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Tom Fiedler, the new executive editor of The Miami Herald, has waited his whole career to get where he is today -- but what timing.

Fiedler -- who has worked for the Herald for nearly three decades, most recently as editorial page editor, and who is best-known for exposing the Gary Hart-Donna Rice affair back in 1987 -- comes in as Herald and its parent Knight Ridder have been hit hard by the laggard economy. The Herald gutted 180 full-time positions, and its newsroom staff went to 375 from 410.

Fiedler insisted the worst is over. "We have no plan other than expanding," said the editor -- who, in fact, has been on a hiring spree, beefing up the Florida capital bureau in Tallahassee and the metro desk. The editor boasted he's added pages to the business section and brought in a deputy business editor.

Political news will get better play on his watch, he said -- no wonder, considering his many years as a political writer, and such hot stories as an upcoming mayoral election and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno planning a run for the governor's mansion.

But he maintained there will be no sweeping changes. Fiedler said his predecessor, Martin Baron, who left in July to become editor of The Boston Globe after a year and a half in Miami, "has done a lot with this paper. I think it has much more of an edge to it than it did a couple of years ago."

In fact, Baron -- E&P's 2001 Editor of the Year -- is a hard act to follow, having led coverage of such stories as the presidential election fiasco in Florida and the battle over Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, which earned the paper a Pulitzer Prize.

Fiedler's colleagues see him as a calming force, after the hurricane that's wreaked havoc on the Herald.

Metro columnist Fred Grimm quipped that his new boss "is about as fair and pleasant as someone could be after so many years in the news business." But he wonders "whether those qualities count for much in a corporate climate that would favorably consider mass castration of the work force if it would draw the paper toward that magic 22% or 24% or 26% of whatever profit target deemed necessary to impress Wall Street."

Reporter Jay Weaver added that Fiedler brought "instant stability at a time when it was sorely needed."

Indeed, despite an accomplished career, Fiedler's greatest strength may be his deep roots. "I know these people, and they know me," he said. "I told people when I came in: This is my newspaper, this is where I live, this is my home -- and it's not going to change."