Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

The Herald and the Palm Beach Post are far superior. I doubt many people would even argue that.

 

I would question why the past two sports editors left. Especially the most recent one. It's not a happy situation down there, but I'm sure Sam Zell will swoop in and fix all those problems.

God Bless You, Zell Dog!!! Let's do lunch!!!

 

Fred Turner left, unfortunately, because of illness. I don't think there's any question about that. The last guy, someone might have been making him ill.

 

It's all good, though. Lots of cross-pollenating among the three, too.

 

But if you paint the shell lots of pretty colors***, people may not notice . . . there's nothing inside.


*** Newest design philosophy, a 180-degree reversal from the previous one.

 

The new design emphasis --- huge graphics with little information --- ain't working.

 

Sun-Sentinel used to be so good. SO GOOD! In the 1980s, it dominated South Florida. Still strong into the mid '90s. Fred Turner was an amazing talent evaluator. Check out some of the hires he made. They're all around the country now in important roles. Kind of surprised Kathy got this job, but the ME is huge into diversity, which proabably hurt Don McMullen and Tom Christiansen. Both would have real good choices, but white males aren't in demand.

 

Rewrite: Your assessment of the current situation is spot on. But the Sun-Sentinel certainly didn't dominate the Miami Herald in the 1980s. Very competitive? Absolutely.

I sense that Frank Ridgeway is a Herald alum. Maybe he will weigh in. I was still at a small college in California at that point. But I have heard the tales.

 

Matt: I concede. I think my point wasn't made well. Sun-Sentinel was an outstanding paper in the '80s. Truly outstanding. But the Miami Herald was also exceptionally strong then too. It was a great battleground and both staffs were as good as any staff anywhere in the USA.

I really wanted to say that it's a shame how far, IMO, the Sentinel has slipped. When I vacation down there I see very little of it's greatness.

 

Fort Laud had much better space than Miami had at the time. I think the general thinking in Miami was that we made better use of our resources, that there was zero waste and that Fort Laud's section was looser and a bit wasteful. But Miami beat writers sometimes expressed frustration that on practice days they might have one 16-incher while their Fort Laud counterpart would have a 20-incher, a 10-inch sidebar and 15 inches of notes. I think there was the sense on our part that we had vastly different philosophies, but we considered them formidable, worthy competitors. Along with the daily sports budget, there was a "competition report" in which we were compared against Fort Laud and USA Today -- Palm Beach was not yet really on the radar, a good section but a bit removed from the fray because it was not easy to find a copy in Dade County. I think the "competition report" was as honest as a thing like that could be, but it did come from the vantage point of our rules of engagement and likely Fort Laud would have had a different assessment of that day's competition. We knew they were going to devote more space to just about everything -- the object was to do it in a more interesting way. As I say, we thought we did. I later worked with a Fort Laud alum who completely disagreed and felt they blew us out of the water. And measured by the inch, sure. But then you get into the whole thing about how much does the average sports fan really care to read each day about a local team -- is 45 inches overkill when you're covering a practice? Our SE explained to us once that if we ever did get a bigger news hole, we wouldn't write longer on everything, we'd offer more variety. So, in a sense, it was apples and oranges except when it came to who broke a story.

 

Rewrite and Frank: all excellent points.

Nowadays, the real competition is often between Palm Beach and Miami.

 

So now the sun-sentinel is hiring an ASE? Just saw it posted on JJOBS.

Why dont they just hire someone they turned down for the other gig?