Soon, it will just be Steve Bousquet, Mary Ellen Klas, and whatever fresh faces have come from Indiana covering the state capital for the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald.
Not that too many lawmakers or lobbyists, especially those working for Big Sugar, will be upset by the news that reporter Michael Van Sickler will be leaving the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau after the 2015 Legislative Session. Van Sickler, who previously covered St. Petersburg’s City Hall, is headed to an editor’s desk in the newspaper’s Tampa bureau, according to sources familiar with Times Publishing Co.’s operations.
Van Sickler’s coverage of the real estate crash during the last decade while the newspaper’s planning and growth reporter earned him recognition in the book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer. While serving in Tallahassee, Van Sickler turned heads with his profile of former House Speaker Will Weatherford and an investigation, co-authored by Craig Pittman, into fundraising trips by GOP lawmakers to a hunting ranch in Texas that were financed by the sugar industry.
Van Sickler is not the only reporter leaving Tallahassee; his wife, Kathleen McGrory is exiting the Miami Herald to join the Times as a reporter covering health care issues.
Rumor has it that Van Sickler and/or McGrory was close to taking a position with the Palm Beach Post, but decided to stick/transfer to Florida’s largest newspaper.
Van Sickler, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, has been with the Times since 2003, after stints with the Ledger and the Post. McGrory has been with the Herald since 2006 and has covered breaking news, Miami City Hall and Miami-Dade schools.
