Nate Monroe - "How do you Know?" - USA Today Columnist Speaks Truth to Power

Nate Monroe writes a column about Florida for USA Today,
exploring how power works in the gilded, strange human heart of
the modern Republican Party. His intrepid  irony and rapier
wit have made him a reader favorite but have also ruffled some
significant feathers. Previously an investigative reporter for
Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union, Nate focused on covering
Jacksonville City Hall, the largest municipal government in
Florida. His most notable deep-dive exposed a massive, nefarious
scheme to sell Jacksonville's city-owned power company to Florida
Power & Light ... and led to an indictment and jail time for
the local CEO, an enormous win for justice and transparency. For
this excellent work, he was surveilled and threatened. Nate says,
“It was obviously surreal to open a batch of records that I had
some sense was about the controversy and to actually discover
that there was stuff about me in there” - his full Social
Security number, driver’s license and a list of friends dating
back to childhood — information not readily available as a public
record. Nate's lived experience as a target of attack on the
media and honest reporting is emblematic of the challenges facing
democracy today. Still, Nate loves his job; he's built for it. An
old school journalist who came up through the ranks, Nate remains
undaunted about speaking truth to power. Prior to arriving in
Jacksonville in 2013, he was a small town beat reporter for
newspapers in the Deep South, where he wrote about hurricanes,
small-town corruption, oil spills, Army Corps screw-ups, Mardi
Gras, and bingo nights at the senior citizens center. Nate's work
is absolutely critical to keeping our democracy healthy and
alive. 










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