My last year in Florida, which was the year 2000, was incredibly busy too. We had both the Elian Gonzalez saga — I was in Ft. Lauderdale before I came here — so that was this huge international story that we were right in the center of, and then later that year, of course, was the disputed presidential election in Florida, and I’m very, very proud of the fact that my newspaper there, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, was the only major paper in Florida that did not prematurely call the election for George Bush that night. We maintained all through the night that it was too close to call, while all the other major newspapers in the state first declared for Bush and then said, ‘Oops!’ And I was very proud of our paper for really crunching the numbers constantly throughout the night.

EBC: You’re not the only editor to be worn down by financial pressures. Meanwhile, papers keep responding to declining circulation and a tough economic climate by cutting back on their staff. Do you think that a broad rethinking of the financial approach that papers take with newsroom investment is needed?

ES: Yes, I do. Actually our readership has remained constant over the past few years. I’m proud of that. And also with the new strategic initiative that we launched at the Post-Dispatch in September, we’ve sold more than 10,000 new home delivery subscriptions just since mid-September. So I think that we can turn things around, or at least hold the line, if we really focus on what our readers need at this point in time, as well as investing in new media. I don’t think that newspapers are going to be able to cut themselves into future success.

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