About

 

Susan Cooper Eastman is a Florida journalist with more than 20 years experience covering the news in the media hothouse that is the Sunshine State.  She brings a storyteller’s sense of narrative and an investigative reporter’s dogged pursuit of story to her work. She also brings heart.  She doesn’t just report, she digs deep. She doesn’t just interview, she listens hard. And she puts people at the center of her journalism.

Susan’s journalism has been recognized with  more than 15 state and national writing awards, including citations from the National Association of Black Journalists, the Green Eyeshade Awards, the Sunshine State Awards and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

She began her career as a freelance correspondent at the St. Petersburg Times (Tampa Bay Times). She wrote many daily and weenkend stories, handled multiple municipal beats in small Pinellas County towns and covered dance and theater as a reporter and critic. In turn, she was schooled in the highest standards of the journalism profession by the editors she worked with in the Tampa and St. Petersburg bureaus.

She then worked for 15 years as a writer for the Florida alternative press, writing intensely reported long-form narrative, breaking news, investigative stories and short tweets, blog posts and many witty bits.

She has been a  staff writer for the Weekly Planet (Creative Loafing Tampa) reporting on the Tampa Bay Area, Miami New Times and New Times-Broward Palm Beach reporting on South Florida.  She covered Northeast Florida for eight years as a staff writer for Folio Weekly.

She currently reports on Northeast Florida as a freelance writer for Thomson Reuters. Her reporting  on early voting, labor unrest at ports and other breaking stories has been published in the Chicago Tribune, the Oakland Press, the Huffington Post and other media.

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