Dave Hyde has a column today on longtime sports editor Fred Turner of the Sun Sentinel. Turner will be inducted into the Broward Sports Hall of Fame tonight along with Earl Weaver among others. If anyone has any Turner stories, please share.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-flsphyde1211sbdec11,0,2257045.column
Fred Turner: The story behind the stories you read
Dave Hyde
Sports Columnist
December 11, 2007
He's a newspaperman, from an era that created such people, and so he'll hate this story. That's because the Golden Rule of newspapermen is we're not the story. None of us working these pages.
The star quarterback is the story. The 13-year-old tennis phenom is the story. The couple that got married in the marathon, at the 15-mile mark, in full sweat — they're the story.
And so Fred Turner will hate that today's story is about his 25-year run as the Sun-Sentinel sports editor who led an award-laden section, who hired a couple of fantasy teams of talent, who had the vision to keep these pages growing with the South Florida sports landscape and who will be inducted into Broward's Hall of Fame tonight because of all that.
"What genius put me in any Hall of Fame!" he must have said when it was announced, because when his Boston ire gets going, his volume does, too. You should have seen his daily staff meetings to decide how the next day's paper would look. Yelling. Stomping. Egos turned up to full broil.
"I'd hear all this yelling, and I'd hardly want to look what's going on," reporter Kathleen Kernicky once said, her desk right outside of Fred's office for years. "But when the door opened everyone came out laughing."
Fred stories. Our office is full of them. How he made this the biggest sports section in America for a time. How he upgraded the staff to fit a major league market. How he'd come in like a dust-storm each morning, grumbling like the sports fan he always was about.
"That Derrek Lee can't hit!" he'd grouse.
We still remind him about that.
"The Panthers got to trade Ed Jovanovski!" he'd shout.
OK, he was wrong on that, too.
But here's a telling one he got right: He gave Mitch Albom his first break in this business. This was before Albom wrote The Five People You Meet In Heaven, before he wrote Tuesdays With Morrie, before he was named the best sports columnist in America for a jillion years.
Albom couldn't find a job. A paper in South Dakota had just turned him down. He came to interview for a magazine position at the Sun-Sentinel, but somehow he landed in Fred's office, too. They talked. Fred looked at his work, and he told an assistant, "We can't let this guy get out of the building."
Albom got out of the building, and all the way to Europe, when Fred called with the job offer. Of course, in true Fred fashion, even this hire comes with a story.
"You know that magazine job you interviewed here for?" he asked Albom. "Yeah?" Albom asked, excitedly. "Well, you didn't get it," Fred said. That's how Albom became a Sun-Sentinel sports columnist. He'll tell you how important Fred's faith was. But then everyone Fred touched still talks about him. Take Bill Plaschke. He's another Fred protege. And the story he tells isn't of coming to the paper. It's of leaving it. Being shoved from it, actually.
Fred took him aside one day and said, "You better go somewhere else."
You see, Plaschke was young and talented, but there was no promotion or money worthy of his talent at the time. A more selfish boss would have happily tucked that talent away for a couple of years, telling him to bide his time, that something was bound to come up.
But Fred saw this guy needed to stretch his wings, or he'd run the risk of the Triple Crown of bad sports writers — bored, bitter and cynical. So Plaschke left. His wings stretched. Today he's one of the country's top sports writers with the Los Angeles Times.
Fred wanted people to succeed the way the best managers always do. What's more, he gave them the freedom to do so, too, even though we journalists can be the clumsiest of people. We argue and get loud and act messy sometimes.
But he always understood that was part of the fun for people in newspapers, like kids playing in the mud. For his 25 years here it was loud and messy, sometimes muddy, but always fun. No one made this paper look better than Fred. No one kept this section thinking bigger.
A couple of years ago, he mysteriously began losing weight and took a medical leave. We lost our Don Shula. Of course, I still pick up the phone some days after a column that doesn't quite hit home to hear a gravelly voice say, "Dave, what were you thinking?"
In fact, as I get to this story's end, I'm already bracing for that phone call today.
"Dave, what were you thinking?"
