Tim Collie

Last Friday the Sun-Sentinel laid off 20% of our newsroom.

We all knew to prepare for Lay Off Day, but I wasn't prepared for the shocking news that Pulitzer Prize finalist, foreign correspondent and the best reporter in the newspaper, Tim Collie, was fired.



His passion for writing and growing as a journalist made working with him a delight. Tim's stories on the Middle East and Haiti layered perfectly the amazing pictures by Mike Stocker. His words along with Mike's pictures made me want to go back shooting. Tim's interest in learning all about multimedia made him an unofficial member of the photo department. He understands and respects photojournalism.

With the emphasis on local, local, local.. the slashing of our travel budget, story lengths and space ... one of the things Tim did to deal with it all was to send gut-busting, funny e-mails to a selected few. I will miss his e-mails.

Here's one of Tim's e-mails to me in April 2008:

Here's the latest version of story, for layout purposes. We'll also need some words for captions of course:

War Long Ago.
Jews. Lots of Jews. Good.
Won.
Bad Arabs. Dead Arabs. Lost.
British People. Europe. Bad.
Not America.
After Hitler.
Before George Bush.
South Florida.
Old People. Strange Words.
The End.


Tim's an incredible journalist who I know will go on to do bigger and better things.