Alumni of Distinction
Edward Sears
JM 1967, Inducted in 1989.
Edward Sears retired in January, 2005 after 20 years as editor of The Palm Beach Post. He spent the previous 15 years in Atlanta, his last position being managing editor of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, a job he held for three years.
Before becoming the first managing editor of the combined newsrooms of the Journal and Constitution, Sears had been managing editor of each paper respectively and held several editing and reporting jobs with the Constitution. Both the Atlanta newspapers and the Post are owned by Cox Newspapers.
While a student at Florida, Sears worked as a correspondent for The Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times and was an intern for two summers with his hometown paper, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. He was editor of the Florida Alligator during the 1966-67 school year, a time marked by the beginning of widespread social unrest on the campus.
After graduation in 1967, he spent two years on active duty as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. He and his wife, Jo Ann, who is also a Gator, have been married for 34 years. Their daughter, Helene Mateer is a sophomore studying architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.
Sears and the papers he edited were honored with numerous journalism awards. He was active in several news organizations and served twice as a Pulitzer jurist.
South Florida is one of the most competitive newspaper areas in the country and during his tenure as Post editor all news sections were dramatically overhauled while the size of the staff was greatly expanded. In 2004, Editor & Publisher magazine named Sears its Editor of the Year calling the Post a "journalistic powerhouse" by "combining aggressive newsroom recruiting with an insistence on old-fashioned newspaper values."
Related link:
Sears’ catalog—‘Editor of the Year’ hawks
old-school journalism
The Campaign for the University of Florida