Influence100
Gary Fineout’s passion for reporting is doubtless fueled by his curiosity, but also by a decades-old blend of indignity and moral outrage. Many were the days when Fineout would storm into the Tallahassee Democrat newsroom, ranting “I knew it, I knew it!” when, say, some other newspaper did a story he had pleaded with his editors to do. He had no qualm about strolling up to the dais in the middle of city commission meetings to listen in if he saw two commissioners having a private sidebar on some issue. That was long after he gained a reputation at the old Florida Flambeau, the student newspaper at Florida State University, for being a tenacious pain in the ass. One co-worker once had T-shirts made saying, “Fire Him! G’s the Worst.” “It involved a multitude of transgressions,” Fineout once explained. Fineout worked his way through several Capitol bureaus, eventually landing at the Miami Herald, where he was famously and ignominiously laid off by the corporate pinheads he oft inveighed against. Not before, however, his reporting on lobbyists footing the bill for lawmakers’ trips and parties almost single-handedly led to the creation of the gift ban. More recently, Fineout—now with The Associated Press—won the wire service’s Best of the States Award for pressing his ear to the door of a closed House GOP caucus while Speaker Steve Crisafulli circled the wagons in opposition to Medicaid expansion. James Rosica is a journalist and lawyer who covers politics for FloridaPolitics.com. Previously, he was state government reporter for The Tampa Tribune and a court reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat.
124 | INFLUENCE FALL 2015
PHOTO: Phil Sears
Gary Fineout {media}