Jonah Hinebaugh | USFSP “I’d like to believe that there’s always going to be a need for someone like me,” says Callihan.
By JONAH HINEBAUGH USFSP Student Reporter
BRADENTON – Since Ryan Callihan joined the Bradenton Herald in October 2017, his beat has changed from breaking news to retail to county government.
Change has been a constant since his days in college, but it’s what solidified his belief that journalism was the right career path for him.
“My favorite part of my job is (that) it’s different every day,” said Callihan, 23. “Sometimes I’m sitting at the County Commission office. Sometimes I’m at the beach reporting on Red Tide. Sometimes I’m covering a shooting at an apartment complex and someone died.”
With the recent layoff of two editors and resignation of a reporter, the Herald’s small newsroom is restructuring. That caused the shuffling of his beats.
Some jobs in the newspaper industry are deemed “superfluous” and the industry needs to figure out how to do the job without them, Callihan said. That leaves him disappointed but not disheartened.
“I’d like to believe that there’s always going to be a need for someone like me,” he said.
Callihan, who grew up in St. Petersburg, began attending USF St. Petersburg in 2013 as a graphic design major. He switched to journalism and began working for the student weekly, The Crow’s Nest, in January 2016.
In the summer of 2017, when he balanced an unpaid internship at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and a part-time job as a store protection specialist for Ross Dress for Less, he learned two things: how to adapt quickly and how to get stories out of people.
The job at Ross forged a connection with those who work minimum wage jobs like he did.
“A lot of the stuff we do is for people,” he said. “We say we give voices to the voiceless, and (to do that) it’s about knowing what it’s like to be voiceless. When someone works as a bartender or a security guard and is making diddly squat and they say they can’t afford whatever, I’ve been there.”
He sits in Manatee County Commission meetings a few times a week. While they can be boring, a strong cup of coffee and his sense of duty keep him awake – typing away, studying an agenda and sifting through government jargon so people who can’t attend midday meetings stay up-to-date on things that directly affect them.
Jan. 16 was no different. It began at 9 a.m. with a two-hour presentation from a project manager at the Department of Environmental Protection to the Manatee County Port Authority.
A couple of hours for lunch gave Callihan time to start writing his story before the County Commission met again.
The meeting wrapped up quickly, but sometimes he isn’t so lucky. Deadlines can leave him writing a story while also taking notes during meetings that have stretched up to 10 hours.
“Say I need to write something by 4. Then I should be at the meeting taking notes on whatever they’re talking about and writing my story at the same time,” said Callihan.
Callihan advises student journalists to get started early, so they know how to do whatever they want, and not to worry too much about their lack of experience.
“A lot of times you are good enough, and at the end of the day it’s about telling a story,” he said. “Everyone knows how to do that.”
Nancy McCann | USFSP Greg McCreery, 39, has to cobble together several philosophy courses on two campuses each semester to make an average annual salary of $35,000. “There’s always a risk I won’t make enough money” to support his family, he says.
By NANCY McCANN USFSP Student Reporter
One of the last things college students expect to learn is that their instructor is living below the poverty level.
Or can’t afford to take a modest vacation.
Or is working three jobs.
But that is the reality for many of the temporary, part-time teachers around the country known as adjuncts.
In the Southeast, they are typically paid between $1,800 and $2,700 per course each semester, although some make significantly more, depending on the individual and institution.
Consider the numbers at USF St. Petersburg:
Almost half of the faculty in 2016 – 128 of the 269 teachers, or 48 percent – were adjuncts. In 2015, it was 138 of the 280 teachers, or 49 percent.
Adjuncts taught 39 percent of all undergraduate student credit hours and 68 percent of all undergraduate course sections in 2015, according to numbers collected by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In graduate programs, adjuncts taught 25 percent of the courses and credit hours.
On average, USFSP adjuncts earned around $8,180 per year by teaching about 25 to 30 percent of a full-time load, according to a 2015 university report. The average annual salary for full-time USFSP faculty was $79,496.
Greg McCreery, 39, an adjunct who teaches philosophy on the St. Petersburg and Tampa campuses, said he usually has six classes in the fall, five in the spring and one in the summer. His average annual salary? About $35,000 for a married man with two young children.
A few years ago, he said, he lost health care benefits because he came just short of the required teaching load.
“I’m a full-time teacher who has to grade and take care of students, but every semester I have to find classes to teach,” said McCreery. “There’s always a risk I won’t make enough money or have benefits. We (adjuncts) have no guarantees.”
After years of complaints, some adjuncts like McCreery are beginning to take action.
On April 20, a group representing adjuncts on the three campuses in the USF system – St. Petersburg, Tampa and Sarasota-Manatee – filed a petition to hold a union election sometime in the months ahead.
If a majority of USF adjuncts approve, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) would become their agent in seeking better pay, benefits and job security.
“Right now, adjunct faculty cannot earn job security, even after many years of dedicated service,” union organizers told USF adjuncts in an email last year.
“Pay is out of step with Florida’s cost of living, there is a ceiling on opportunities for advancement, and it is routinely unclear whether our classes will be offered in the upcoming or subsequent semesters. These working conditions are detrimental to our efforts to teach effectively, to develop as professionals, and to contribute to the intellectual life of our campus communities. Also, these conditions force some of us into poverty, unable to afford our living expenses.”
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Nancy McCann | USFSP Peter Golenbock, 70, a nationally known sports author, acknowledges that he could – and would – teach his classes on sports and American history for free. But he says the campaign to unionize adjunct teachers at USF’s three campuses is a just cause.
Around the country in recent decades, the number of adjuncts has been rising as college administrators seek to hold down costs, including student tuition and fees.
Adjuncts (not including graduate assistants and other non-tenure track employees) now make up more than 40 percent of the faculty in schools across the United States. In 1975, it was 25 percent.
Part-time faculty typically fall into four groups: Graduate students; retired academics and other professionals; people working in government and private business who like to teach on the side; and teachers striving for a career in higher education by piecing together jobs each semester, sometimes at multiple schools.
At USFSP in recent years, adjuncts have included high-profile figures like Melanie Bevan, a former assistant police chief in St. Petersburg who is now police chief in Bradenton; the late Terry Tomalin, the longtime outdoors editor at the Tampa Bay Times; and Fred Bennett, a former Tampa business executive who helped oversee a program linking the College of Education to youngsters at some of St. Petersburg’s struggling elementary schools.
