South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
What my darkened office revealed, eight months into COVID-19
I had to go to the office this week because my computer was dying. I had put it off as long as possible, dreading the demands of its replacement to remember passwords and favored links. But with the screen’s blurred-out bottom rolling higher and higher every morning, something had to be done.
I hadn’t been in the Sun Sentinel’s Deerfield Beach office since early March, shortly after I was diagnosed with pneumonia. I had gotten sick five days after attending a going-away party for colleagues who’d accepted a buy-out offer. At least 17 other party-goers got sick, too, though our symptoms didn’t all match up. It took a month for me to get the then-exclusive test for the then-novel coronavirus. The results came back negative, as did two subsequent antibody tests. I remain unconvinced. And I fear a second bout.
I considered leaving my old computer at the front desk, where our ever-cheerful security chief, Cliff Bland, now sits behind bulletproof glass, one of the many changes I noticed that day. The barrier became necessary after a guy with a grudge shot and killed five journalists at our sister paper in Annapolis, Maryland. The shooting happened not long after President Trump began calling the media the “enemy of the people.”
Instead, I headed to my secondfloor office at the newsroom’s far end. I recalled an email about not leaving food in your desk, and remembered that I’d gathered up some crackers and salad dressing packets the day my colleague, Rod Hagwood, shared his overflow collection from Wawa.
I found the newsroom dark and stuffy, silent and empty — an eerie look for an organization so full of life. Sun Sentinel journalists have been working remotely for months now, so the electricity and cable has been turned off to save money. Cliff offered to restore the lights in my corner, but the window provided natural light and I didn’t expect to stay long.
Then I saw the pile of mail on my desk and sat down for what became a long look.
Everything in my office looked so familiar, yet felt so strange.
There was my to-do list, frozen in time, reminding me to check on an Earth Day video with Broward public school students, on slides for a climate change talk in Miami and on my plan to create a community panel to help interview municipal candidates for election endorsements. It also made mention of performance reviews and expense reports, and reminded me to delete emails. I receive about 500 emails a day and remain notorious for having one of the paper’s biggest backlogs.
The phone showed I’d missed 169 calls. (If yours was one, know that emails alert me to messages left.)
On the file cabinet, my photo with Margaret Thatcher had fallen askew in its frame, coincidentally capturing my feelings about her since watching the latest season of The Crown.
On the conference table, sat a small pile of the February 14 opinion page, which featured the remembrances of some family members two years after the Parkland shooting. Our production chief, Dennis Wallace, had printed high-gloss copies for me to give Gena Hoyer, whose beautiful son Luke was killed that day. But my lunch with Gena got perpetually postponed when the pandemic knocked the world off its axis. Soon, it will be three years since the shooting.
But it was the mail that most captured my attention.
I was drawn to a box sent by a candidate for Congress whom we’d endorsed in the Republican primary. He’d sent a thank you note, along with four red campaign T-shirts.
Sorting through the legalsized envelopes, I found a firstplace certificate for the Green Eyeshade Award, named for the visor that copy editors once wore to prevent eyestrain. During the glory days of newspapers, this award would have been presented at a dinner in Atlanta. Now it arrives in the mail.
I also found a certificate of appreciation from Leadership Broward. This year’s class visited the Sun Sentinel virtually on Zoom. I’d shared why we make election endorsements. In short, it’s because when making up their minds, people want to know what other informed people think.
But I suspect the class members most enjoyed the exercise where they got to decide which stories would go on the front page. I’m only sorry they didn’t get to experience the feel of watching the presses run.
But it was the hundreds and hundreds of letters to the editor that set me back. We publish a daily note in the paper that says we are working remotely, so send your letters via email. As I flipped through the letters — most of them hand-written, most by senior citizens — I was struck by our nation’s digital divide. It’s not just poor people who aren’t online. A good number of older folks aren’t, either. (But if you are, please be sure to check out the attached photo gallery of my office.)
It didn’t surprise me to see letters sent from the Broward County Jail. We often hear from inmates who want to complain about conditions, claim their innocence or weigh in on the day’s events. Years ago, before crossing the firewall between the newsroom and the editorial board, I sometimes fielded three-minute calls from people on the jail’s pay phone. There was little I could do to help, but I was unnerved, nevertheless.
Most letter writers are annoyed or angry, a good number at us. Some people express their passion by writing in all capital letters. Others write around the margins of a political cartoon, an editorial, a story or you name it.
Most, though, have a beef with a government, business, homeowners association or other institution, and they want to be heard. Experience tells us that movers, shakers and policymakers monitor our letters forum and — at least at the local level — often respond to issues they see raised.
In the mix, I found a lovely letter from state Sen. Lauren Book, recognizing my inclusion in a list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Florida Politics. More than me, the Sun Sentinel’s powerful platform deserves the recognition. Still, who among us doesn’t like to receive a letter of thanks or congratulations? As I read what she wrote, I got a little puffed up in the chest.
Lauren’s letter brought me back to the Peanuts cartoon taped to my computer monitor. It shows Lucy looking over Linus’ shoulder as he writes a letter to the editor.
“Dear editor of letters to the editor,” he begins. “How have you been?”
“How have you been?” she asks. “What sort of letter is that to write to an editor?”
“I just thought he might appreciate having someone inquire about the state of his health,” Linus replies.
“Editors are sort of human, too, you know!”
But Peanuts is not what I want to leave you with today.
I want to leave you with another clipping I’d taped to my computer monitor, one given me by former Plantation Mayor Diane Veltri Bendekovic as she was about to retire.
It features quotes from some of our nation’s founders and presidents on the importance of free speech and a free press. Their words are worth remembering today, as we prepare to inaugurate a new president amid a public health crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Benjamin Franklin: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
Samuel Adams: “There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly terrible to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a free press.”
George Washington: “The freedom of speech may be taken away — and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.”
James Madison: “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
John F. Kennedy: “There is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove.”
Ronald Reagan: “There is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong and independent press to our continued success in what the founding fathers called our noble experiment in self-government.”
George W. Bush: “Power can be very addictive, and it can be corrosive. And it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”
As I left the building with my new computer, I took one last look around the lobby and remembered the day I first arrived. I was struck then, and remain inspired still, by the statement of purpose carved above the doorway. It was written by Col. Robert McCormick, the late publisher and owner of the Chicago Tribune. Its namesake company, Tribune Publishing, owns the Sun Sentinel.
“The newspaper is an institution developed by modern civilization to present the news of the day to foster commerce and industry
to inform and lead public opinion, and
to furnish that check upon government
which no constitution has ever been able to provide.”
The work environment of Sun Sentinel journalists has changed dramatically this year, but our work remains rooted in that mission statement. Thank you for supporting us in making happen what we call “the daily miracle.”