Is this why Lowe falls back on Clinton-bashing so often? Because his editor is so unknowledgeable?

Great...

This is such an S-S moment, and just so Tony Fins is clear, I'm not talking about Hitler's Schutzstaffel or drawing any comparisons. The Schutzstaffel was a much better run organization.

1. Here you have an editorial page editor, whose job in theory is to stir debate, raise questions and provoke righteous outrage. At the S-S though, the job description is to lull into complacency and massage into a deep sleep. It would be career suicide for Fins to actually get a public discussion going. That's why nobody knows who the hell he is. This is one section of the paper that could be cut and no one would notice.

2. You have a paper that has interpreted local local local as posting lame consumer pieces, lapdog court reporting, retreads about home loans, and poorly written cop folos. That spares anybody the task of actually finding out what's going on in the city streets, actually telling a story, and taxing the reader with compelling information about poverty, rising crime and collapsing health care.

3. And you have a mangy, shopworn management team, repeatedly beaten like those puppies you see in abuse shelter stories on local TV, so drained of innovation, curiosity and energy that on most days editors' meetings look like Bingo night at a Hollywood nursing home. Looking at some of these tired spinsters, you really have to wonder what they read or do when they go home at night. Maybe they cut loose then, because they sure as hell show no life in the newsroom.

It's going to be very exciting to see what Abrams makes of this place. I can tell you the editors have been staring at these emails like those apes smashing bones in front of the 2001 monolith.

I don't know if you guys saw this, but it's from a recent interview that Abrams did talking about Zell and his plans for Tribune Co. papers. He talked a lot about rock n' roll again, and his love for Dennis Hopper films:

Q: How did you come to know Sam?

Abrams: What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? That he had plans? That he had wisdom? Bullshit man!

Q. Some people have likened Sam Zell to Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the legendary editor of the Chicago Tribune. What would you say to that?

A: Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll... uh... well, you'll say "hello" to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you. He won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say, "do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you"... I mean I'm no, I can't... I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's... he's a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas...

Q: Ragged claws, yes I see. Can you explain how you envision the newspapers working with the television stations? Where do you see the synergies between print, the web, and television?:

A: One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics.

Q: Physics, ok. But when you say physics are we talking the standard model, or are you leaning more toward conventional aspects of modern String Theory?:

A: There's mines over there, there's mines over there, and watch out those goddamn monkeys bite, I'll tell ya.

Q: No, those are penguins I think. But they're not real. They're just posters.

A: This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this fucking shit we're in man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack.

Q: Will there be more layoffs after this latest round?

A: The heads. You're looking at the heads. Sometimes he goes too far. He's the first one to admit it.

Q: But Zell see value in what reporters do? Does he like journalism? Does he understand the important role that journalists play in a democratic society?

A: I wish I had words, man. I wish I had words... I can tell ya something like the other day he wanted to kill me. Somethin' like that...

Q: Why'd he wanna kill you?

A: Because I took his picture. He said "If you take my picture again, I'm gonna kill you." And he *meant* it.

chilling, like a journey into the heart of darkness or something

C'mon Pulp, you think hackneyed, over-the-top gags like comparing Bush to the Nazis will give the Sentinel "an edge they sorely need"? We've got to keep things in perspective. I'm no Bush fan and I agree papers need to be feisty, but they can do it without being completely tasteless. Like the editorial page editor said, Bush may be many things but he isn't a Nazi. And in any event, let's be honest: the cartoon wasn't that funny anyway. I don't think SS readers are missing out.

Here's why you have an editorial page that's the way it is: First, the hiring editor decides that a minority who departs the editorial board MUST be replaced with a minority. Then, during the next vacancy, they declare that they're only interested in hiring a woman.

That effectively cut out many of the experienced staffers -- many of whom are good critical thinkers and strong writers -- who wanted to be on the op-ed staff.

So ye reap what ye sow: Hire for a quota, and get a milquetoast op-ed page.

That's been quite the way in News under the current regime: Show the world that you resemble the United Nations, and a quality paper be damned.

Technically, he wasn't comparing Bush to the Nazis. He was taking the question of "just war" as defined in the Nuremburg charter and using it to question the Iraq war. Far more serious charges have been lobbed against the administration by far more prestigious individuals and institutions than the Sun-Sentinel.
Now, I'm not sure every reader would have taken it that way, but that's the problem with writing for the intelligent reader. You risk confusing the less intelligent consumer. But you don't improve a paper by pandering to the lowest common denominator, which has been Earl's marketing tactic thus far.

Oh, and one more thing. The Sun-Sentinel's problem isn't too many minority hires. The quality of some of those writers may be in question, but I can tell you there's no shortage of terrible white writers amd reporters too. The tragedy of the paper is that it should be a beacon of Obama's America in South Florida, one of the most diverse places on earth. If anything, the problem actually is that the management hiring and nurturing of these voices is the very stereotype of what some might call "whiteness": staid, safe, conservative (not politically, but behaviorally) who wouldn't commission ideas or stories that have not been rung dry and vetted in other media. They hide behind the idea of a "local" that's more apt for Idaho than Inverrary, Montana than Miami.
It would be a real tragedy if what's wrong at this paper is laid at the feet of affirmative action or minority hiring.
Because the problem is recruiters and higher-ups who are simply afraid of risky thoughts, writing, technology and people. They're afraid, plain and simple.
And they're mostly white, male and female, gay and straight.

Oh boy! Bush is a Nazi! Yawn. The best thing for the SS would be a total enema. Teaching old dogs new tricks is a waste of time. Clean house and start with new people with fresh ideas. Of course, they should keep me.

Race isn't the issue. Being a third rate, non-destination newspaper is. The talented journalists -- white, minority, gay, straight -- are already at REAL newspapers. They don't need to work at or even apply to the Sun-Sentinel.

You have no idea how many times job candidates have come in and admitted they really wanted to be at the Miami Herald ... or just wanted a job so they could be closer to their family in South Florida. And, especially when the Herald was invoked, the S-S honchos would keep pursuing them.

How inane is that: Hiring people who frelly admit from the start they'd rather be somewhere else.