As part of an internship at The Miami Herald, my beat for an entire year was to cover a small town south of Homestead called Florida City. Every other week, I would go to the city council meetings to find issues worth reporting. And in between, I wrote features.
Because it was a small town, I started to feel a part of it. Mayor Otis T. Wallace, who had been the mayor for almost two decades, and the other council members were very sweet with me and always willing to provide information and answer my questions. I even bumped into my elementary school principal – a local and friend of the mayor. Small world!
So it became pretty interesting to learn the ins and outs of Florida City’s administration and to see it grow in ways outsiders wouldn’t expect.
My biggest story on this town turned up on the business section’s front page for the Herald. (But read it on this blog that picked up the story.) A colleague told me it took her five years to accomplish the same thing. You might expect me to boast at this point, but instead I’d like to thank my editor at the time, Donna Gehrke-White, for mentoring me. She was very hands-on and taught me how to write a decent news story.
Thank you Donna!
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