Jack Gurney — former Sarasota City Commissioner … and wasn’t he the Mayor for a while too? — is BACK … in a BIG way already! — at Sarasota’s Pelican Press newspaper. His front page cover story this week reports on whether or not “Mayor Kelly Kirschner violated state procurement guidelines” when he made a certain call to a Tampa parking meter vendor recently. Yikes and Yowza — read the piece here: Jack is Back and Hotter than Ever Reporting on our Local Mayor!
And not a moment too soon.
He’s covering the City beat, mostly, I think and in conjunction with Stan — the Man — Zimmerman who covers County, mostly — the Pelican Press is hotter than ever.
‘Course, ya know — I used to write for the Pelican Press too … wah, wah, wah — and now I see in this week’s paper, they’ve got some new columnists/contributors sprouting up. I miss that gig dearly … but wish these new writers as much fun as I had when I was part of the ink on those pages.
Stan Zimmerman
October 7, 2010 at 10:56 pmMC: Yes Jack Gurney is back, and on the city beat. Not to be overlooked is the return of Rick Barry as well. They’ll tag-team city coverage. Between the two of them, they have a combined 70 years of reporting on Sarasota and its environs. I wish the SHT’s new city hall reporter – J. David McSwane – a lot of luck in keeping up with these two dynamos. I might add two years ago, Rick won the Florida Press Association’s first-place award for “In-Depth Reporting.” It is an honor to work with these guys. For news junkies in Sarasota, this is very good news indeed.
And we have another new reporter, Moira Toner on the school board beat. She’s a cub. We call ’em that because they’ll stick their nose just about anywhere. I wish I could bottle her enthusiasm, because I could make a fortune.
In case you’re wondering, these changes are not because of any huge upheaval at the paper. We had a couple of resignations, people moving on to better things. Pelican readers have even more good reasons to look for the paper on Wednesdays. s/Stan Zimmerman
MC
October 8, 2010 at 8:14 amThanks Stan for updating readers way more thoroughly than I had done. I was thinking yesterday the Pelican should do like a one-page splash to show everyone who’s on staff and their beats and experience — just to showcase it all, but you’ve done a great job here for that.
I’m glad Rick Barry is back — that’s fabulous too, and it’s good to hear there’s a school board person on that beat too.
Thanks for the update, Stan!