The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel yesterday bid farewell to their managing editor, Sharon Rosenhause, along with the very position of managing editor itself. One can only hope that the Sun-Sentinel will also abolish the unofficial post of "diversity queen" by which Rosenhause was also known. Many newspapers have a "diversity queen" which almost always means diversity of ethnicity or gender but not diverse opinions. Although Gregory Lewis in his Sun-Sentinel blog enthusiastically gushed that the departing Rosenhause was "the Queen of Newspaper Diversity," the comments on Bob Norman's Broward-Palm Beach New Times Daily Pulp reveal a rather bleak opinion about her and "diversity." An example is this comment from John de Groot:
Pity she wasn't a "champion" for talented journalists capable of knowing the difference between what is interesting and what is not.
And this from "Amy" who apparently had a sad run-in with the diversity queen:
Sharon Rosenhouse has the personality of a wet dish rag, and the energy level of a burnt out journalist way past her prime. She actually walked away from me once while I was in mid-sentence complimenting one of her reporter's articles. Of all the editorial meetings I've ever sat in on, at several different newspapers, the one that she ran just might have been the most depressing and deflated news meeting I've ever seen.
"Disgusted" disgustedly wrote:
I worked at the old San Francisco Examiner at the same time as Greg Lewis and Sharon Rosenhaus and I can assure you not many of my colleagues there felt as fondly towards her as Greg apparently does. She was nasty, rigidly ideological and impossible to work for; after awhile, many reporters, myself included, simply refused to write for her, A1 play not being worth the time and aggravation of dealing with her and her henchman. Her idea of "diversity" was as bigoted and narrow-minded as the whitest Mississippi cracker; her idea of journalism was pure PC propaganda. That she got a shout-out from Betty Medsger, who almost singlehandedly changed the Journalism department at San Francisco State University, my alma mater, from perhaps the best J School in the state to a politics and PC-infested shithole tells you all you need to know about Sharon's "mark" on journalism.
Richard Biebrich "thanked" Rosenhause thusly:
To Sharon,
Thanks for destroying what was one of the best sports desks in the country prior to your tenure at the Sun-Sentinel.
"former Sun-Sentineler" gave an extended sendoff to the diversity queen which incorporated a chronicling of the decline of the Sun-Sentinel:
"still employed" portrayed the diversity queen as an ideologically rigid commissar type:
Sharon Rosenhause gave diversity a bad name. During her time at the Sun-Sentinel, she divided the newsroom into two kinds of people: those who considered her their benefactor, and those who wondered what the hell they had done to piss her off. That's no way to run a dog food factory, let alone the collection of fragile egos that makes up an editorial department. She ruled humorlessly, arbitrarily and fearsomely. Many of the people she hired or promoted in the name of diversity are talented. Greg Lewis, though not a great writer (he'd be the first to admit that), is a good reporter and a man of integrity who is popular with his colleagues and a mentor to all young reporters. Still, because of the way Sharon divided the newsroom, the straight white people Sharon didn't favor felt great resentment bordering on racism.
That's not diversity; that's divisiveness.
The industry's obsession with "diversity" is/was stupid.
Had we encouraged more diversity of OPINION (y'know IDEAS) in this business we wouldn't have half the country cheering our demise.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And how many other "diversity queens" remain in newsrooms around the country enforcing diversity in everything except in what counts---opinions?
The Sun-Sentinel's slow, tortuous death may have been inevitable even without the lovely and charismatic Rosenhause as managing editor. But Rosenhause surely helped drive the paper into the ground more quickly than anyone else could have.
Her myopic world view: straight white men---racist and bad; gay white men, okay;, white women, better;, gay white women, very good; gay nonwhite women---time to party and watch Rosie O'Donnell!
Look at Rosenhause's dour, unsmiling mug and can anything enlightened or self-aware be going on there? Like most half-educated ideologues her worldview was a thousand times more insular, arrogant and racist than the injustices she so often congratulated herself on fighting against.
While she was flying around the country scooping up diversity awards, the paper was going down the shithole largely because of the nitwits she hired. The only thing Sharonmodo cared about was hiring non-white non-males, too many of whom were not up to the job and clearly in over their heads, yet unfireable due to the oppressive atmosphere of intimidation, favoritism, and ethnic and gender insulation.
Read Gregory Lewis' appallingly written rimjob and realize this toady no-talent still has a job while Tom Swick---one of the finest travel writers in the country---was just sent packing.
Earl and Sharon are complicit along with the advertising overseers they willfuly handed the newsroom keys over to, in making the paper dumber and dumber and dumber until you can barely look at it without retching. But, hey, she's the queen of diversity!
Granted, there are plenty of wholly craven white guys, namely Earl and Gremillion, who bear even more responsibility for the destruction of whatever quality the Sun-Sentinel once possessed. But one question: How exactly did Rosenhause make the Sun-Sentinel better? If the ship you're trapped on is quickly going under the water,do you feel better knowing the crew is diverse even though they helped steer it onto the rocks?