Sean Lengell, reporter for the the Tampa Tribune, whose newsbeat was Seminole Heights, is now handling the Ybor City and Housing Authority beats. He had a good sense of what was going in Seminole Heights not only from living in the neighborhood, and from attending all of the various civic association meetings and neighborhood activities but also from being a member of the Southeast Seminole Heights email group. He and Sherry Ackerman did extensive reporting on the anti-prostitution activities and as part of which he participated in some of our late night Exercise Club walks. This reporting significantly helped our efforts to deal with prostitution problems. Sean is a good guy and real "fair and balanced" reporter showing all sides to this neighborhood. He will be missed.
His replacement is Kathy Steele whom he used to work with at a newspaper in Georgia. Sean gives her a good reccomendation. We look forward to working with her. Welcome!
One of the many reason Seminole Heights had a lot of success in its civic activism has been in having good relationships with the newspaper reporters covering the area.
In some people's minds having a reporter listening in on a neighborhood email group could be risky because negative issues could be brought out to the rest of the city. My response is "so what". This is life in the neighborhood, good and bad but at least interesting.
With the St. Peterburg Times we are fortunate to have Sherri Day on the SE Sem Heights email group from which she has already done a story about WILD 98.7 and their antics in the hood. (a future posting).
A little turnabout reporting on the reporters!
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