Trailblazing Shiny Sheet publisher pushed ‘real reporting’ of Palm Beach
Longtime friend recalls Agnes 'Aggie' Ash, who died last month at 99
By Florence Snyder
Flights of angels are busy this week singing Agnes Ash to her rest.
The long-retired publisher of The Palm Beach Daily News and Palm Beach Life Magazine died March 22 at age 99 in the Palm Beach community she had served in so many ways for so many years.
Aggie, as she was known to generations of admiring journalists, sources and readers, earned her first byline as a cub reporter at the Dayton Daily News.
There, she caught the eye of the paper's founder, Ohio governor and presidential candidate James M. Cox.
A dogged reporter and a dazzling writer, Aggie was bound for bigger challenges than Dayton could offer. She was a master storyteller with a rare gift for illuminating large and difficult societal issues through the deceptively lighthearted lens of fashion, sports and celebrity.
Over the years, Aggie covered everything and everybody from the Truman White House to Prince Charles and his polo ponies in Wellington. Aggie loved football, and took special delight in scooping every sportswriter on the planet when she broke the news of "Broadway" Joe Namath's retirement.
She moved from the Atlanta Constitution to The New York Times to The Miami News.
From the corporate headquarters of their expanding publishing empire, the Cox family was watching, and they wanted Aggie back.
In those days, there was zero pressure in the newspaper industry for "diversity" of any kind. But the bean-counters in the Cox Newspapers C-suite were very familiar with Aggie's ability to think at the speed of light and manage time and money with the skill that comes from experience as a working mother of four.
Aggie was hired in 1976 with the expectation that she would turn the Daily News and magazine into a profit center, which she did, in a big way. She consistently posted the best numbers of any Cox publisher, all of whom were men, and none of whom were tasked, as Aggie was, with the day-to-day hands-on management of the news cycle.
To the delight of citizens, taxpayers and friends of the First Amendment, Aggie hired real reporters to do real reporting, which came as a real shock to a Palm Beach Town Council accustomed to "controlling the narrative."
Aggie created opportunities for women in places where they had not existed before. At the height of the "power lunch" era, Aggie delighted in bringing her young editors and lawyers to dine at the Sailfish Club and discuss business that could just as easily have been handled in the office. She was going out of her way to bestow her prestige on young women who might otherwise have been mistaken for secretaries by the Palm Beach swells who lined up at her table to pay their respects.
Aggie, who retired in 1991, was the last and best of the generation of media executives who made Florida journalism the international gold standard. Now and forever, her memory is a blessing.
Florence Snyder served about five years as general counsel for the Daily News and Palm Beach Post in the late 1970s and early 1980s and is a retired attorney in Tallahassee.
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