IT WAS DECEMBER 31, 1965 and I went to work early.
With a severely burned hand, I was tied into my apron by a coworker and was ready to help put the January 1, 1966 Sentinel to bed early so everyone could celebrate the new year’s arrival.
Before I could start, however, I was called into the production manager’s office where I was fired for being “disloyal” to the company.
What was my crime? I was alleged to have encouraged Sentinel personnel to go to work for Gannett’s Cocoa operation.
That was a gross canard, but the PM had made up his mind and I was “out the door” — after being forced to wait a couple of hours for my final pay.
When my coworkers found out, one or more of them used a Sentinel phone to call Bob Lawson, the Cocoa production manager, to let him know I was fired.
Bob Lawson had been the Production Manager in Orlando before moving to Gannett in Cocoa. He was not one of my favorite people.
The first Monday of the new year found me at the St. Petersburg Times looking for work. The Times was an award winning newspaper in its day — a little dull compared to its northern neighbor, the Clearwater Sun, but solid.
Bottom line, no vacancies in St. Pete.
Where were you yesterday?
The next day I drove east to Cocoa.
When I walked into the Cocoa Tribune office I was greeted by a beautiful receptionist named “Jess.” I managed to ask to see Bob Lawson.
When he came to the front, his greeting was “Where were you yesterday? I got a call the night you were fired and expected you yesterday.”
I started work in Cocoa that afternoon — at slightly better pay.
The Tribune was a PM and I worked nights, which meant I was working on the soon-to-be first of Gannett’s Today newspapers.
As in Orlando, I was working as a stoneman, building pages. Unlike in Orlando, I built everything but Page One.
Gannett killed the Cocoa PM in 1969. It also killed the Titusville Star-Advocate where I worked as a reporter-photographer. (More on the Start-Advocate elsewhere.)
The history of newspapers in Brevard County can be read at https://tinyurl.com/ybhpocy7)
Editorial page faux pas
The Editorial Page editor tried different layouts, most of which his compositor (this scrivener) told him would not work. He finally settled on one.
When Today finally came off the press for the first time, the editorial page looked pretty good. (The only major “oops” during the premier run was the color image above the fold on Page One was printed in monochrome.)
Gannett blanketed Brevard County with the new paper. For two weeks EVERY address in the county received a free copy. Designated areas received copies throughout the first month.
And then the calls started coming in.
It seems the Editorial Page editor was making up letters to the editor. That’s not so bad; priming the pump, as it were. His problem was that he was using local residents’ names and addresses as the letters’ authors. Had he only taken a first name from Column 1, a surname from Column 2 and a community from Column 3 he might have gotten away with it.
We soon had a new Editorial Page editor.
The publisher cannot read type?
Al Neuhart was heading up the local operation. He had hired some top talent from across the country for the editorial department, but although he claimed to have been a reporter at one time, he was basically an ad salesman.
As in Orlando, when the type exceeded the space, the excess had to be “cut.” For that, especially when everyone was new, an editor had to make a decision.
Neuhart, who never should have been allowed in the composing room, was passing by and I asked him if I could cut a story where I pointed.
“Get me a galley proof” said the publisher.
I was flabbergasted. Having come from Orlando where the publisher was a real newspaper person who could read type — even when lacking some of his facilities — I could not believe my ears. I quickly found another editor who COULD read type and he approved my cut.
My respect for Neuhart, never high, dropped below the level of the Dead Sea.
Too much editorial help
In an effort to keep everyone honest, management invoked a rule that whatever stoneman worked on a page, that person had to sign off on it. I had no objection.
There was, however, an editor — a genuinely good person — who, in an effort to expedite things, starting dumping type into a chase on which I was working.
Today was not a union shop, so there were no rules to prevent this.
But since my name was going to be linked to the page, as fast as he put type in, I took it out.
He volunteered to sign off of the page, but that was not acceptable to this scrivener. In the end, he stood by, ready to OK cuts and to chase after whatever was needed to get the page to the mat roller.
Years later I did a stint as a make-up editor at the Harrisburg Patriot-News, a union shop. I pointed at things but never touched the type — remembering my time in Cocoa.
The “Soc” Section
Neuhart hired Gloria Biggs for that was dubbed the Family Section. It was not, she insisted (as this then stoneman teased her) the “Soc(iety) Section.” The lady later was named editor of the Melbourne paper. Gannett eventually acquired and killed it.
Among the women working for Ms. Biggs was Food Editor Mary Lee Thompson.
Miss Thompson owned a small dog she would bring to work. Normally the animal slept in a box on her desk. Occasionally when she would come to the composing room to check on her page, the dog would trot along with her. She frequently was warned that the dog was no match for a turtle (see previous newspaper entry) and it was hard to see in any event. “Dunk,” the dog, always managed to dodge danger.
Somehow I was assigned — or maybe I adopted — the “Soc Section” as my special purview in the composing room.
The Eau Gallie Courier tabloid
Putting together the tabloid weekly Eau Gallie Courier was a once-a-week, long-into-the-night overtime job.
The Courier started in 1965 and somehow — and I can find nothing online — it was composed and printed by Gannett. I don’t know if it ever was a Gannett property.
The editor, whose name sadly escapes me now, and I managed to produce the tabloid sans bloodshed, possibly because of the midnight lunches we took at Cocoa Beach restaurants. (He lived at the south end of Merritt Island and I was visiting him in 1967 when astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died on the launch pad when a flash fire engulfed their command module during testing for the first Apollo-Saturn mission.)
Next – Entering Editorial
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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