Susannah Nesmith, Columbia Journalism Review

Susannah Nesmith

Columbia Journalism Review

Miami, FL, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • Columbia Journalism Review

Past articles by Susannah:

TV stations fight ‘sea of sameness’ with experimental local news

Tegna’s Atlanta television station, WXIA 11Alive, tried to break the local television mold last month with an investigation into a national issue: veterans denied benefits after being less-than-honorably discharged when they should have instead been offered treatment for Post-Traumatic... → Read More

A chain of small newspapers hits on a formula for growth

Second-generation newsman Joe Smyth quietly did something extraordinary 25 years ago--he essentially gave away his family’s chain of small community newspapers. Smyth, now 75, tells CJR he was trying to protect the newspapers from the prevailing winds of... → Read More

Paper makes audacious decision to highlight silent epidemic

The Palm Beach Post made the bold decision to profile all 216 people who died of an opioid overdose in its coverage area last year, risking the wrath of victims’ families, some of whom were horrified to have... → Read More

What Birmingham readers want: dig deep and be a 'witness'

Engaged readers appreciate deep and nuanced reporting on education and race relations in Birmingham, but they also wish news outlets had the resources to send reporters to all the board meetings of the area’s 25 school systems. That... → Read More

A pregnant reporter talks about covering the Zika outbreak in South Florida

Sammy Mack covers the health beat for WLRN, the NPR member station in South Florida. That means she’s been reporting on the Zika virus since early summer, when health officials began warning that they expected an outbreak to... → Read More

After a bitter contest, a Florida newsroom votes to unionize

After a contentious campaign within the newsroom, editorial employees of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune voted to form a union Thursday—becoming, along with the Lakeland Ledger, one of only two unionized newsrooms in Florida. Both papers are owned by Gatehouse... → Read More

Another Gatehouse paper in Florida moves to unionize

Newsroom employees at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune took steps to unionize Wednesday, just days after journalists at a sister publication, the Lakeland Ledger, officially became the first newspaper in modern Florida history to form a newsroom union. The move... → Read More

Ferguson's new police chief on 'being black and blue,' the press, his Miami roots

For years, South Florida reporters have wondered what Delrish Moss would do when he retired from the Miami Police Department. Moss served as a patrol officer and spent several years as a homicide investigator, but he put in... → Read More

None of Florida’s newspapers are unionized. That could change soon

The list of digital newsrooms moving to unionize has grown steadily since the start of 2015: Gawker, Vice, Huffington Post, Salon, and more. But the media’s new interest in organizing isn’t only for digital startups. Journalists at The... → Read More

How a regional newspaper pulled off a national investigation into sexual abuse by doctors

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week rolled out a remarkable, ambitious investigation into sexual assault and misconduct by doctors. The stories of women being abused by their physicians that the AJC uncovered are horrifying, and the impunity often enjoyed... → Read More

In Georgia, a small-town newspaper owner takes on a goliath waste company

Dink NeSmith is a man on a mission. He’s determined to stop the second largest waste management company in the country from dumping coal ash in a landfill in the rural South Georgia county where he grew up.... → Read More

How a newspaper veteran returned to journalism with a public radio station

One day last week, Nancy Klingener updated her Facebook profile to feature a picture of herself, in sunhat and sandals, biking down a street in Key West, Florida. It might be an image of sun-drenched contentment, but for... → Read More

In Tampa Bay, a singular newspaper kills off a rival in a bid for its own future

When the Tampa Bay Times announced this week that it had bought and closed its rival The Tampa Tribune, friends of mine who had worked at the Trib were saddened, and some were angry at how suddenly the... → Read More

'Miami is the best news town': A photojournalist reflects on a 40-year career

Over a 40-year career at The Miami Herald, Tim Chapman covered more than 50 hurricanes, rolled up on thousands of crime scenes and parachuted, figuratively speaking, into wars and coups around the region—though those who know him wouldn’t... → Read More

How two Florida papers partnered for a harrowing probe of state mental hospitals

In an unusual partnership, the Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune rolled out a joint investigation this week exposing horrific conditions in Florida's public mental hospitals. The stories are devastating: staffers alone on the wards being brutally... → Read More

A big investigation of segregated schools gets big results

It’s been eight months since the Tampa Bay Times rolled out an investigation into five elementary schools in Florida’s Pinellas County that had become “Failure Factories”—almost exclusively black, with some of the worst test scores in the state,... → Read More

How the Miami Herald's Steve Rothaus became an LGBT pioneer in mainstream journalism

When Steve Rothaus began covering the gay community for the Miami Herald nearly 20 years ago, he was the first reporter at a mainstream newspaper anywhere in the country to cover gay issues as a regular news beat.... → Read More

After a hospital reportedly pulls ads, Georgia paper says it won't back down

When a small Georgia daily pointed out recently that a local hospital board was apparently violating the state’s open-meetings law, the paper was hoping the board might swiftly change its ways. Instead, the hospital reportedly decided to cancel... → Read More

Meet the woman fighting behind the scenes to defend open government in Florida

Barbara Petersen has been fighting back efforts to make Florida’s government less transparent for more than 20 years. There haven’t been many battles more consequential than the one she’s waging right now. Over the last few years, there... → Read More

Florida appeals court reverses order to 'unpublish' information

A Florida appeals court has issued a brief but pointed rebuke to a Palm Beach County judge who believed he was within his rights to order a newspaper to “unpublish” information it had legally obtained—a clear win for... → Read More