Word: columnists
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Within minutes of his conversation with former Miami Commissioner Arthur Teele Jr., Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede realized his friend, who was deep in the middle of legal problems and a criminal probe, was in great distress. DeFede instinctively pressed the record button on the tape recorder by his home phone...
...Teele told the columnist it could wait until DeFede showed up at the newspaper the next day. ?Ten minutes later, I got a call that Art had shot himself in the lobby,? DeFede says. ?I was trembling,? he says. ?My hands started shaking. While I was concerned about Art, I thought it had moved past the crisis stage...
...respond as the keeper in the newsroom?? Fiedler asks. ?I ultimately agreed and Jesus agreed and Robert Beatty agreed. We talked to smart people in San Jose.? He adds that the decision to fire the columnist was made by Herald executives. ?Nobody in San Jose said you should do this,? he says. ?We were looking to see if there was precedent here...
...small segment of our readership that may have been an issue,? Fiedler says. ?An equal or larger group cheered him on. This is what we paid Jim to do, to provoke discussion that forced others to think about their position. Jim did exactly what I would want any good columnist to do. He certainly exceeded any expectations. How the community saw Jim had nothing to do with this decision. What mattered to me was how anyone dealing with the Herald would view this a year or two from...
...strict and that rigid. That's the conclusion I kept coming back to (that) night, and that's why a suspension wasn't right. We have to be absolutely clear when it came to an issue of trust - we can only wish this doesn't happen with your star columnist. Unfortunately we don't get to make those choices...