Florence Snyder, Author at Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Florence SnyderFebruary 18, 2015

Like all addicts, David Carr had a drug of choice. His was journalism. He craved the constant rush that the news business provides. The endorphins unleashed in the newsrooms where he worked in Minnesota and Washington and New York made for a better high than “the frantic kind of boring” that Carr described in his memoir about […]

Florence SnyderFebruary 16, 2015

It’s not every day that a divorce lawyer reports her own client to the state’s child abuse hotline. But that’s what John Jonchuck’s lawyer did on January 7, when Jonchuck showed up at the firm’s office dressed in pajamas and toting his five-year-old daughter Phoebe, along with a Bible which he incorrectly believed to be written in Swedish. Jonchuck’s lawyer told the Hotline that […]

Florence SnyderMarch 31, 2014

Florida agency heads have been lying to reporters, spinning like dreidels, and withholding public records since the Chiles administration. So let’s give Rick Scott’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner points for breaking new ground with his prior restraint on journalist, author, Florida State University (FSU) professor and all-around state treasure Diane Roberts. Roberts is an eighth […]

Florence SnyderMarch 19, 2014

Editor Lenore Devore thinks reporters should look at the wheat to be found in public records, and not the chaff of press releases peddled by taxpayer-supported ministers of disinformation. So when the Lakeland Police Department’s “public information officer” stonewalled a young police reporter looking to flesh out details of a shooting, Devore did what good […]

Florence SnyderJanuary 13, 2014

Muckraking matters, but the true test of a newspaper’s mettle is its day-to-day commitment to telling ordinary stories in extraordinary ways. Florida lost one of its most gifted — and beloved — storytellers Saturday when Tim O’Meilia, 65, succumbed to cancer. O’Meilia leaves behind wife Debbie, sons Rolly and Casey, and generations of Florida journalists […]

Florence SnyderDecember 5, 2013

Arthur England was an unpretentious man. Unlike a lot of retired traffic magistrates, he did not want to be called “Judge” after he left the Florida Supreme Court in 1981. It was easy to forget that for all of his professional life, he really was the smartest guy in the room. England, who died Aug. […]

Florence SnyderSeptember 25, 2013

With the passing of Dexter Douglass, Florida has lost one more of its dwindling supply of lawyers who make friends out of clients, and leave them in better condition than they found them. Douglass hung out his shingle in an era when law was a respected profession and lawyers aspired to be the person in […]

Florence SnyderSeptember 8, 2013

Context Florida Publisher Peter Schorsch got it wrong — dead wrong — when he suggested in his Sept. 5 Saintpetersblog post that reporter envy might taint coverage of “the Chris Clark imbroglio.” Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas broke the story that Florida’s power elite spent the week chewing over, praying over, and […]

Florence SnyderSeptember 3, 2013

As Sen. Eleanor Sobel and Interim Department of Children & Families Secretary Esther Jacobo were practicing their talking points for last month’s Tri-County Legislative Delegation Town Hall, the Miami Herald was toting up bodies for its explanatory journalism headlined Killing our kids. Veteran reporter Carol Marbin Miller knows where the public records are, and she’s […]

Florence SnyderJuly 28, 2013

There’s not much to smile about in this Summer of Tsuris. Governor Rick Scott has fled the jurisdiction as Dream Defenders occupy the Capitol. Deck chairs are being shuffled at the Department of Children & Families. The Agency for Health Care Administration is using the children it warehouses in geriatric nursing homes as an excuse to bash Obamacare. Obscene “compensation” pours […]

Florence Snyder
Crowds gather to see Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. (Gabrielle Russon)

Florence Snyder: Why journalism should be addicted to David Carr

Florence Snyder: DCF's Orwellian response to child thrown from bridge

Florence Snyder: Detzner praises “witty” speaker, then cancels her lecture

Florence Snyder: It’s Sunshine Week: Meet a young woman from the Old School

Florence Snyder: Palm Beach Post’s O’Meilia, gifted storyteller, dead at 65

Florence Snyder: ‘Judge’ England was the smartest guy in the room

Florence Snyder: Dexter Douglass: Helping real people with real problems

Florence Snyder: Columnist wrong to suggest envy might taint coverage

Florence Snyder: State is failing the vulnerable children in its care

Florence Snyder: Judelle & Brady Sing Away the Tsuris