They typify the group of adjuncts who teach for emotional fulfillment and the chance to give back to the community.
“Don’t tell the administration, but I could do this – and would do this – for nothing,” said Peter Golenbock, 70, a nationally known sports author and law school graduate who teaches classes about sports and American history. “These kids are wonderful, and I enjoy the hell out of it.”
But Golenbock was one of the names on a recent email urging fellow adjuncts to support the union campaign.
“Every other type of faculty (at USF) has a union, including teaching assistants,” he said in an interview. “The cause is just and I can’t imagine anyone disagrees with that.”
He said his support for the union drive “simply has to do with fairness” – adjuncts must be able to “make a living” so the best teachers can be hired.
“I’m rooting for ‘em,” said Golenbock.
But for every financially secure adjunct like Golenbock, it seems, there is an adjunct like McCreery, the philosophy teacher on the Tampa and St. Petersburg campuses who is struggling to make a satisfactory income.
“Did you know that a definition of the word “adjunct” is “an inessential part of something”? he asked.
McCreery said he has no interaction with other philosophy professors, and since he must share an office on the Tampa campus with other adjuncts he can’t leave books and other material there to share with students.
“Right now, we (adjuncts) have no voice,” he said. “Everyone else at the university has union representation. It makes sense that full-time professors make higher salaries (than adjuncts), but we deserve more.”
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Courtesy of Rebecca Skelton Adjuncts “are floating out there alone,” says Rebecca Skelton, who teaches art on the St. Petersburg campus.
Some of the adjuncts around the country who struggle to make ends meet consider the growing, low-paid work force a crisis in higher education.
That has helped spur the drive to form unions – a drive that is gaining momentum.
In the last three years, adjuncts at schools like Duke, Georgetown, Tufts and the University of Chicago have joined SEIU, the union says, and adjuncts at more than 50 other schools are considering it.
The union has already had an impact on some campuses.
According to SEIU, the “median pay per course was 25 percent higher for part-time faculty that had union representation.” The union says that part-time faculty at Tufts now make at least $7,300 per course; adjunct pay at George Washington University increased 32 percent in one department with the first union contract; and Antioch adjuncts now have defined workload expectations and protected health care insurance.
In November, part-time faculty at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa voted 2 to 1 to join SEIU. The victory was announced as the first for adjuncts at a public school in the South.
Courtesy of Jeanette Abrahamsen “There are a lot of people who want to get behind” the union drive, says Jeanette Abrahamsen, who teaches broadcast news and beginning reporting on the Tampa campus.
HCC adjuncts are now seeking a collective contract to improve pay and working conditions.
Rebecca Skelton, a USFSP adjunct who teaches art, and Jeanette Abrahamsen, an adjunct who teaches broadcast news and beginning reporting at USF Tampa, were guests this spring on WMNF’s call-in show, “Radioactivity,” to talk up the union.
Abrahamsen, 31, who has a master’s degree in digital journalism and web design from USFSP, said she had met with other adjuncts to talk about banding together.
“It helped us just to meet and talk about it because a lot of times you don’t know a lot of the other adjuncts. We are working at different times and people are driving around to different campuses,” said Abrahamsen. “Once we started talking about it, we realized there are a lot of people who want to get behind this.”
“We are floating out there alone,” Skelton, 64, told The Crow’s Nest. “You can feel from some of the professors that you are not as good as full-time faculty.”
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Nancy McCann | USFSP Adjuncts are “a great resource” who complement full-time faculty well, says College of Business chief Sridhar Sundaram.
At USFSP, the pay for adjuncts is set by the college they teach in – Arts and Sciences, Business, or Education – and the philosophy on utilizing adjuncts seems to vary from college to college and department to department.
For example, adjuncts make up about half the faculty in the Kate Tiedemann College of Business, and exact numbers can vary from semester to semester, according to Dean Sridhar Sundaram.
Because of their expertise in specialized topics outside the university, he said, adjuncts are paid $3,500 to $5,000 per course. They teach 30 percent of the credit hours in the college, he said.
USFSP business adjuncts include professionals working in government, accounting and investment firms, and health services administration.
The majority of core and introductory courses are taught by full-time faculty, while adjuncts teach electives, Sundaram said.
“The spirit of using adjuncts in my college is that we want someone who is an expert in their area,” said Sundaram. “Adjuncts are a great resource to tap into, and they complement full-time faculty well. It would be difficult without them.”
Courtesy of Lisa Starks Adjuncts with doctorates make more than those with master’s degrees, says Lisa Starks, chair of the Verbal and Visual Arts Department.
The portrait of an adjunct in the College of Arts and Sciences can be quite different.
In the English program, there are eight full-time faculty and 19 adjuncts, said Lisa Starks, chair of the Verbal and Visual Arts Department.
Adjuncts taught 56 percent of the classes this semester in the English program – 40 percent of the classes on campus and 81 percent online.
The adjuncts with master’s degrees make $2,500 per course per semester, said Starks. Those with doctorates make $3,000.
“It would be wonderful if we could use full-time faculty only, “said Starks. “If the budget allowed, it would be a dream come true.”
Morgan Gresham, the department’s creative writing program coordinator, said the department utilizes guidelines published by the National Council of Teachers of English for the working conditions of adjuncts.
The guidelines include making teaching appointments in a timely manner, providing office space with access to computers and telephones, and including adjuncts in faculty meetings and on committees.
“Many of our adjuncts have been here for years,” said Gresham. “I would love for them to have an opportunity to be full-time.”
One of the two full-time professors added to the department a couple of years ago was an adjunct who was “given the chance to move up,” said Starks.
Starks said she was an adjunct herself “a really long time ago,” teaching five classes in a semester when she was a graduate student. She also taught aerobics and GRE prep.
“We are doing the best we can to make the lives of our faculty and students the best for everyone,” she said.
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Although adjuncts are often described as talented and popular teachers who can bring outside experience and a love of teaching to the classroom, the cost savings may have a downside for students, at least according to one study.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a nonprofit association of academics that strives to maintain quality and preserve academic freedom in higher education, issued a report in 2016 repeating its 2003 conclusion that “the dramatic increase in part-time faculty has created ‘systemic problems for higher education’ that have … diminished student learning.”
