Remembering Agnes Ash, a trailblazer in Florida’s journalism leadership circles
Flights of angels are busy this week singing Agnes Ash to her rest. The former Tallahassee resident and long-retired publisher of The Palm Beach Daily News and Palm Beach Life Magazine died last Friday at age 99, surrounded by her devoted and accomplished family, including former Tallahassee Democrat reporter Jim Ash.
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 investigator and dazzling writer, Aggie was bound for bigger challenges than Dayton could offer. Right out of the gate, she was a master storyteller with a rare gift for illuminating large and difficult social 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. She loved football and took special delight in scooping every sportswriter on the planet when she broke the news of "Broadway" Joe Namath's retirement.
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 with the expectation that she would turn the Palm Beach properties 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 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 and potentates and legends in their own minds who lined up at her table to pay their respects.
Aggie 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 Beth Snyder, a lawyer and Tallahassee resident, was general counsel for the Palm Beach Daily News (a.k.a. the 'Shiny Sheet') and Palm Beach Life Magazine from 1976 to 1982.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Send letters to the editor (up to 200 words) or Your Turn columns (about 500 words) to letters@tallahassee.com. Please include your address for verification purposes only, and if you send a Your Turn, also include a photo and 1-2 line bio of yourself. You can also submit anonymous Zing!s at Tallahassee.com/Zing. Submissions are published on a space-available basis. All submissions may be edited for content, clarity and length, and may also be published by any part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Agnes Ash: A trailblazer in Florida’s journalism leadership circles
