Media Day at the Capitol Set for February 19-20, 2025
In conjunction with FPA’s and IMS’s board of director meetings, members will be attending this year’s Media Day in Tallahassee on February 19-20. This is also the Legislature’s last interim committee week before Session begins on March 4.
The event will kick off with individual meetings in the Capitol with local legislators followed by a luncheon at the offices of Gannett’s lobbyist, Ron Book, who has graciously offered to host the event, and to invite local legislators. The next morning the group will have a breakfast meeting at the offices of FPA’s lobbyist, Kim Case, at Holland & Knight, with Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R. Fleming Island) invited to provide comments on hot issues expected during the upcoming Session.
We are asking board members who will be in Tallahassee to try to set up meetings with your local legislators this week so we are getting our message out. We will send you an example request for a meeting.
As in previous years, the key goal for Media Day is facetime with legislators so newspapers can draw attention to proposed legislation that is detrimental to the publication’s ability to keep their community informed. While bill numbers change year-to-year, important legislation to keep an eye on includes those that limit accessibility to records through the state’s Sunshine Law, weaken defamation lawsuit protections, or take public notices out of newspapers, all of which are a concern this legislative session in various forms.
In particular, Senate bill 386 (Sen. Harrell) has been filed seeking to replace newspaper notice of self-storage unit liens with “public websites that customarily conduct or advertise personal property auctions.” The bill has been referenced to the following committees: Judiciary (Clay Yarborough), Regulated Industries (Jennifer Bradley), and Rules (Kathleen Passidomo). There is no House bill yet but if it is filed the following committees will likely be assigned to hear it: Civil Justice Sub. (Traci Koster), Commerce Comm. (James Buchanan), Judiciary (Chuck Brannan).
Members should continue to form and maintain relationships with their own local legislators and delegations as these connections become very valuable as Session approaches and gets underway.
Resources are available to help members in this regard including talking points, a 2023 Florida-based survey from Mason Dixon Polling on the public’s reliance on newspapers for public notice, and a recent nationwide survey by America’s Newspapers on the trust citizens place in their community papers.