The AAUP report says that “while many faculty members serving in part-time positions are well qualified and make extraordinary efforts to overcome their circumstances, researchers have found that having a part-time instructor decreases the likelihood that a student will take subsequent classes in a subject and that instruction by part-time faculty is negatively associated with retention and graduation.”
The report says that “every 10 percent increase in part-time faculty positions at public institutions is associated with a 2.65 percent decline in the institution’s graduation rate.”
Part of the problem, according to AAUP, is that many adjuncts are less available to students than full-time faculty are. The reasons for this include the paradox that adjuncts sometimes teach more courses than full-time faculty due to the low wages they receive per course, they are less integrated into the institution, and they do not have access to as many resources.
AAUP also mentions that adjuncts are assigned to “crowded group offices” or do not have one at all, making it more difficult to meet with students.
Courtesy of Vincent Tirelli A glut of adjuncts diminishes the influence of full-time faculty, says Vincent Tirelli, an adjunct at City University of New York.
Vincent Tirelli, 58, an adjunct for over 25 years who teaches government and politics at the City University of New York, said “one of the most important things research has shown is that students need contact with their professors and their peers.”
Tirelli wrote his doctoral dissertation – “The Invisible Faculty Fight Back” – on what some call “precarious faculty” and was one of the founders in 1998 of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor. He said a university with a lot of adjuncts can have consequences for full-time faculty.
“In the past, the idea that our colleges and universities were governed by both the administration and the faculty was a thing – shared governance,” Tirelli wrote in an email to The Crow’s Nest. “Less and less is that the case, and with the growth in the use of part-time faculty the idea is pretty much a joke. Thus, we have the corporate university.”
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What about students – and their parents? After all, they are the consumers at USFSP.
Students sometimes do not know their class is being taught by an adjunct. Some are not even familiar with the term. But interviews suggest they do have opinions on what makes a good teacher.
Take Zack Batdorf, 22, a senior majoring in psychology. Asked if it concerns him that an instructor is not a full-time professor or does not have a doctorate, he said these things don’t matter to him.
“Certainly, for me, it’s the quality of the experience that’s important,” said Batdorf. “How can I relate to the teacher?”
Samantha Ortiz, 18, a freshman majoring in criminology, said she knows exactly what an adjunct is because an “honest and passionate” instructor last semester talked about his financial hardships and explained to her class that adjuncts like himself were “not being treated as equals.”
Ortiz said the instructor “made me think outside the box,” and although he was not available all the time, he “tried to make the most of helping his students.”
“Being a good teacher has to do with how much they involve themselves with you, not their Ph.D. or whether they work full time,” said Krista Evans, 21, a junior in mass communications. “Adjuncts deserve a shot, too.”
Nancy McCann, a graduate student in journalism and media studies, has taught as a graduate assistant and adjunct at USF Tampa and USFSP.
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Information in this article was obtained from the following reports:
“Higher Education at a Crossroads: The Economic Value of Tenure and the Security of the Profession (2015-16),” American Association of University Professors.
https://www.aaup.org
“Statement from the Conference on the Growing Use of Part-time and Adjunct Faculty” and “Position Statement on the Status and Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty,” National Council of Teachers of English.
http://www.ncte.org/positions/workingconditions
“This Was Our Movement in 2016” and “SEIU Contract Highlights: The Union Difference,” Service Employees International Union.
http://www.seiu.org
Dr. Lauren Friedman, Director of Institutional Research, USFSP Office of Academic Affairs, provided data reported to the National Center for Education Statistics through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP Caplan once thought of becoming an X-ray technician.
By CAITLIN ASHWORTH USFSP Student Reporter
LUTZ – Andrew Caplan left his office earlier this month to cover a meeting of the Pasco County School Board for the Tampa Tribune.
When he got back, both his job and his newspaper were gone.
The Tribune had been sold to its longtime rival, the Tampa Bay Times, which closed the 121-year-old paper and laid off all but a handful of its news staff.
And just like that, Caplan, 27, became a casualty in the disruption that has convulsed the American newspaper industry over the last two decades.
Florida’s newspapers have had a major impact on the history and culture of the state. The Tribune was arguably the state’s most important newspaper in the 1940s and 1950s, and it was still Florida’s second largest paper.
However, the digital age, the Great Recession and self-inflicted wounds have greatly weakened once-prosperous papers, and readers’ habits and loyalties are changing.
Around the country, newspapers are cutting back or closing, and thousands of journalists like Caplan have lost their jobs. The future of the industry is uncertain.
Caplan, who grew up in Citrus County, was well into his 20s when he decided to pursue a career in journalism.
At first, he said, he thought he might become an X-Ray technician, but quickly changed his mind.
“I realized I don’t like blood and broken bones,” he said.
As he and his father kicked around career ideas one day, Caplan said there were two things he loved to do: watch sports and talk about sports.
“If curling was on TV, I would watch it,” he said.
After mulling over potential employment options in radio, commentary and journalism, he decided to become a sports reporter.
Going to games and talking with players and coaches seemed like the ultimate fan experience, Caplan said. And you get paid to do it.
Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP At the Chronicle, he said, he learned “how to write fast and on the fly.”
As he pursued an associate degree at the College of Central Florida in Ocala and then a bachelor’s at USF St. Petersburg, Caplan supported himself as a self-employed process server, delivering subpoenas to people who were behind on their child support, mortgage, rent and credit card payments.
The pay was good and the work was usually mundane – until the day he encountered a barefoot, bearded man with booze on his breath and a gun, which he pointed at Caplan.
“It is dangerous to constantly knock on strangers’ doors day in and day out,” Caplan wrote in a column for the USFSP student newspaper.
“After the event, I asked myself, ‘Is this what I want to do for the next 20-30 years?’
“Hell, no! I want to be a sports writer.”
At the student paper, he covered university and local sports. He created and co-hosted a weekly sports show on the USF student radio station, and he covered high school football games for the Times.
But he knew he needed to broaden his resume, “to do more than just sports.”
During the 2015 spring semester, Caplan interned at Equality Florida Action, an organization focused on equal rights and security of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
The ban on same-sex marriage was lifted in June 2015 and, through his internship, Caplan documented the effects it had on LGBT people.
A lesbian couple with two children tied the knot. A Sumter County clerk was honored to wed same-sex couples. And a teacher married her partner of 26 years and finally felt comfortable enough to share the news with co-workers.
Caplan said the internship gave him the opportunity to learn about things happening nationally and talk to local people whom it affected. It helped expand his breadth as a reporter and strengthened his skills as a feature writer, he said.
Over the summer of 2015, Caplan interned at his hometown paper, the Citrus County Chronicle, a daily with a circulation of 26,000, and graduated from USFSP.
The internship led to a full-time job with the paper as staff reporter on education, city government and anything else that needed covering, like a feature on actor Miles Teller, who grew up in Lecanto and frequently returns for visits.
“I learned how to write fast and on the fly,” Caplan said.
He also learned how to design pages using Adobe InDesign. On some Saturdays, he would design five or six pages for the Sunday section.
When the Tribune reached out to him about an open position in Pasco County, he jumped at the opportunity. He was hired in March.
He knew that the Tribune lagged far behind the Times in circulation and prestige, he said, but moving from a small-town daily to a big-city metro was too good to pass up.
Mainly working out of the Tribune’s office in a business park in Lutz, Caplan covered county schools, Dade City government and features for a Pasco news section that was distributed on Fridays and Sundays.
It was obvious that the Tribune was struggling. He was often the only journalist in the office, and his editor was there only once a week.
But the paper’s sudden demise was still a jolt, leaving Caplan and the paper’s other 265 employees at loose ends.
For now, Caplan is back at the Chronicle, covering his old beats. But he is only a stringer – paid per story – not a full-time staff member with salary and benefits.
He has applied to attend USFSP this fall to seek a master’s in digital journalism, which could “give me a leg up” in an industry where digital is supplanting print. He might apply for full-time jobs at other papers, might start a sports blog to get more experience.
After all, he still wants to be a sports reporter.
Rachel S. O’Hara | Sarasota Herald-Tribune Johnson got into journalism when she was 14.
By TATIANA CUBAS USFSP Student Reporter
SARASOTA – As an investigative reporter, Elizabeth Johnson searches for stories that otherwise would go untold.
For nine months, she pored over 1,400 pages of police and court records about a black man who was serving a 30-year sentence for the armed robbery of a white woman and her children.
Although prosecutors and then a jury concluded the case against Andre Bryant was solid, Johnson showed that it was full of holes. Her lengthy story in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune helped free him in October 2015, seven years after he began his sentence.
“It’s still shocking to think I played a part in getting an innocent man out of prison,” Johnson wrote three months later.
“As I began digging, more and more information pointed to Andre’s innocence – a witness recanted her statement, a juror told me that he never believed Andre was guilty and no one could explain how evidence found far from the route Andre took while fleeing police — a helicopter tracking him overhead — got there.”
In three years at the Herald-Tribune, Johnson, 25, has done some of the paper’s most distinctive work. But not all of it is so serious, and not all is for the print product.
Johnson contributes to unravel.us, a website that is billed as “an online news and entertainment platform for young professionals” in Sarasota and Bradenton. It appeals to the generation that grew up on Facebook, uses Instagram to post photos of food, and seems to have an opinion on almost everything.
“Like you, we’re not going to be bogged down with the traditional way our parents get the news,” it says.
While unravel.us is produced by the Herald-Tribune, readers and viewers would never know the traditional newspaper is involved.
“We did a focus group with young professionals who said they weren’t interested in getting news from the Herald-Tribune,” Johnson said. “They felt that the Herald-Tribune didn’t give them the news they want.”
Although unravel.us has a separate home, its stories are also posted to the newspaper’s website.
Johnson is also part of an online video feature called “Besties with Katy and Liz” with fellow reporter Katy Bergen.
Each video lasts five to 10 minutes, as the reporters – best friends, or “besties” – chat with guests and quickly dissect the news, giving viewers “just enough information to sound intelligent at happy hour.”
“Besties” is filmed in a window setting in the newsroom so viewers see a backdrop of downtown Sarasota and trees with bright green leaves – a view of city lifestyle with a tropical side.
When the videos feature a guest, there is an increase in viewers, Johnson said.
Johnson said she got her start in journalism at a radio station when she was 14. She graduated from Murray State University in far western Kentucky in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
At the student paper, she was a sports reporter as a freshman, sports editor as a sophomore and editor-in-chief as a junior and senior.
She came to Florida right after graduation for a job at the Bradenton Herald, then moved to the Herald-Tribune 10 months later, first as a cops reporter and then investigative reporter.
Nowadays reporters do a bit of everything in their work, reporting and shooting photos and video while bouncing from issue to issue. “Journalism is not a thriving industry,” Johnson said.
Her favorite story was the one that helped free Bryant from prison.
While she was investigating the case, she said, she talked with Bryant’s son, who was 6 months old when his father was arrested. When she asked him if he knew his father’s favorite color, he said he didn’t.
“I can’t imagine not knowing my mom’s favorite color,” Johnson said.
In her story, published Sept. 21, 2014, she wrote:
It took detectives four hours to book a suspect and the state of Florida just 10 months to try, convict and sentence a man to three decades behind bars.
The case was tidy. Open, shut; bad guy in prison.
But some of it – a lot of it, actually – didn’t add up.
After her story appeared, the Innocence Project of Florida took on Bryant’s case. The state attorney’s office agreed to review it and eventually asked the court to vacate Bryant’s conviction because of reasonable doubt. He was released from prison.
Johnson said her second favorite story was one she reported and wrote with Bergen.
Sarah Harnish had killed herself and her 17-month-old daughter. Many readers could assume the worst about Harnish, but the Herald-Tribune’s story revealed that she was silently suffering from mental illness.
Johnson’s project these days has her manually entering data from public records into a spreadsheet.
As people who’ve seen the movie “Spotlight” know, she said, that’s what Boston Globe reporters did in discovering that the Catholic Church had covered up years of systemic child abuse by priests.
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Cormier and Caitlin Johnston walk a street that may give way to an expanded interstate highway.
By DEVIN RODRIGUEZ USFSP Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – Tattooed on one forearm in thick black letters is the word “Comfort.” And on the other, “Afflict.”
When asked what they mean, Anthony Cormier smiled wryly. “Journalists are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” he said.
Cormier is an investigative reporter for the Tampa Bay Times who loves his work. He said that he couldn’t see himself doing any other kind of journalism.
“This is the one place where we can really help the public and, in some small way, nudge the world in the right direction,” he said.
