Steve Bousquet

About

I love to listen, learn and write. For the past several years, I have been Opinion Editor at the South Florida Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, where I write and edit editorials and columns, help set the agenda for the paper's viewpoint section and work to engage readers and expand the paper's digital reach as much as possible. Our core readers, in Broward and Palm Beach counties, grew up reading printed newspapers and are very politically active. Over four-plus decades in journalism, I have worked at five radio stations and two television stations and at three major newspapers in Florida. At age 12, I got a job peddling The Westerly (R.I.) Sun, which was an "evening," not an afternoon paper. In New England, that often meant delivering papers after dark. I think that job got me hooked on news, and in high school, I was a paid "stringer" who phoned in details of our baseball games to the Providence Journal and the Sun. I moved to Miami in 1981 to work as a TV reporter for WPLG-TV, the ABC affiliate there, and at the time, one of the best local news operations in the country. It was a terrific place to work and a fabulous experience and I developed a lifelong fascination with and a fondness for South Florida (I know. I know. It's not always easy). The 1980s: Cocaine cowboys, spring break mayhem, Dan Marino and the Dolphins and scams of every kind (see the International Gold Bullion Exchange). After more than a decade, I moved to Tallahassee, where I have covered the state capital and statewide issues for three decades. I've loved every minute of covering the capital, but if I have a center of gravity in Florida, it is Fort Lauderdale where I first learned about this wild, wacky place, met my wife Nancy, bought my first house, started a family, chased so many interesting stories and made so many lifelong friends.