Joel Engelhardt
Carolyn DiPaoloCerabino refused even the president’s admonitions to write something nice, documented Palm Beach County’s role in the 2000 election and reflects on the role of kismet in column-writing.
Tom O’Hara worked with Frank Cerabino at the Miami Herald in the mid-1980s before becoming managing editor of The Palm Beach Post and, a few years later, luring Cerabino over.
In 1991, O’Hara made Cerabino a local news columnist.
“It was a no-brainer,” O’Hara, now retired, wrote to Stet News upon hearing of Cerabino’s announcement last week that he would retire. “Frank is skeptical and cynical. He’s an excellent reporter and a fine writer. He’s not afraid to piss off anyone and he’s always fair. And, of course, he’s so damn funny.
“Hiring Frank and making him the local columnist is probably the highlight of my management career at The Post.”
During his 34-year run as a Post columnist, Cerabino has ridiculed public officials with offbeat humor, satirical contempt and direct criticism.
He hasn’t backed down, even if the subjects of his derision become president.
Cerabino, who announced his retirement last week in Stet News, has written countless times about Donald Trump and his local battles over flagpole size, property tax values and airport noise.
Editor’s note: More on Cerabino’s departure and other journalists leaving The Post from Stet News.
In 1989, after Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” came out, Cerabino wrote about how in the book, Trump labeled his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago home as “one of the most valuable parcels of land in the United States.”
In court, arguing that Mar-a-Lago had been overvalued for tax purposes, Trump took the opposite tack.
“Sure,” Trump replied when confronted in a deposition with the statement from his book. “It would even be better if they would stop the airplanes from flying all over the place.”
Donald Trump became column fodder for Cerabino.
Trump often went up against the town, such as when he erected an oversized flagpole at Mar-a-Lago. The town didn’t give him the deference he gets now, Cerabino said.
But that didn’t stop Trump from trying to get deference from the local news columnist.
“He was always trying to get me to write something nice about him, which, I’m glad to say, I never did,” Cerabino said.
Critical columns about Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis often would hit a nerve with readers, a good thing, Cerabino said.
“You’re writing to get people to pay attention to an issue and your take on it,” he said.
Even negative comments mean the reader saw the column and probably will be reading the next one, he said.
His occasional “Notes from Hell” column, in which he weaves together comments from readers, took on a life of its own with his detractors, he said.
“They wanted to be the person who told me off in the most creative way that warranted me to include them,” Cerabino said. “One guy wrote you haven’t pissed me off in six months and that’s really pissing me off.”
As a columnist, especially one writing three, four or five columns a week, as Cerabino did for most of his 34 years, thin-skinned politicians doing excessive things were a blessing, he said.
Cerabino kept reporting, too
Cerabino was known for never turning down a story assignment and being the go-to-person for writing deeply reported stories on complex topics, such as the COVID pandemic.
- In December 2000, just one month after the U.S. Supreme Court stopped Florida’s presidential vote recount, Cerabino’s reporting filled a 12-page special section documenting Palm Beach County’s role in “How Al Gore lost the presidency.”
- Earlier that year, as TV’s “Survivor” reality show captured the country’s imagination, he roughed it on Munyon Island with three other Post columnists, Ron Wiggins, Emily Minor and Dave George. After one night, they spelled out “We ate Wiggins” in the sand.
- In 1991, after two West Palm Beach police officers that were part of the city’s get-tough-on-crime Criminal Apprehension Team faced charges in the beating death of a man in custody, Bobby Jewett, Cerabino turned a story that helped lead to the CAT squad’s dissolution. It was based on a complaint filed by a drug dealer who said the officers tied him up in the back of a pickup truck and took him to an isolated lake where they talked about making him “walk the plank.”
- In 2006, he drove from Florida to California after an editor suggested it would be a good way to illustrate the effect of gas prices. (Day 1: Palm Beach to Dothan, Ala. Miles traveled: 527.4. Highest price of gas for the day: $2.99 at the Chevron in Lake City. Lowest price: $2.73 at the Petro in Cottonwood, Ala.)
Luck behind two memorable columns
Two memorable columns reminded Cerabino of kismet when it comes to finding a topic, especially when covering a big event with the rest of the world’s media.
