Opinion
By Dave Scott, 10-11-24
Residents of Fernandina Beach are watching the downfall of a once cherished 170-year-old local institution as it publicly suffers and slowly dies from self-inflicted wounds that will soon prove fatal.
The Fernandina News Leader newspaper, founded in 1854, is suffering a humiliating public death exacted by out of town liberal editor, Tracy Dishman, and a fanatically crazed crew of progressive/liberal writers she recruited, to complete the execution. The paper is now in journalism hospice with the end quickly approaching.
Steve Nicklas, a popular fixture at the paper for the past 34 years, three of them as an award-winning editor, bailed out this week explaining his motives here in the following:
“As a community, Fernandina Beach is taking a hard left turn, like a NASCAR driver heading into a curve. Up ahead, a roadblock of liberalism impedes the city’s future. And there is no pit stop for relief.
The News Leader, Florida’s oldest weekly newspaper, preserved its objectivity for most of its 170 years. But it has succumbed to the contagion of liberal bias infecting media outlets in our country — at a pandemic’s rate.
I was along for an exciting ride for the last 34 years. But my ride has ended as abruptly as Dale Earnhardt’s. Now I’m pursuing a new track for my popular financial/business columns. I’m joining celebrated columnists Dave Scott and Ken Timmerman at The Yulee News, an upstart newspaper with both colorful paper and electronic editions. And bold, enterprising ideas and plans. My columns are also carried by the Nassau County Record in Callahan and the online Citizens Journal Florida.
For me, it’s out with the old, staid News-Leader, and in with the dynamic, thriving Yulee News. I’d rather ride the energetic colt than the aging mare.
I have fond memories at the News-Leader, coming here from the New York Times newspaper group in 1989 to become executive editor. I was the youngest editor in the once-thriving group, full of vigor and bright-eyed ambition. We had an enterprising newsroom, as we won 12 Florida Press Association awards one year and 15 more the next.
I’ve been writing columns under various headings for 30 years, since transitioning from executive editor to the financial field. I most recently won three successive “Best of the Best News-Leader columnist” awards. I’m also proud of the numerous Associated Press writing awards I picked up in my career.
When Tracy Dishman came aboard she pretended to be balanced for her first year. Then she saddled the editorial page with far-left columnists, who moved here from New York, and added a young woman (also from New York) to write something about nothing.
A steady barrage of orchestrated critical letters to the editor from friends of Dishman’s peppered the editorial pages. The most distasteful and libelous being from former Democrat Club head, Sheila Cocchi, whose comments frequently appeared in the paper like open oozing sores.
With innuendo and falsities, letter writers can say anything they want under Dishman’s encouragement. She made it clear to me she didn’t like my column, and I didn’t hold back on my contempt for her and her obvious lack of any journalism knowledge or training.
Dishman apparently came from a magazine that covered recipes, washed-up whales and pillow talk. Hard news is not her skill, and the decline in subscriptions displays this. Meanwhile, she has flustered Publisher Foy Maloy bent over an ink barrel.
Dishman is feeding her readership with softball stories about whales washed up on out-of-state beaches and foxes and tattoo artists Actually, she is starving readers of real information in what is still a conservative town.
Encouraging critics and her pals to openly criticize me for my conservative learnings and writings was being a sitting duck. I had shots taken at me without me being able to return fire. No more.
Cocchi is one of the premier blowhards, although Barb Gingher challenges her for this title. These perpetually unhappy, pathetic leftists are the progressive rot creeping into our idyllic community. They move here from places they’ve left in ruins and proceed to tell us how to live and what to believe. Dishman is their enabler.
They say misery loves company. But not even misery loves their company. To most normal people, Dishman, Cocchi and Gingher are as popular as potholes behind your driveway. They hide behind a keyboard and launch negative attacks, as keyboard kamikazes.
We could start a misery index, gauged by miserable people like these. As more extreme far-left people move here, the higher the misery index goes. It is currently at a tipping point.
Fernandina Beach has changed drastically in the last 30 years. It used to be a hard-core conservative mill town. Now it’s watered down and polluted by these left-wing radicals, with no credibility, who are psychotic in the causes they embrace.
Unfortunately they’ve infiltrated the News-Leader. The once-heralded paper is headed toward a crash like Tiger Woods on a winding road. A pileup of cancelled subscriptions and financial struggles are ensuing.
I’ll be watching and reporting on the wreckage. Fortunately I won’t be in the fatal pileup.”
Steve Nicklas
The loss of insightful and well-respected writer Nicklas is a severe blow to the paper. Steve was the latest and most prominent to abandon the failing paper He joins the fledgling print and online Yulee News as it steamrolls across Nassau County’s majority conservative landscape, picking up disgruntled News Leader readers, advertisers and subscribers.