Last year Cormier and two colleagues gave a forceful nudge to the state of Florida, exposing horrific conditions in its six primary mental health hospitals.
The yearlong investigation by Cormier, Leonora LaPeter Anton and Michael Braga showed how $100 million in budget cuts led to acute staff shortages, patient neglect and violence against both patients and staff.
Stung by the disclosures, the Legislature this spring added $16 million to the mental hospitals’ budget and $42 million to community programs geared toward mental health.
And in April the three reporters who did the nudging won journalism’s highest honor – the Pulitzer Prize – for investigative reporting.
“If winning the Pulitzer does anything, I hope it creates awareness for Florida’s mentally ill,” said Cormier, 37. “The prize is an incredible honor, but my focus is on the work, on continuing to do important journalism. That’s been the goal all along, and it hasn’t changed.”
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Cormier’s credo is inscribed on his forearms: Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
The prestigious prize capped a vagabond-like personal journey for Cormier that is typical in the newspaper industry.
When he graduated from Florida State University in 2000 with a degree in creative writing, Cormier said, he couldn’t find a writing job.
So he tended bar and delivered papers for the Panama City News Herald.
When the News Herald needed a stringer to cover a feature story, Cormier got the assignment. That, in turn, helped him land a full-time job at the paper as a sports writer and, later, a cops and crime reporter.
Several years later, he wrote a story titled “Files Wide Shut” about how government, school district and law enforcement officials in seven Florida Panhandle counties violated the state’s Public Records Law. That won a first place award from the Florida Society of News Editors and helped him land a job with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in June 2006.
In Sarasota, Cormier had the time and freedom to find, write and edit in-depth stories about police misconduct, profligate city spending, gang violence and a man whose Ponzi scheme bilked investors out of $162 million.
He also earned the admiration of Herald-Tribune executive editor Bill Church, who called him “our newsroom’s version of a gym rat, someone who studies the nuances of other journalists and shows he’s got game, too.”
Cormier moved to the Times in May 2015 to continue reporting the mental health hospital investigation that the Herald-Tribune was conducting in collaboration with the Times.
The unusual partnership between a large, independent newspaper – the Times – and a midsized chain paper – the Herald-Tribune – led to the explosive findings that ran in both papers. The series was titled “Insane. Invisible. In Danger.”
In the months that followed, Cormier has continued to collaborate on enterprise stories.
A two-month investigation with Alexandra Zayas and Steve Contorno led to a story called “Safe, Then Sorry.” The reporters disclosed problems at the Spring of Tampa Bay, a shelter for domestic violence victims that is run by a much-admired charity and funded in part by tax dollars.
A 5-year-old girl who was living at the shelter with her mother said she had been molested by another resident, an incident that exposed a bigger issue – the shelter’s policy to not run background checks on the women the agency serves.
Because three reporters worked on the story, Cormier said, it brought newer and broader perspectives to the table.
“Our team is very specific,” he said. “We have the time to make certain that we are as precise as possible. In this job we don’t raise questions – we answer them.”
On his current project, Cormier is working with Caitlin Johnston, the Times’ transportation reporter.
At issue is the Tampa Bay Express project, a plan by the Florida Department of Transportation to add toll lanes to busy stretches of interstate highways in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Polk counties.
Under the plan, the state will have to acquire and knock down more than 100 homes and businesses along Interstates 275 and 4.
On a recent Wednesday, Johnston and Cormier went door-to-door to speak to people whose homes lie in the path of the project. Many of the people seemed unaware of the plan and the procedures the state will follow in taking homes.
The reporters knocked on doors for most of the day. Many residents were upset. Many were away at work.
“This is a story that we have to play straight down the middle,” Cormier said. “The Transportation Department doesn’t have a lot of options, and people just don’t know what’s coming.”
Cormier also offered this advice to journalists who work on similar shoe-leather stories: “Get comfortable shoes you don’t care about; you’ll destroy them doing this work.”
Cormier said he will continue searching for stories that are important to the community. One emotion helps drive him.
“To do my job, you need a healthy dose of anger,” he said. “If you don’t have a deep well of skepticism and anger, bad guys are going to make you feel like you don’t know what you’re saying. You need to come at them with anger.”
Jeffrey Zanker | USFSP Zimmer chats with diners Boteem Williams (left) and his brother Brindon outside the restaurant.
By JEFFREY ZANKER USFSP Student Reporter
TAMPA – When state inspectors visited the Burger King at 9925 Adamo Drive on March 8, they found five major health violations and ordered the restaurant to close.
Forty live roaches. Roach excrement. “Potentially hazardous” food temperatures. Improper hand-washing by an employee. Problems with the mop sink faucet.
The restaurant was allowed to reopen the next day, but it was too late to escape the glare of publicity.
That came a week later, when reporter Beau Zimmer and photojournalist Angela Clooney of 10News WTSP-Channel 10 arrived to do a story and ask employees for a copy of the Health Department report. By law, restaurants are required to give a copy to anybody who requests it.
Zimmer’s report, which aired March 22, was the latest installment in a weekly feature that 10News WTSP calls “Restaurant Red Alert.”
Using state inspection reports, Zimmer warns consumers that all is not well behind the counters, in the kitchens and on the floors and walls of popular restaurants.
“People do not like seeing roaches crawling across their plates at a restaurant,” said Zimmer, 36. “It is important for customers to know what they’re eating.”
The name Zimmer is well-known hereabouts. Zimmer’s grandfather, the late Don Zimmer, was a longtime resident of Treasure Island and a player, coach and manager in Major League Baseball for 66 years. His father, Thomas Zimmer, is a scout for the San Francisco Giants.
But Beau Zimmer said he always wanted a career in broadcast news, not baseball. He got his start when he was only 9, appearing as a reporter on WTSP’s Saturday morning kids program, “This Side Up.”
Three years later, he was a reporter on CNN’s weekly “Real News for Kids.” Most of his stories were about Florida.
“It was my first real adventure,” he said.
Zimmer graduated from St. Petersburg College in 1999 with an associate degree and from the University of Florida in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications news.
At his first full-time job, at Gainesville’s WCJB-TV in 2002 and 2003, his general assignment beat included restaurant health alerts from the station’s bureau in Ocala. Not much was on the Internet then, he said, so “I had to drive up to Jacksonville to see the reports, which were handwritten.”
