I’m hoping you’ll read every word of the incredible backstory by #martymetzer of how the Miami Herald covered the nation’s most epic human tragedy story of the last two decades. Something we tend to forget when hurricanes or terrorism or epidemics or crime or war bear down on us —…

Florida journalists don’t have to, thanks to Lucy Morgan who 45 years ago faced down the Florida courts while standing up for the First Amendment They are called “shield laws”. Almost every state has some form of one providing for either “qualified” or “absolute” privilege. The laws are designed to…

Annapolis Killer Gets Life in Prison: The Safety and Future of Local Journalism Gets the Punishment “I cannot wait to forget his name.” That was Summerleigh Geimer’s statement Thursday. Her mom, Wendi Winters, was killed by an angry, vindictive, and apparently not insane gunman, three years ago on June 28. Five employees of a small, local newspaper, The Capital-Gazette Newspaper, were murdered in an attack in…

How I connected with my Pulitzer Prize-winning childhood shero 40 years later and what she means to me, my town and the dwindling universe of local investigative journalism. — For forty years I have been toting around a yellowed collection of newspaper stories by Lucy Morgan. The stories came with me in the one suitcase I packed when leaving the town where I had spent my formative years and never looked back. The stories were with me when I…

Florida “sleazeballs” surely rejoice as Carl Hiaasen retires — Once upon a time I was a lowly newspaper copydesk editor. Before screenwriting, before designing Knight-Ridder New Media products, before SiliconValley startups, before business school, before BostonGlobe national and foreign news page designer, I was a young, overeager copy editor at The Miami Herald. In his “goodbye” piece today, Miami…