Florida Field Notes is Northeast Florida’s outdoor journal. We are an independent news organization created to inform Florida voters about environmental issues that affect them, and to showcase the people, places, and events that make this region unique.
At Florida Field Notes, we are journalists, not advocates. We rely on proven reporting techniques, like multiple-sourced stories that are fact checked. We are funded by advertising, grants, and donations, but not by special interests.
If we advocate for anything, it’s for a sustainable Florida – a healthy ecosystem and a strong economy and we don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.
“Ecological destruction in Florida is nothing less than economic suicide,” said Gov. Rubin Askew in a 1972 speech. In the 1990s, Gov. Lawton Chiles said, “A clean environment means a strong economy.” In 2014, Florida surpassed New York as the third most-populated state in the U.S. with an additional 100 million visitors a year. It’s more important than ever to get the balance of business and the environment right.
Rapid growth has left some long-time residents wondering where “real Florida” went and some new residents wondering if there’s anything here beyond chain stores. We want our stories to showcase the “sense of place” that famous authors, like Pulitzer Prize winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, have written about so compellingly.
So whether you’ve been here five minutes or five generations, we want our stories to help you call this place “home.”
Florida Field Notes was founded by freelance writer Lisa Grubba, a longtime Florida resident and graduate student in the journalism program at Harvard University Extension School. We are a paying market for freelance contributors, editors, web and social media designers, and photographers. To get in touch, send an email to editor@floridafieldnotes.com, find us on Facebook at “Florida Field Notes,” or on twitter @lisagrubba.
Thanks for stopping by. Now come on along and ride shotgun with us as we cruise the rivers, walk the coastline, hike the uplands, and wade through the wetlands in our neck of the woods.
