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Goodbye Palm Beach, and thank you!
Posted By Jose Lambiet On April 13, 2011 @ 2:47 am In Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Island's Finest, Jupiter Island, Media, Palm Beach Gardens, Stars. Wellington, West Palm Beach, Jupiter I 42 Comments
The image is not a chart. It displays a large grey rectangular area with intersecting diagonal lines, resembling an abstract graphic or a visual placeholder. Below this graphic, there is a caption: "[1] It's hard to say goodbye when you're having fun!" The accompanying text indicates that this is the author's last entry for "Page2Live" as they become executive editor of "Radar Online," a celebrity website.
Yet, this is my last Page2Live (1I entry. On Tuesday, I became executive editor of Radar Online 113 one of the country's biggest celebrity websites.
The sandbox I get to play in now is a lot larger, and the gig often will take me to Los Angeles and Las Vegas and New York City.
But I leave The Palm Beach Post PI and the readers who supported me with news tips, kudos and criticism for the past seven years with a heavy heart.
I love Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, and not just because it's my home. There are few places in this country as quirky as Palm Beach, Stuart, Boca and Wellington. News people who work here know they're lucky because, indeed, there never is a dull moment.
For more, look below or click
My first story was a profile of the controversial Welly developer Glenn Straub, a West Virginia who conducts business the way miners in his native state attack coal veins.
The 2004 piece opened with an anecdote about how Straub was so reviled that polo fans cheered when he injured himself in a potentially fatal fall during a Palm Beach Polo Club game. Straub complained about the coverage a little, but I believe he secretly loved the attention.
I'll confess to a rough beginning in Palm Beach society a couple months later.
To some, including the recently deceased Dame Celia Lipton Farris 14), a great philanthropist, I just didn't dress right.
After checking me out from head to toe at a party where I might have appeared without a tie and a shave, she told me: "Palm Beach had a dress code, young man!'
I never got around to buying a blue blazer with gold buttons or loafers adomed with some crest.
Publicly, Palm Beach society didn't acknowledge Page2Live. But secretly, I believe it loved the attention.
Some public officials, meanwhile, will welcome the news of my departure.
Weeks ago, a high-ranking official at the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office PI half-kiddingly promised me lunch at the Palm Beach Yacht Club lel if I left the Post.
I guess stories about on-duty sex, violence, incompetence and corruption at PBSO was grating on the administration's nerves.
I'm told former West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel, now a U.S. Congress hopeful, made a round of gleeful calls when she heard about Page2Live's demise.
She could still be traumatized after my story last year about how she ignored a citation for a blown red-light stop caught on the very cameras she had installed throughout the city.
I believe that secretly, however, even Frankel loved the attention. What do I miss the most while now working alongside a dedicated staff of 11 to dig up more stuff on Tiger
Woods, Angelina Jolie and Lindsay Lohan?
You. the reader, the driving force behind Page2Live!
The site catered to a tough crowd, one as unforgiving of spelling and grammar mistakes as the flaws of the characters I wrote about.
You took the time to write more than 40,000 comments. Many were on the money and well crafted. Many were plain stupid or wrong. And some were obviously written by individuals guilty of BWI, Wagging while impaired. None, however, was dull. And every single one kept me on my toes.
There would have been very little content on this site without tipsters. You know who you are, even if many of
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you remained anonymous! Rarely did a day go by without one of you calling me or text messaging me with stories. And for that, I couldn't thank you enough. Because if there's one thing that a website editor fears the most, it's having no fun.
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