Eric Fehrnstrom's Moment
BOSTON -- Eric Fehrnstrom began to panic when he landed on Sanibel Island off Florida’s Gulf Coast in December 1989. Fehrnstrom, a scandal-sniffing veteran reporter for the Boston Herald, the then-Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, was on a juicy story he knew had page one potential. It might even, as he would later describe it, become a “kill shot.”
With Massachusetts in a fiscal free fall, the lieutenant governor, Evelyn Murphy, had jetted down to the island for a short vacation. If Fehrnstrom could find her, the story of an out-of-touch politician would write itself. But out in the island heat, away from the smoky cocoon of the fourth-floor statehouse press room, “Fernie,” as he was known, wasn’t so sure he could land his prey.
He had a lot of beach to cover and no addresses for Murphy. “I thought it was crazy,” recalled Michael Fein, a Herald photographer who accompanied Fehrnstrom. “We were lost as to what we were going to do.”
A day into their search, they were no closer to finding Murphy. If it's possible to feel despair on a tropical island, they found it driving around in their rental car, Fein told The Huffington Post. They began to question and debate their strategy. And pray for luck. It was then that they spotted Murphy jogging past the palm fronds along West Gulf Drive.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/10/eric-fehrnstrom-romney-_n_1754252.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
This is Mitt Romney’s chief media strategist and right-hand man.