Assigned to do a non-baseball column in October 1997 at the Florida Marlins’ first World Series game, Cerabino latched on to a man seeking one free ticket, not for himself, but for his 13-year-old son.
He told the tale of a woman who came along with two kids and realized she had an extra seat. After a brief conversation, she agreed to take the man’s son, wearing a Marlins Tasmanian Devil T-shirt, inside the stadium to enjoy the game.
Bottom line, for Cerabino: With all those people paying big money for a ticket, his column identified the happiest guy in the world even though he never made it inside to see the game.
Searching for a column at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, Cerabino wandered into a festival nearby and posed the question, why didn’t the Democrats find a way to reschedule the fifth annual L.A. Tofu Festival to another weekend?
“I had to see it for myself. I couldn’t imagine an entire festival making a big deal about tofu — but then again, I can’t imagine an entire week making a big deal about Al Gore, whose new moniker is ‘principled fighter,’” Cerabino wrote.
“Principled fighter? How did those two words end up around his neck? I’ve always looked at him more as … human tofu — malleable, tasteless and available in firm, regular and soft.”
Let Frank be Frank
The high-wire act of writing a column would sometimes draw questions in the newsroom of whether a Frank Cerabino piece went too far. The prevailing wisdom delivered by many an editor was: “Let Frank be Frank.”
When he started writing the column, then-Executive Editor Eddie Sears burst his bubble a bit, Cerabino recalled, advising that columnists are like baseball hitters: The good ones succeed just once out of every three trips to the plate.
One of those swings and misses: More than 10 years ago, Cerabino ventured into video, devising a feature called “Street Level.” He would leave the office (to the musical accompaniment of his own accordion) and videotape interactions with the public.
Among the videos: A trip to Lake Worth Beach to talk to day drinkers and to Riviera Beach to talk to residents about saggy pants.
Many of the two dozen videos survived on the web, but the feature didn’t.
It “drew flies,” Cerabino said.
Next generation deserves a shot
Cerabino’s columns won countless awards and were distributed statewide by Gannett. In his Stet interview, he spoke of following in the footsteps of legendary Palm Beach Post-Times columnist Steve Mitchell and working alongside Wiggins.
Among his influences: Jimmy Breslin, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins. His retirement comes years after nationally known Miami Herald columnists Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry called it quits.
He wrote two serialized works of fiction, “Shady Palms,” and “Pelican Park.”
Now is a good time to leave and make room for young journalists, he said.
“A whole young generation is going into this profession, and they deserve a shot to put their marks on things,” he said.
But Cerabino realizes his replacement may come from the instantly popular writers and videographers who never stepped into a newsroom, pointing to the north Florida blogger Catturd.
In a column last year, Cerabino wrote: “First of all, I had no idea 42 years ago in journalism school that decades in the future a guy who goes by the name ‘Catturd’ would be a far more influential voice in the arena of public discourse than I would ever be. But alas, we have sunk knees deep in this pungent litter box.”
That provoked a thought about the definition of the new journalism that he heard former NBC host Chuck Todd give in an interview.
He recalled that Todd described journalism as a pipe delivering both sewage and drinking water into your home. All you have to do is figure out how to drink the water without ingesting the sewage.
No Frank Cerabino 2.0
Don’t expect to see Cerabino carrying on his writing as an independent observer online, he said.
“There’s no Phase 2 Frank Cerabino independent journalist outfit,” coming, he said.
Instead, he plans more pickleball, time with his grandchildren and mall-walking.
As for how big a hole his departure will leave for The Post?
“I don’t delude myself into thinking it’s going to change that much. People get the paper for all kinds of reasons. They like to have something in their hands,” he said.
And maybe, he pointed out, the paper will replace him with Catturd.
Go deeper: The Palm Beach County Library has a digital archive that includes Cerabino’s work dating to 1991 here. Get access to it with your library card.
Former Palm Beach Post Managing Editor Tom O’Hara recalls why he hired Frank Cerabino.
Read more: Find out who else took a buyout last week from The Palm Beach Post and its parent company, Gannett, at StetNews.org.
Editor’s note: The authors of this story, Joel Engelhardt and Carolyn DiPaolo, worked with Cerabino at The Post until 2020.