I'll answer that, for one day, the story isn't what's wrong with the Dolphins or who the new center fielder is. It's about the guy who for 25 years decided what the headlines would be deserving one himself.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-flsphyde1211sbdec11,0,2257045.column
Fred Turner: The story behind the stories you read
Dave Hyde
Sports Columnist
December 11, 2007
He's a newspaperman, from an era that created such people, and so he'll hate this story. That's because the Golden Rule of newspapermen is we're not the story. None of us working these pages.
The star quarterback is the story. The 13-year-old tennis phenom is the story. The couple that got married in the marathon, at the 15-mile mark, in full sweat — they're the story.
And so Fred Turner will hate that today's story is about his 25-year run as the Sun-Sentinel sports editor who led an award-laden section, who hired a couple of fantasy teams of talent, who had the vision to keep these pages growing with the South Florida sports landscape and who will be inducted into Broward's Hall of Fame tonight because of all that.
"What genius put me in any Hall of Fame!" he must have said when it was announced, because when his Boston ire gets going, his volume does, too. You should have seen his daily staff meetings to decide how the next day's paper would look. Yelling. Stomping. Egos turned up to full broil.
"I'd hear all this yelling, and I'd hardly want to look what's going on," reporter Kathleen Kernicky once said, her desk right outside of Fred's office for years. "But when the door opened everyone came out laughing."
Fred stories. Our office is full of them. How he made this the biggest sports section in America for a time. How he upgraded the staff to fit a major league market. How he'd come in like a dust-storm each morning, grumbling like the sports fan he always was about.
"That Derrek Lee can't hit!" he'd grouse.
We still remind him about that.
"The Panthers got to trade Ed Jovanovski!" he'd shout.
OK, he was wrong on that, too.
But here's a telling one he got right: He gave Mitch Albom his first break in this business. This was before Albom wrote The Five People You Meet In Heaven, before he wrote Tuesdays With Morrie, before he was named the best sports columnist in America for a jillion years.
Albom couldn't find a job. A paper in South Dakota had just turned him down. He came to interview for a magazine position at the Sun-Sentinel, but somehow he landed in Fred's office, too. They talked. Fred looked at his work, and he told an assistant, "We can't let this guy get out of the building."
Albom got out of the building, and all the way to Europe, when Fred called with the job offer. Of course, in true Fred fashion, even this hire comes with a story.
"You know that magazine job you interviewed here for?" he asked Albom. "Yeah?" Albom asked, excitedly. "Well, you didn't get it," Fred said. That's how Albom became a Sun-Sentinel sports columnist. He'll tell you how important Fred's faith was. But then everyone Fred touched still talks about him. Take Bill Plaschke. He's another Fred protege. And the story he tells isn't of coming to the paper. It's of leaving it. Being shoved from it, actually.
Fred took him aside one day and said, "You better go somewhere else."
You see, Plaschke was young and talented, but there was no promotion or money worthy of his talent at the time. A more selfish boss would have happily tucked that talent away for a couple of years, telling him to bide his time, that something was bound to come up.
But Fred saw this guy needed to stretch his wings, or he'd run the risk of the Triple Crown of bad sports writers — bored, bitter and cynical. So Plaschke left. His wings stretched. Today he's one of the country's top sports writers with the Los Angeles Times.
Fred wanted people to succeed the way the best managers always do. What's more, he gave them the freedom to do so, too, even though we journalists can be the clumsiest of people. We argue and get loud and act messy sometimes.
But he always understood that was part of the fun for people in newspapers, like kids playing in the mud. For his 25 years here it was loud and messy, sometimes muddy, but always fun. No one made this paper look better than Fred. No one kept this section thinking bigger.
A couple of years ago, he mysteriously began losing weight and took a medical leave. We lost our Don Shula. Of course, I still pick up the phone some days after a column that doesn't quite hit home to hear a gravelly voice say, "Dave, what were you thinking?"
In fact, as I get to this story's end, I'm already bracing for that phone call today.
"Dave, what were you thinking?"
I'll answer that, for one day, the story isn't what's wrong with the Dolphins or who the new center fielder is. It's about the guy who for 25 years decided what the headlines would be deserving one himself.
