This week marks my 15th anniversary as Editor of The Bradenton Times. The milestone, which comes just a few months after turning 50, has given me the chance to reflect on a decade and a half during which I’ve had the opportunity to do work that I love, in and for a community that will always be dear to me.
TBT had been online for less than a year when I took the helm. Joe McClash, still a county commissioner, had embarked on an ambitious effort to provide an alternative local news source that was not encumbered by conflicts of interest with local advertisers, whom he felt were preventing issues such as growth, development, and phosphate mining from receiving impartial coverage.
Days after I came aboard, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe occurred. A blowout caused an explosion on a semi-submersible offshore drilling rig, leaving eleven crewmen dead and leading to the largest marine oil spill in history. Needless to say, that gave us a lot to write about.
The county administrator was locked in a silly feud with a local businessman who ran a wildly popular beach cafe out of the county concession on Holmes Beach. My in-depth investigation into the matter gave our fledgling publication its first story to garner more than a thousand reads, and I launched my regular Sunday column with a piece opposing the high-speed rail boondoggle that would have placed a train between Tampa and Orlando.
At the time, we were a daily publication, and the pace was beyond grueling. It was my first posting as Editor-in-Chief, and our ambitious slate of coverage, combined with my on-the-job learning, often saw me working more than 70 hours a week. Little by little, we evolved from a minor local government newsletter to a full-fledged local newspaper, adding entertainment, sports, arts, and much more.
We found a few veteran reporters to cover local government, including Doug Miles and the late great Joe Shea. I convinced a reluctant intern from USF who started just after me to name the weekly historical column she pitched Sunday Favorites. We eventually brought on our first investigative journalist, John Rehill, who also covered local government. We continued to earn a reputation for being a place where you could find stories, or at least perspectives, that you wouldn’t find elsewhere. And there were victories, such as Long Bar Pointe and the election of underdog, non-developer-sponsored candidates we had endorsed, including former Manatee County District 2 Commissioner Michael Gallen and school board members like Julie Aranibar and Karen Carpenter.
However, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC opened the floodgates for dark money in PAC politics, and we quickly saw that things would never be the same. Joe himself was the first local victim, losing a seat he had held for 22 years by the slimmest of margins after developers poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into scurrilous attack ads.
The political divide of 2015 hit the community hard, and the paper nearly shuttered following the 2016 presidential election. At the last moment, Joe decided to keep it alive as a weekly. For the next several years, I curated a much more modest Sunday edition that allowed us to tread water during those dark times when we had to acknowledge that local government reform might not be a realistic goal. We decided that if we could not afflict the comfortable, we could at least comfort the afflicted.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant increase in our readership. Trapped in my house, compulsively consuming data, I put out what now seems like unimaginable volumes of content, and we emerged from the pandemic as the paper of record for our community. I recreated the investigative journalist/local government reporter role and recruited Dawn Kitterman, who had been managing community Facebook groups, demonstrating tremendous potential for such work.
Things remained bleak in 2022, as we witnessed a developer takeover of the board and its administration to a degree that would have been unthinkable just a few years before. However, once again, from tragedy came opportunity, and frustrated citizens turned to us to find out who was responsible for the ravaging of their community. Readership continued to swell, and we witnessed something of a miracle in 2024, when an activated community went up against record political spending and emerged victorious. It was, hands down, the highlight of my more than two decades in journalism.
Getting to do this job and fill this role has been one of the great honors of my life. What’s more, I recognize that I am one of the lucky people in this world who gets to do what they love for a living. I am grateful beyond words to our publisher for his dedication to keeping this outlet afloat. I am grateful to all of the talented and dedicated reporters I have had on my team over the years. And I am grateful to you, the readers, who have allowed me to speak truth to power in a meaningful way.
The free press has never faced an attack like the one it is currently under. It is my sincere hope that in another fifteen years, we will still be right here, reflecting on the additional victories we are able to achieve. There may be some dark days ahead, but I look forward to our publication continuing to cast some light into that darkness.
Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch is also the author of three novels and a short story collection available here.
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kmskepton
Congratulations on a well-earned anniversary. Thank you for your hard work. We need you!
Saturday, April 26 Report this
crcoryea
Congratulations on your milestone! It is funny to say but I remember all of these circumstances you listed, it was mostly during a time when I was in various roles for Manatee County Government. At the end of my first year with Manatee County Commissioner McClash was voted into office. He was a tough Commissioner, hard working and a fact finder. I can name the few others that worked that way as I worked for 33 different Commissioners and of course the people during my time with Manatee County. I wasn’t sure about The Bradenton Times when it was first launched but i read it and realized we needed it. When covid-19 hit it was an every hour struggle to keep up with current information. I’m still proud of our leadership team during that time whether people agreed or disagreed with our process because I know everything we put into it wasn’t for us but for the community. But Mitch, what i wanted to say is that you’ve always been fair, well researched and never held back. When i agreed to have you interview our County Musgrave/Lena Road Property Purchase proposal team, everyone thought I was nuts but because I knew we had the best of the best working on this research and analysis for over 2 years I wasn’t nervous. We didn’t know each other then but you wrote a factually based story that validated why this project was needed for the 50-100 year approach. Today, some 5 years later, those projections, trends and needs have been confirmed. Not long after that a very public campaign to move me out of government ensued and the Bradenton Times again was fair in their reporting. In hindsight, it worked out really well for me to start my own consulting business and continue to do work that matters, where I am thriving today. But I would agree with you that the November 5th 2024 election in Manatee County results were tops for me because the PEOPLE spoke and won. Keep up the great work, cheers to you, your team of wonderful reporters, your publisher and the readers of The Bradenton Times.
Saturday, April 26 Report this
mcems1986
Mitch, congratulations on your tenure with TBT. It has been said by Cheri, but you and staff reporting has been spot on. Investigative, fact filled and what we want to have in Manatee County, awareness. Here's to many more years, keep up the great work..
Saturday, April 26 Report this
David Daniels
Mitch, your writing is sharp and witty. When I read your opinion pieces, I often stop to re-read some quip and think, what a perfect way to say that. Our community is fortunate to have The Bradenton Times doing precisely what the framers envisioned a free press to do. Let's hope the court imposes a proper penalty against the developer-backed losers who have filed frivolous, anti - first amendment lawsuits.
Saturday, April 26 Report this
nellmcphillips
Congratulations Mitch! It was nice to settle into Manatee County almost 6 years ago, finding a newspaper that was investigative and factual. Keep up the good work.
Sunday, April 27 Report this
rjckeuka4
You do great work Mitch...and Dawn too!!! Congrats on your milestone. Thanks particularly to the TBT for reporting on the '20-'24 County Commission's clown show and to Joe for his 5-page summary of their fumbles and mumbles! August 18, '24 was a banner day for the County ousting KVO, Satcher, et. al. due in no small part to all of your efforts. Cheryl got it right...objective, well researched, courageous, fair, thorough...that's been the character of your reporting. I know you'll keep it up! R. Correnti
Sunday, April 27 Report this
mcmplm
Without your excellent reporting and Joe's support, Manatee County citizens would be "lost at sea" trying to find out what is really going on with local government. Maybe a little more reporting on Bradenton City Council ?. Thanks for printing my letters.
Mike Meehan
Monday, April 28 Report this