In October 2003, he moved to WDRB-TV in Louisville, Kentucky, where he said his stories on children struck by cars at school cross walks helped change state law on speeding in school zones and earned him a nomination for an Emmy award.
Zimmer returned to St. Petersburg and 10News WTSP in 2005 to cover consumer and enterprise stories.
He feels lucky to work in his hometown and at the station where it all began, he said. “It is rare for reporters to work in their hometown, since they move around for jobs.”
The day he visited the Burger King started around 9 a.m. in the newsroom of the station’s headquarters at 11450 Gandy Blvd. N in St. Petersburg.
Around him were journalists with phones pressed to their ears and fingers typing on keyboards.
“So many cooks in the kitchen,” Zimmer said.
At 9:30, a group of reporters and producers gathered in the news conference room to discuss story ideas and plan when stories might air. National news dominated the discussion, from the Zika virus to the presidential race.
Most of the reporters were young. They scanned through their phones for ideas.
Zimmer mentioned reports of possible health violations and residential abuse at an assisted living center in Tampa. To get ahead, he wanted to record video of the building after his visit to the Burger King.
His office is in a dimly-lit corner of the newsroom, not far from reporters Noah Pransky and Mike Deeson. Pransky was researching developments in the presidential race with what he called his “good friends of Google,” and Deeson was watching video footage to help him update a story.
Zimmer said his daily schedule was “slammed and busy.” He wanted to get started on an assignment about IRS scams before visiting the Burger King, then catch a 6:30 p.m. flight to Virginia for vacation.
After he discussed his day with producer Amy Marinec, he decided to visit Burger King first, then begin on the IRS story later.
Then he drove to Adamo Drive and parked on the back side of the restaurant, where Clooney, the photojournalist, was preparing her equipment.
Zimmer and Clooney came to the restaurant without notifying anyone.
“If you come in announced, you will always find a clean kitchen” he said.
In reporting his “Restaurant Red Alert” segments, Zimmer and the photojournalist who accompanies him tell employees why they are there, seek out the manager for comment, and ask to see a copy of the inspection report, which by law must be made available to anybody who asks for it.
At some restaurants, managers let the 10News team inspect the kitchen and other spots where violations were found and interview customers in the dining room.
But at Burger King, the employees did not cooperate.
“Nobody wants to be spoken to,” said a cashier.
Another employee arrived and declared, “Hey, you need to back off from here.” He put his finger on Clooney’s camera and told the journalists to “skedaddle on this way,” pointing to the door.
Then Zimmer was handed a cell phone to take a call from a manager. He explained his purpose, repeated his request for a copy of the state health report, and agreed to wait outside.
Several minutes later, an employee came out to give him a copy of the report.
Meanwhile, Zimmer interviewed two brothers who had just eaten at the restaurant.
The younger brother, Brindon Williams, had gotten a milkshake from the machine where state inspectors had found roach excrement.
“I think that’s kind of gross because I don’t like feces on my milkshake,” Williams said.
Story in hand, Zimmer returned to the station, typed a short transcript and recorded his voice-over at an empty booth while Clooney scanned through the video.
While editing, Clooney noticed a smudge on the lenses. She realized that it was the fingerprints of the employee who told them to “skedaddle.”
Zimmer looked over the video and chuckled. “That was the first time someone told me to skedaddle,” he said.
His report was ready for the 11 p.m. newscast six days later.
When Zimmer introduces himself, he said, some people associate him with his baseball-famous grandfather. But he wants to be known as the reporter who alerts consumers about dirty restaurants.
Ivelliam Ceballo | USFSP “I couldn’t see myself doing journalism anywhere else,” says Marrero (in blue shirt), shown interviewing Trump supporters from Melbourne.
By IVELLIAM CEBALLO USFSP Student Reporter
TAMPA – Reporter Tony Marrero stood at the entrance of the Tampa Convention Center amid a colorful sea of people.
On one side was a long line as hundreds of supporters waited to get inside to hear Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
On the other side were dozens of protesters holding bold signs like one that read, “Love has no borders.”
Marrero had put his ballpoint pen behind his ear and his old-fashioned reporter’s notebook on a tall flower pot beside him. Now he was shooting video with his Iphone.
As the presidential campaign heated up, the bombastic Trump had attracted crowds and controversy in equal measure, and violence had begun to break out at his rallies. When he visited Tampa on March 14, the day before the state’s important primary, the Tampa Bay Times was ready.
Marrero, another reporter and a photographer were stationed outside the convention center. Two other reporters and a photographer waited inside as people made their way through the doors and security.
“When a story this big – a national story – is in our own backyard, we want to own it,” Marrero said.
Marrero, 40, is the early-morning breaking news reporter in the Times’ Tampa office. He covers crime, fires, weather, and other big events – like a Trump political rally – for the paper and its website, tampabay.com
Marrero was born in Baltimore. He’s lived in Florida since he was 21. He said he always enjoyed writing and knew he wanted to be a journalist so he got a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Marrero was working for Hernando Today, an affiliate of the Tampa Tribune, when the Times hired him in 2009. He covered Hernando courts and Pinellas County government before moving to the paper’s breaking news team.
“The variety really makes it fun,” he said.
He feeds off the energy of his colleagues as they work together, especially on assignments like the Trump rally, he said.
“I couldn’t see myself doing journalism anywhere else.”
Marrero had arrived at the newsroom at 7 a.m.
By then, colleague Marlene Sokol had gotten word of the planned protest and posted it on “Bay Buzz,” the Times’ blog on local politics.
After doing some research on the protest, Marrero looked up from his desk to chat with three colleagues, the only other people in the large newsroom.
On top of everything else going on, his editor needed a weather story. Skip O’Rourke, a photo editor, reminded everyone that he took a photo through their seventh story window to meet a deadline some days ago. They laughed.
“Digital recorder, extra batteries, pens…” Marrero went through what he needed as he packed his laptop bag. He finally decided not to take the laptop because it would be extra weight.
It was 10 a.m. Time to go. The rally was scheduled to begin in four hours.
Marrero left the office with just enough time to pick up a piece of pound cake from Kahwa Coffee, which he ate as he walked to MacDill Park along downtown Tampa’s waterside pathway.
There, Marrero chatted with protesters as they gathered to begin a march to the convention center and back. Many of them shouted, “Build a wall, build it high, let’s put Donald Trump inside.” Reporters followed along, their cameras and microphones in hand.
After the march ended, Marrero conferred with Dirk Shadd, one of the photographers assigned to the story. Scanning the crowd, they agreed to approach someone wearing the most colorful hat.
Shadd and Marrero walked up to a group of young adults and learned that the friends had driven from Melbourne to attend the rally.
By 1:13 p.m., the Times had a story on its website.
One of the best parts of the job, according to Marrero, is the teamwork involved – “especially when you like the people that you work with.”
The Times reporters worked together, using #trumptbt, as they tweeted updates to the story.
When police announced that no one else would be admitted into the rally, the Trump supporters and protesters outside began to argue.
While Shadd worked his way into the middle of the trouble, Marrero watched intently from nearby. He snapped his last photo of the day and struggled to catch what the verbal combatants were saying.
Later, walking back to the newsroom to update the story, Marrero noticed a group of police vehicles that were apparently escorting Trump to the rally.
The convoy passed the site where five developers – using Trump’s name – promised in 2005 to build the tallest, most luxurious condo tower on Florida’s west coast.
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP As photographer James Borchuck looks on, Griffin prepares to sample the unusual ice cream cone.
By KATHERINE WILCOX USFSP Student Reporter
TAMPA — As a business reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, Justine Griffin often writes on weighty topics: An analysis of what a Donald Trump presidency might mean for local tourism. Profiles of prominent business leaders. A tour of Amazon’s grand new warehouse in Ruskin.
But on a recent Monday, Griffin had a much sweeter assignment: Try a doughnut ice cream cone at a shop in south Tampa.
Her assessment? “It’s sweet, and filling, and within a matter of minutes it becomes a sticky, melted mess,” she wrote. “But it’s just so Instagram-worthy.”
Griffin, 28, was born and raised in Pasco County and graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2010 with a bachelor’s in journalism and humanities.
She has been a reporter for six years. She started in 2010 at the St. Augustine Record on the breaking news and police beat, then spent time at the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the Sarasota Harold-Tribune before arriving at the Times in May 2015.
When she’s not covering her beat, Griffin enjoys riding her horse, Belinda, and writing for several blogs, including “Horse Junkies United” and “Deal Divas,” the Times’ blog on fashion and shopping.
She is also vice president of the Journalism and Women Symposium, a national nonprofit that works to empower women in the field.
Griffin was at the Herald-Tribune in 2014 when she tackled the most ambitious project of her career: a 32-page narrative of her experience as a first-time egg donor.
“I had a friend pass when I was young,” she said. “After she died, her mom had trouble conceiving.”
That’s when Griffin became interested in donating to help other families having trouble getting pregnant.
Her report, titled “The Cost of Life,” ran as a long-form narrative in print with no ads and as a multimedia project online – exposure that any 25-year-old journalist would welcome.
Now, two years later, Griffin was waiting in Datz Dough, a doughnut and ice cream shop at 2602 S MacDill Ave. in Tampa that features the newest viral sensation – an ice cream cone made out of a doughnut.
Her day had started early in the nearly empty St. Petersburg office of the Times, where she met with her editor, Chris Tisch, and got advice from food critic Laura Riley, who gave her some pointers on evaluating the odd dish.
On her way out, Griffin ran into food editor Michelle Stark, who asked her to post photos of the cone to the paper’s food Instagram account.
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP Borchuck records video as Griffin recaps the taste test.
Upon arrival, Griffin interviewed Tony Pullaro and Gina Moccio, the communications and public relations coordinators for the bakery. She asked some basic questions about the background of the shop and how they came up with the idea for the unusual cone.
According to Pullaro, the idea was based on a viral image on an Instagram from a bakery in Prague that invented the special cone.
Soon Times photographer James Borchuck arrived and Tina Contes, the lead confectionist and general manager of Datz Dough, invited them into the kitchen to see where the magic happens.
Contes, who created the recipe used at the shop, takes pride in the different forms of the creation that she invents every week.
This week it’s a cinnamon sugar doughnut cone lined with chocolate ganache, stuffed with Boston cream ice cream and topped with chocolate whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, and a homemade potato chip dipped in chocolate. Last week, it was topped with cotton candy.
After Contes finished her creation, she passed it to Griffin to taste on camera for the Times’ website, tampabay.com. After one bite, the creation was melting down the sides and falling apart, something Griffin said she would have to mention in her story.
Griffin explained that although the ice cream doughnut cone was tasty, she still had to note the negatives and the whopping $10 price.
Those drawbacks didn’t seem to faze a group of women who saw Griffin eating the cone. They each ordered one.
After the questions were over and the videos were shot, Griffin went to the Times newsroom in Tampa to write her story.
Griffin pulled quotes from her memory, notes, and an email correspondence she had with a representative at a food research company based in Chicago. After about 30 minutes, she had finished the story and sent it to Tisch, her editor in St. Petersburg.
Then it was time to meet with the photographer to record some sound bites for the video feature that would accompany her story online.
Griffin said she doesn’t do this as often as she used to at the Herald-Tribune, but she feels comfortable in front of a camera or on a recording.
Within an hour, the story was up on the Times’ website. The next day it was in the paper and on the front page of tbt*, the paper’s free tabloid.
Marla Korenich | USFSP For downing three hot dogs faster than anyone, Shelby Webb won the newsroom’s “Top Dog Award.”
By MARLA KORENICH USFSP Reporter
SARASOTA – At 10:30 on a Friday morning, she left the Sarasota Herald-Tribune office with purple streaks in her blond hair, an interrobang tattoo on her ankle, and a smile.
An interrobang is a question mark and an exclamation point together.
“It’s my favorite symbol. It explains my life,” she said.
Shelby Webb describes herself as enthusiastically curious. Her actions cause reactions, she said.
“People are always saying, ‘Really? What are you doing?’” she said.
Webb, 24, is the education reporter for the Herald-Tribune, and has been there for almost three years. She is a fifth-generation Floridian, born and raised in Sarasota. She graduated from the University of Florida in 2013 with a bachelor’s in journalism.
Following graduation, she applied to 90 papers. Only two responded. The Herald-Tribune was one of them.
This morning she is headed to Bradenton for an interview.
“Just so you know, my friend spilled a beer in my car, and it smells terrible,” Webb said.
