiences. “Ratings in television, film, radio — everything is down, because they’re choosing what they want to hear,” he said. “And if you ignore that, you don’t know the business.”

Estefan brought another level of ideas, investment, credibility — and industry connections. He helped Marcello Hernández, the comedian who used to host Only in Dade segments, get the attention of talent agents before he left last year to become a “Saturday Night Live” cast member.

Estefan would not disclose the size of his investment in the company, but called it “substantial. … It’s not that we make millions. We cover expenses and make a little money.”

But he predicts the real money will come once the company expands into live events, something he has plenty of experience with as the producer of several Grammy and Super Bowl halftime shows. He also plans to move Only in Dade into television, particularly comedies and film. He wants Only in Dade to go global; for now, Only in Dade is trying to take its model to four other U.S. cities.

As rapper Bad Bunny blasted through the club, Anaut talked to Jensen about a tip that came in earlier that day. “It needs more reporting” — an order she never thought she would be giving.

“Life led me here somehow,” Anaut said with a smile. “It became that. It really started as a meme page and then turned into something else.”

Only in Dade gets a flood of messages every day, including the kooky and the violent. Alex Castellanos, one of four people who run the Instagram account around the clock, scrolled through hundreds of messages sitting in the inbox, scanning for grid-worthy items, as well as submissions that may end up in a montage of clips accompanied by a joke or song.

“I see messages all the time like, ‘Oh, you guys put up everything!’” he said. “The [TV] news picks and chooses what they want to put up. They don’t even report everything. But once they see something we put up,” it can turn into a news story.

But the account’s posts can also annoy the professionals reporting the news.

“Frankly, they drive me crazy,” said one local television assignment editor who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to other news outlets. Only in Dade content frequently requires more reporting to verify the details, which can be hazy, incomplete or contain factual errors. “They make me spin my wheels when I don’t have the time to do it.”

But the account’s utility is also undeniable. When reports emerged of an airline passenger arrested for throwing a computer monitor at an employee, and another of a massive police car chase spanning three counties, the editor immediately thought “somebody had to have video. That was the first place I looked.”

Whenever Only in Dade posts a video related to police activities or crime in unincorporated Dade County, reporters descend on the local police for details. “‘We saw this post on Only in Dade. Do you guys know anything about it?’” Miami-Dade police spokesman Alvaro Zabaleta described as a frequent occurrence. (His common response: “Yeah, we know all about it. We’re working it.”)

A recent post about a building collapsing during a demolition got so much attention that the City of Miami’s official Instagram account posted a lengthy comment on Only in Dade in response.

“People knew they could send them videos on social and so that grew from there,” said Steve Owen, an assistant news director at the local ABC affiliate. But he doesn’t view the account as competition. “We get videos sent to us, everybody gets videos sent by everybody. They’re just one of them,” he said. “It’s just the way it is now.”

For all this newfound utility, Carter insists that Only in Dade isn’t a news outfit, but rather an entertainment company. “[News outlets are] in a different world than us,” he said. “They have their guidelines and their corporate ways, and we don’t.”

That means old rules about spelling, grammar and transparent corrections don’t apply. And that Only in Dade can post a video of, say, a woman in a bikini slithering in the green, murky leftover water from a nearly empty pool (some 2 million views and counting) and not have to tell you who she is or why she’s doing that. It’s a new definition of newsworthy.

But the account has gone too far, as well. It once posted video of an accident showing a motorcycle police officer thrown some 30 feet through the air, and he was severely injured, said Zabaleta, the police spokesman. Police asked Only in Dade to remove it. “We have to take into account the family sees this too, so it’s really not tasteful,” he said. “[Only in Dade] agreed 100 percent and took it down.”

Its staff members now avoid videos of horrifically injured car accident victims, as well as those of people having sex outside, a frequent user-submitted genre. (This is Miami after all.) Every juicy tip doesn’t get automatically reposted, such as a photo of man and young boy at a construction site with the tipster claiming that the underage boy was illegally working. “It’s summer,” Jensen said. “Maybe he’s just bringing his kid to work.” She didn’t post it.

Back at the club, Hernandez wrapped up his nightlife interview, and the Only in Dade crew piled into their branded party bus to check out another scene.

Halfway there, Carter received a text: Tekashi69 and his supposed new love interest, musician Yailin, just arrived at the club they had left. The controversial rapper was embroiled in public drama with Yailin’s ex — a sort of love triangle. Prime content.

“Turn the bus around!” someone exclaimed. Hernandez tapped out questions he would ask in case he scored an on-camera interview with Tekashi. (“Where are you working out these days?” — a dig at the rapper’s gym brawl video.)

By the time the party bus pulled up, Tekashi69 and Yailin had left. They had gotten into an argument, witnesses told them, and the Only in Dade crew had missed it.

No worries: About 10 minutes later, Carter’s phone pinged with video of the couple arriving, filmed by a clubgoer.

He told Jensen to post it, and moments later, it became news.

Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.