Ron Matus, Saint Petersburg Times

On Tuesday, September 26 Ron Matus, a reporter from the St. Pete Times, visited our Public Affairs Reporting class to discuss the ins and outs of a being a reporter. Ron joined the St. Pete Times in 2002 after spending five years at the Gainesville Sun as an environmental reporter. In addition, he is a beat reporter that focuses on state education. He gave us his personal experience as a reporter, advice about the business and discussed a story he wrote about a professor at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Ron also explained to us how much work it took to write this particular story, including the process it took to gather the public records to write a credible story with proper sources.
His story about the FAMU professor was very interesting. Titled, “FAMU instructor sails through hot water,” this was a story about a professor who has a huge track record of being ineffective and corrupt, although he is kept around for some reason by the university. In 1996, Bill Proctor was elected into the Leon County commission and managed to be re-elected three times even after falling into “political hot water” more than once. He worked in former Governor Lawton Chile’s administration and was known to be missing in action. In the Leon County Commission he compiled the worst attendance record for special meetings and workshops. He turned in campaign finance and financial disclosure reports late garnering huge fines, had his drivers license suspended more than once, owed about $90,000 in taxes back in 2004 and failed to pay student loans according to public records found by Ron Matus. In addition, he received a written reprimand from FAMU after repeated accounts of unexcused absences. Yet, they still remain to keep him as a Visiting Faculty member and pay him $50,000 a year.
We learned a lot from Ron not only about Public Affairs reporting, but also gathering records for any story we may need to write. One notable thing he taught us that I didn’t know was there is an office in Charlie Christ’s cabinet that focuses on public records. From my understanding there is always supposed to be an office of this sort, but it has been made more transparent through the Charlie Christ administration. The office will make sure that entities, which have records requested, will provide that information to the requester in a reasonable amount of time. Ron noted personally that FAMU sort of ignored his request for a few weeks, and once he contacted this public records office FAMU got back to him immediately with the information he needed. In the end Ron ended up with a folder of hundreds of pages, which were all important to the information provided in his story.
I learned a lot in the session Ron Matus hosted and was glad to have the opportunity to ask him questions. Another important lesson I learned was how difficult a reporter’s schedule can be. His hours were 8-5 on a regular basis and also having two children doesn’t help. It is commendable at how he balances his life with the rigorous schedule of a reporter.