Despite the smell, Webb’s quirky attitude keeps things rolling.
“I didn’t think my hair would turn out so purple, but no one has said anything about it yet, so I think it is okay,” she said.
At B’Towne Coffee Company shop in Bradenton, Webb met with three employees of Manatee County government to talk about an upcoming convention designed to get millennials more involved in local government.
The convention will include “cosmic shuffleboard,” and Webb went off on a tangent about hipsters and shuffleboard. She made a lot of jokes to keep the conversation going.
Rachel S. O’Hara, a Herald-Tribune photographer, joined to take photos and shoot video for Unravel, an online publication of the Herald-Tribune for young professionals in the Sarasota-Bradenton area.
Marla Korenich | USFSP As photographer Rachel S. O’Hara snaps away, Webb (right) watches for traffic.
To get a photo of the three government staff members in the street, Webb ran out into the middle of the road behind O’Hara to make sure no cars were coming.
“Hey, you watch the other side of them! I am depending on you,” Webb yelled.
Back at the office an hour later, Webb looked at the 13 red steno notebooks spread out on her desk.
“I don’t even know which one has the notes I just took,” Webb said.
There is also a stack of newspapers about 2 feet tall.
“I was going to do something with them, but I’m not sure what,” she said.
Also on her desk is a trophy in the form of a dog holding a hotdog atop a Grey Poupon jar.
“We did a hotdog-eating contest to boost morale in the newsroom,” she said.
Webb ate three hotdogs and buns the fastest, to the dismay of Katy Bergen, a reporter in the next desk.
There are 100 desks in the office, but only 15 had people in them. There was only one editor in sight.
Like virtually every other American newspaper, the Herald-Tribune has dramatically cut staff in recent years, but the empty desks don’t worry Webb anymore.
“I used to be worried, but they know I am a workhorse and pump stories out,” she said.
Webb talked on the phone with her editor, Victor Hull. She had to add some paragraphs to a Lakeland Ledger story to make it relevant to the Herald-Tribune.
“He’s the best editor I’ve had,” she said.
A previous editor would rewrite her stories, she said, but Hull is easier to work with. She thinks she has become a better writer since her start in 2013.
“I think they just gave up on you,” quipped Scott Davidson, a fellow reporter.
While getting a quote to add to her paragraphs, Webb talked to an official who alerted her to a government meeting next week.
“See, this is why it is so awesome. I called to get a quote, and he tipped me to a story idea,” she said.
When she writes stories, she said, she starts from the top down.
“I don’t like to leave an interview if I don’t know what my lead is going to be,” she said.
Several times during the day, Webb said how much she loves her job.
“Every day is different,” she said. “I get to meet people, learn new things every day. I know what’s going on in the county without trying.”
Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP After retiring to St. Petersburg, Douglas L. McElhaney put together the first forum in 2013.
By CAITLIN ASHWORTH USFSP Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – In 34 years as an American diplomat, Douglas L. McElhaney witnessed a revolution in Portugal, helped negotiate independence for the African nation of Namibia, and served as ambassador in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
When he retired in 2007, he spent four years teaching at the University of Miami as an ambassador-in-residence before moving to St. Petersburg.
It was a homecoming of sorts for McElhaney, 68. As a child, he often visited his grandparents here, and his parents had moved here, too.
“I feel very at home here,” he said.
That explains how an annual conference on national and international issues featuring prominent speakers from the U.S. Foreign Service, academia, the military and the news media began in St. Petersburg in 2013.
The fourth conference will be Feb. 17-19 on the campus of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, a co-sponsor of the event. More than a thousand people have already signed up to hear from about 60 speakers on 30 panels.
The conference is free and open to the public.
Among the topics: “Russia: imperial aspirations on a beer budget”; “Immigrants: A new wall or a new screen door?”; “Internet earthquake: News in an era when everyone is a reporter and publisher”; and “American jobs: Does anybody want them? Can anybody find them?”
The conference began “when Doug brought the idea to me five years ago, and it’s since taken off,” said political science professor Thomas W. Smith, director of the university’s honors program. “He draws on his Washington rolodex while I tap the academic resources I know.”
The honors program administers the conference with “a lot of help from the community and volunteers,” Smith said.
As a youngster, McElhaney said, he was “curious about the world.”
His father was in the Navy, his mother was a French teacher, and his older sister was a flight attendant for Pan-American. He grew up with an interest in travel and foreign cultures.
In high school, McElhaney said, he got to know foreign exchange students and befriended a Brazilian classmate.
While in college at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, McElhaney stayed with the friend’s family while working for the Brazil Herald, a small English-language newspaper in Rio de Janeiro.
Although his Portuguese was rudimentary, he said, he was able to report for the English speakers in the area and experienced Brazil during a military dictatorship.
“One of the families down the street from where I lived, their son had disappeared and ended up dead in a military hospital,” he said. “He evidently was a campus activist.”
McElhaney earned a master’s in international affairs at Columbia University, then joined the U.S. Foreign Service and moved to Portugal in 1973 to serve as a vice consul stamping visas and passports. That, he said, is the “introduction to international life.”
In 1974, the day after a one-day revolution toppled Portugal’s dictatorship, McElhaney said, he was held up inside the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon for 10 hours while a crowd of demonstrators unsuccessfully tried to break down the doors.
For the next two years, he said, he witnessed the once-fascist dictatorship drastically change to Western ideals. But his time there ended abruptly in 1976.
“They thought I was a spy,” McElhaney said with a laugh. When a newspaper printed his name, phone number and address, he moved out and left the country shortly thereafter.
During his 34 years in the Foreign Service, he also served in Brussels, Rome, Milan, Paris, Sarajevo and Cairo.
In the late ‘70s, McElhaney said, he worked on negotiations that led the independence of the African nation of Namibia. During the `90s, he was the United States’ deputy representative at NATO during the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts.
He served three years as U.S. ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina until he retired in 2007.
McElhaney said he got the idea for a conference after attending a similar forum at the University of Colorado at Boulder. That five-day conference, which was founded in 1948, drew 77,000 people last year, according to its website.
The first St. Petersburg conference, which was held in the USFSP building that once housed the Dali Museum, was developed from his “Rolodex and laptop” and drew 300 people, he said.
The conference is a nonprofit and “all speakers come on their own nickel.”
It’s now his goal to make the conference a weeklong event.
