Opinion Archive

During election season, no matter where you go, there are certain things you come to expect as a journalist.

Midnight was still a little over a couple of hours away in the eastern time zone on the night of May 24, and Pace was on a softball field in Clermont celebrating a 6A state championship that was four years in the making.
A week earlier in Fort Myers, Jay’s baseball team was on the field of the spring training home of the Minnesota Twins celebrating its first state title in more than a half century.

Recently, our skies were the canvas for some spectacular natural phenomena – a solar eclipse and the northern lights. Despite having been born and raised in Canada, I cannot recall ever having seen the Northern Lights, yet people here in north Florida were posting stunning photos of them. My wife and I even doused the porchlight and stood in the driveway gazing into the northern night sky but saw not a glimmer. I woke up very early the next morning and decided to try again. It was raining. I still have not seen the Northern Lights.

After over a month covering the city of Milton, I feel like I’m already getting the hang of writing about city council meetings.

Rule one? Expect the unexpected.

You think you’ve seen the world until you’ve seen it as a parent.

Every day adventures are suddenly dangerous.

I’m not complaining that the spring football game between Navarre and Pace was postponed a couple of weeks ago.
I was driving back from Fort Myers after covering a state baseball championship game the night before.

I have a vivid imagination and have had it all my life. It is so vivid that I imagine myself to be six feet tall with brown wavy hair and sporting washboard abs. Others see a man whose hair has turned white, some of it turned loose, and who is sporting washtub abs. They just lack imagination!

Covering a breaking news story, especially a tragic one, is one of the hardest parts about being a journalist.

Everyone has heard the phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads,” but the truth is 99.9% of the journalism community would rather go their entire career without covering a tragic event. Probably 100%. And that old saying really applies to readership, because unfortunately, in general the public would rather read about something horrible that happened than someone uplifting someone else.

Can you imagine the chapter book that could be written about the last year of government in the city of Milton?

Milton has so many controversies that it needs a corkboard map you’d typically find in a police department to connect the dots of several related crimes.

Sports seasons are complete and the only thing remaining for the senior athletes in the area is to walk across the stage and receive their high school diploma.
They’ve spent the last four years representing their schools on football fields, baseball fields, softball fields, basketball courts, tennis courts, volleyball courts and more.