Teetering amid the carnage, like a wounded and stunned General Custer at Little Big Horn, is Editor Dishman, whose alignment with Nassau County’s minority liberal/progressive clique is the paper’s coup de grâce.
Hapless, impotent Publisher Foy Maloy can only look on helplessly as there is no hope of cavalry riding to the rescue of this journalistic massacre. Maloy and Dishman long ago abandoned the basic five W’s and H — the who, what, when, where , why and how — the basic formula of journalism, and have become ideological enforcers, masquerading as media.
The paper’s owners at Community Newspaper Inc. can’t be happy with the sagging NL’s advertising revenue and subscription numbers. I’ve heard it’s sitting at the bottom of that chain’s list of owned newspapers, a position that must be causing some serious discussions and gnashing of teeth in its Athens, GA headquarters.
Steve is a major loss as his popular award-winning state syndicated column will appear weekly in the local online Citizens Journal Florida, another fledgling media predator that’s taking bites out of the News Leader’s readership that is becoming weary of Dishman’s leftist antics.
Steve’s departure is even more stinging as earlier this year readers of the News Leader voted him “Best Columnist” in the area, the third consecutive year he’s been so honored. This is a distinction that’s well-earned as readers have to cut the ballot out of the paper, fill it in, address an envelope, buy postage, and then mail it. This means they put thought and effort into their decision.
In addition to Steve, the News Leader had others recently walk out the door including Dr. Pat Turley Brown, a noted zoologist and gifted nature writer and long-time columnist Dickie Anderson and her “From The Porch” local musings.
Full discloser here. I wrote a column similar to this one for the News Leader for two years before Maloy told me it was being discontinued in 2014 because the paper was losing subscribers because of it…..almost 20 he lamented.
Since I was never compensated for writing it there was no financial harm and I parleyed it into this blog and a column for the Yulee News, Citizens Journal, and the national Biz Pac Review. When Maloy dropped it people accounting for more than 60 subscriptions (many multiple) emailed me telling me they cancelled the NL because my column was no longer being carried. I was flattered and Maloy was now down 80.
Total weekly circulation of locally focused newspapers fell by 40% between 2015 and 2020 says the Pew Research Center. Folks like liberal editor Dishman and an indifferent Maloy are major causes.
So what’s left in the editorial rubble at the News Leader? It now boasts a writer whose first column focused on squirrels, promising there’ll be many more about these exciting backyard rodent pests. It harbors a humor columnist, Jennifer Silverman, a narcissist armed with an infinite supply of personal pronouns, whose subject matter doesn’t extend beyond her own nose, who has no idea she’s penning a humor column and must be baffled by the resulting laughter. And then there is the grumpy New York transplant, Chuck Oliva, whose mug shot portraying a puzzled guy in a rumpled t-shirt staring at his shoes symbolizes his leftist subject matter. This is a lineup folks would have paid a midway carney to see in a freak show at a small county fair years ago.
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Speaking Of Baffled People: On Oct. 3 after returning to the White House from a flyover of Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina a reporter asked a clearly befuddled Joe Biden, “What do the states in the storm zone need — after what you saw today?”
“Oh, storm zone? I didn’t know which storm you’re talking about,” Biden replied. “They are getting everything they need — they’re very happy across the board.”
At this point, it’s obvious that Biden’s cognitive decline has reached a point where people are questioning whether we actually have a president right now. His assessment that storm victims are “very happy” despite widespread destruction, which includes a rising death toll and people still in need of being rescued, according to those on the ground, only reinforces that belief.
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Speaking Of Hurricanes: A variety of local Fernandina businesses and organizations have rallied to collect and deliver much needed basic supplies to folks in Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina that were severely impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
I’ve been told that among items most requested are bug repellent, baby bottles, baby formula, baby food, charcoal and handheld can openers.
Among those sites collecting and distributing supplies are PJD’s Beer & Wine Garden, 12 South 2nd Street; The Boat House, 30 South 2nd Street; American Legion Post 54, 626 South 3rd Street, all downtown Fernandina, and VFW Post 4351, 96086 Wade’s Place, Fernandina, under Shave Bridge.
Folks can drop off contributions at these locations knowing they will get where they are most needed.
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College Game Day Take Over: This Saturday, October 12, from noon to 6 pm. Tony Bonic and his popular “Smoke N Da Cockpit” crew of current and former air traffic controllers will take over the kitchen at PJD’s Beer & Wine Garden. The menu includes such popular items as sliced pork sliders, Wisconsin beer brats with sauerkraut, a spicy beef sandwich and sausage dogs.
Republished with the author’s permission. Read The Dave Scott Blog– subscribe Free
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
