As we ruminate further on the decline of newspaper journalism (Holy Smoke! The Detroit papers will be available only online five days of the week!), let’s celebrate something that makes newspapers so important to us – great columnists.
Florida is blessed with several of the best in the nation, and luckily the University Press of Florida has begun a program of preserving great newspaper columns as part of a series on Florida culture, edited by University of South Florida professors Gary Mormino and Raymond Arsenault. Mormino and Arsenault offer a master's degree in Florida Studies. Woo hoo!
Jeff Klinkenberg of the St. Petersburg Times is one of Florida’s greatest blessings and his latest collection, Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators (University Press of Florida, $24.95), is another entry in his “Real Florida” crusade against anything false and manufactured with the stench of a theme park attached.
Klinkenberg — that's him wrestling an alligator at right — hits the road to find off-the-beaten trail people and places, examples of the old, weird and wonderful Florida.
Imagine this scene: You pull up at a desolate Florida Panhandle gas pump to fill up the guzzler. There’s a picture of that bad-ass cop on the pump, warning you that if you drive off without paying you are dogmeat. Then the real-life cop pictured on the gas pump pulls up next to you. What happens next, of course, is a great story.
Great, serendipitious things like that happen to Klinkenberg.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2008.