On the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1995, I was leaning against a desk in the SunSentinel newsroom, craning my neck toward a bank of TV sets bolted high up the wall.
To my right was Earl Maucker, the big daily's recently retired editor. To his right was a local TV news team with its camera aimed at us.
As the verdict was read, Maucker and (because of my proximity to him) I were filmed reacting to it. That night, we were on TV watching TV.
So two journalists were recorded by two other journalists reacting to what some other journalists were recording in California.
I was reminded of that Fourth Estate feedback loop on Friday, when reporters from the SunSentinel and Miami Herald attended the UP's weekly staff meeting. Below are the details, but here's a link to the UP's reporting on what the SunSentinel reported, which actually quotes our own reporting.
It's just for this reason that I've resisted the urge to advise the UP to cover the hell out of our recent struggles with Student Affairs. Besides the "who cares?" factor – I'm self-actualized enough to know my firing affects very few people – there's the conundrum of covering it without the story eating it own tail.
I'm proud of the editors for coming up with an elegant solution: a blog detailing their research into my firing and the much bigger issues it's spawned.
Next week, the EIC has decided to write an editor's letter in the print edition, explaining the basics of what's happened. It will refer readers to the blog if they want to know more. After this current madness winds down, the editors have discussed morphing the blog into one that covers FAU administration in general.
Quite by accident, Student Affairs has created a monster of a newspaper. Talk about your unintended consequences.
