CONTRIBUTORS POST
DUNKELBERGER
A.G. GANCARSKI covers the Jacksonville political scene for
FloridaPolitics.com, combining a deep bench of sources with relentless reporting and an irreverent style. In writing about Brian Hughes, A.G. treated the political communicator as an artist — fitting, given Hughes’ background in film studies. The piece is intended to read like an artist profile, providing insight into one of the most iconoclastic and effective people working in his sphere.
JIM ROSICA, Florida Politics’ man in Tallahassee, never thought
he’d be back in journalism. No, he was going to law school to become a big-shot attorney. Then he graduated into the Great Recession and ... well, you know how that went. He credits (or blames) Brendan Farrington for recruiting him as the AP’s session reporter in 2011, which led to a stint as the Tampa Tribune’s statehouse reporter, then to his current post. His hobbies are changing diapers and cleaning spit-up. (Did we mention he’s almost 50 with an infant and a toddler?)
SCOTT POWERS is an Ohio native who grew up everywhere
as the son of a career military officer, and only ever wanted to be a journalist. He wrote for newspapers in Texas, Ohio and Florida [The Orlando Sentinel] for 30 years, and now writes, from Orlando, for FloridaPolitics.com. He also is author of the new suspense-thriller novel, “The Roswell Swatch.” He and Connie have three now-adult children. He wears hats.
ROSANNE DUNKELBERGER is the editor-at-large of INFLUENCE and contributed stories about books and an Emerald Coast getaway to this issue. Most of her career in Florida’s capital city was spent as editor of Tallahassee Magazine. She leaves the political reporting to her husband, Lloyd, who is now covering his 34th Session. Rosanne recently celebrated her 60th birthday and is wondering where both her youth and her upper lip got off to.
ALAN SNEL covered the business side of sports, including spring
training facilities, for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel and the Tampa Tribune. He lives in Vero Beach, not too far from Old Dodgertown.
MARY BETH TYSON grew up on the small island town of Cedar Key, located on the west coast of Florida in a multigenerational commercial fishing family. Watching the culture of fishing become endangered is what led to her desire to learn the art of photography. After turning her art into a business, she turned her attention to 10 | INFLUENCE SPRING 2017
WALLHEISER
ROSICA shooting weddings with a true documentary approach. Mary Beth and her husband, Ryan, live in Tallahassee where they are raising their three young sons and are advocates for their oldest with Down syndrome. There’s a very good chance this bio was written from a school pickup line. A Jill-of-all-trades, JENNA BUZZACCO-FOERSTER has spent more than a decade covering government and politics (and everything in between). When she’s not doing a yeoman’s job for FloridaPolitics.com and INFLUENCE, you can find her sipping cocktails and reading her mystery-of-the-month book club book by the pool.
AUDREY POST spent almost 30 years working as a reporter and editor at newspapers, primarily in Florida (The Palm Beach Post, Miami Herald, The Tampa Tribune, and Tallahassee Democrat) before the Great Recession forced out many veteran journalists. She opted for academia and is completing her doctorate in Mass Communication at Florida State University, where her research focuses on mass media and her newsroom background makes her question a lot of the conclusions ivory-tower scholars have made in earlier research. MITCH PERRY, Florida Politics’ Tampa Bay area correspondent,
hails from another Bay Area — the one on the Left Coast, otherwise known as San Francisco. After burning out in his attempt to be an actor, he reinvented himself as a newsman, first as a reporter/ Saturday Night News Anchor at KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California, before migrating east to become the Assistant News Director at WMNF Radio in Tampa in 2000, where he still hosts a weekly radio show on politics and other things. He also lives (and dies) with his beloved Golden State Warriors.
MARK WALLHEISER is driven to document the world around
us with a craft honed over the past 42 years of professional photography. Besides numerous state and national awards for his photojournalism, he’s been twice nominated individually for journalism’s highest honor — the Pulitzer Prize, once in 1988 in the public service category and again in 2016 for his coverage of the presidential elections. (That viral photo of candidate Trump and the baby at an Alabama rally? Yep, that was Mark.) His work was part of the Biloxi Sun Herald’s 2006 entry that won the Pulitzer in public service for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina.