Lead sports designer, The Oklahoman

Having met Mike at APSE, I find it hard to believe he runs anything but a tight ship. And, having worked with him there, I know he is the kind of person who listens to people, regardless of title or position, and sincerely wants to see the biz improve and grow. If I hadn't already committed to another job, I'd be banging on his door right now. He gets it -- the word, presentation, the Web, thinking outside the box. A good guy putting out a good section.

 

Oklahoma City is an awesome place to live in and it has a great sports scene. The Oklahoman has a some good and talented people as well. I worked there for eight years in the sports department, but the last three were horrible. That was when Mike Sherman came aboard as sports editor. He's a dictator. I laugh at people who say he listens to people. He talks above his employees and it's his way or the highway. That's not how you run a paper. He is a smart guy with a lot of good ideas. I will give him that. But he treats his employees like shit most of the time.
I left there for a lesser job, and I am glad I did. Now I enjoy where I am working at. I make more money, I feel like I am valueable contributor and I am treated like an adult. I know too that I am not the only one that feels this way, either. Some other people in the sports department left for lesser jobs or had no jobs lined up at all because they just wanted to get the hell out of that lousy atmopshere. I still know people there who want to leave, but are afraid to because of the bad state of the economy and the newspaper business.

 

Seems kinda shitty to badmouth an SE who's taken the time to post the job listing and a paper who has the blessing of one of newspapers' most talented people (Crutch), but what do I know?

 

I've watched this paper slowly build itself up over the years, and it has been a pleasure. I have no idea what it's like to work there, but considering the state of the industry right now, this is probably a really good gig.

 

On a purely nostalgic bent, it's pretty funny to me it was named the worst paper in America in 1999. I hadn't heard that before.

1999 is the year I moved cross-country and stopped somewhere near OKC for dinner. Took the Oklahoman in with me and it was so bad I stopped reading it and just ate while staring vacantly around the Denny's.

I have a vivid memory of its layout looking like it was done in 1954 and of a columnist's mug that really, seriously looked like it was taken in the 1960s. Buzz cut, thick, black-rimmed glasses on a guy I assumed was about 70 by that date I was reading.

The paper has to have gotten a lot better, because it had no other direction in which to go.

 

WTF? You must be talking about another Mike Sherman...

 

Time to jump in to defend some of the good people in the biz. I guess it's cool to piss all over success when you are hiding behind your internet handle and not manning up to your own problems.
From what I know, no one who has left The Oklahoman for a "lesser job" has been any great loss. All of them have been replaced by better folks.
Ask these jokers why they left. Maybe they were asked to do a better job or maybe cause the standards got a little bit tougher.
These days the paper is winning APSE, innovating in multimedia (check the website, NewsOK.com or NewsOK.tv) and investing in its people.
No layoffs, millions spent on video and the web, an NBA team coming to town to cover. Bigger and better events cover by a bigger and better section.
The bitter ex-employees out there can bite it.

 

As someone else said, I'm not going to bash those on here who see anonymity. It comes with good and bad consequences.

But, Lincoln, I will agree with you; there are a lot of things the Oklahoman is doing right. I've long held a warm spot because of the multimedia spending and production. At a time when others are floating in the wind hoping to land in a good spot, OKC is making their own fortune.
I don't know Mike more than an unsolicited email or 12, but he's always greeted my mailings w/ respect -- something that can't always be said, even from people you work for.

 

No matter what is being said about The Oklahoman, I will give a shoutout to their websites -- newsok.com and newsok.tv. They are really, really good and entertaining sites. They have done a great job with those two entities.

 

Outing alert.

 

He's a man, he's 40?