Noted journalist Jeff Klinkenberg to discuss 'The Next Florida'

September 20, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Jeff Klinkenberg, an author, essayist and one of Florida’s leading newspaper columnists, will discuss the profound cultural shifts occurring in the Sunshine State on Sept. 26 at the University of Florida’s Bob Graham Center for Public Service.

Klinkenberg’s appearance kicks off the Graham Center’s series of talks on “The Next Florida,” a program looking at the emerging culture, politics and economics of Florida in the 21st Century. The speaker series is co-sponsored by the Bob Graham Center and UF’s College of Journalism and Communications. Klinkenberg will speak in Pugh Hall at 6 p.m. The program is free and open to the public.

Klinkenberg, who has worked at the St. Petersburg Times since 1977, can discuss Florida’s environmental terrain as well as its politics and emerging cultures. The author of several books, Klinkenberg grew up in Miami in the 1950s and began exploring the Florida Keys and the Everglades as a small boy. He started working at The Miami News when he was 16 and is a journalism graduate of UF. He’s in the UF Journalism College’s Hall of Fame.

As a writer, Klinkenberg has received praise from the dean of Florida writers, Carl Hiaasen. “If Jeff Klinkenberg isn’t careful, he might give journalism a good name,’’ Hiaasen said. “He has a rare eye for marvelous detail, and an affectionate ear for those small, wise, bittersweet voices that tell the true story of Florida.’’

A look at some of Klinkenberg’s recent columns illustrates his wide range, from a review of a former pinup model turned photographer to a story about an Apalachicola oysterman who survived the BP oil spill.

“Commercial fishers are superstitious souls,” Klinkenberg writes in that column. “When something good happens, they automatically want to knock on wood. They are always waiting for the other rubber boot to drop. Luck is too much like the tide, here today and gone tomorrow.”

Klinkenberg is a two-time winner of the Paul Hansell Distinguished Journalism Award, the highest honor in state journalism, given annually by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors to the writer with the best body of work. He has been an adjunct instructor in UF’s College of Journalism and was the first “Writer in Residence” for the University of South Florida’s Florida Studies Graduate program. In addition to the Times, his work has been published in leading magazines including Esquire, Outside, Travel and Leisure and Audubon.