Sentinel Critic Rips Miami Herald

Sun-Sentinel movie reviewer Phoebe Flowers unleashed some serious pent-up emotions about her former bosses at the Miami Herald in her blog yesterday. It involved the death of Boyd Ogle, a long-time English and journalism teacher at Stranahan High and father of Miami Herald book editor and movie critic Connie Ogle.

Flowers and Ogle are good friends and Flowers took great umbrage at the fact that Miami Herald editors chose not to run Connie Ogle's obit on her father in yesterday's newspaper, opting instead to run a "stripped-down version". The news was greatly upsetting. Later, it was decided that Ogle's obit would run as a column in Saturday's newspaper.

Flowers, who worked at the Herald for nine years before joining the Sentinel in 2003, went off on her former bosses for the decision not to run the Ogle's original obit. She reconsidered her words, however, and removed the tirade from the web site. Out of deference to Flowers' decision, I'm not going to get into the guts of the original post, but I have to share this passage:

"I hope to God that when McClatchy takes over this long-running epidemic of profoundly incompetent, heartless and thoughtless management is weeded out as quickly as possible. I may not have to work there anymore, but a lot of good people still do."

Post Credit Magically Disappears

Remember that David Copperfield robbery story? What I didn't mention yesterday was that the Palm Beach Post scooped the Sun-Sentinel, which didn't have a word about it in the newspaper. It was a Jose Lambiet special that went out on AP wire yesterday morning.

And that's where it gets interesting, as a Pulp reader pointed out to me.

The Sentinel picked up the story off the wire and put it on its web site at 10:41 a.m. yesterday. There was only one change made by Sentinel editors. The AP story quotes Copperfield: "Call it reverse pickpocketing," Copperfield told The Palm Beach Post for Wednesday's editions.

In the Sentinel version of the AP story, a bit of it magically disappears: "'Call it reverse pic-pocketing,'' Copperfield said."

I'm not talking about the missing "k" in pickpocket (yes, the Sentinel managed to add a typo to the story), but the deleted credit for the Post. There's nothing against the rules about that. And knowing how petty both newspapers can be in their turf battle for Palm Beach County, I'm sure that kind of thing happens all the time. But still, it sure does make you feel a little dirty to watch it in action.