Breaking news in Southwest Florida
For journalists, no two days are ever the same, especially when it comes to breaking news. And this week it kept our Southwest Florida team very busy.
There was a 19-year-old motorcyclist who died in a collision with a school bus, a brawl at a high school basketball game, and a man who allegedly stabbed two children as they slept after his withdrawal from synthetic cannabis.
On top of all that, reporter Tomas Rodriguez told you about the Lehigh Acres Middle School cafeteria brawl where a sixth-grade girl approached a male student, pointing a BB gun in his face.
Weapons in schools is not something new to Tomas and his reporting. Last month, he reported that despite an increase in the number of weapons confiscated within their borders, Southwest Florida thankfully has escaped a growing trend of children injured or dying in the classroom.
So it should come as no surprise that after this week’s latest arrest, local school officials and law enforcement quickly offered assurances that everything is and will be done to keep it that way.
But breaking news isn’t just about crime and mayhem. It’s also about jumping on the latest news that may impact your lives.
It’s when U.S. News & World Report released its annual college rankings, and reporter Nikki Ross jumped in to provide a detailed look at where Florida colleges and universities ranked. She noted that a few even cracked the top 5 in a number of categories. As a mother of two who attend colleges in the state, it was definitely of interest to me.
It’s also breaking news when a city suddenly announces a massive boil water notice -- the first time it had done so in about 20 years. That’s pretty rare, especially for one of the largest cities in the state. So reporter Luis Zambrano made a beeline for Cape Coral City Hall to get some answers. The result was a story about what residents needed to know. And he’s still asking questions about how the city gave the ‘all clear’ the very next day after reporting that E. coli bacteria had been found during routine sampling of the city's water supply.
And when Amazon backed out of "Project Rainforest" in Southwest Florida, it was breaking news. Reporter Laura Layden confirmed this week that a Fort Myers distribution center was yet another casualty of the e-retail giant’s decision to pull back on its U.S. expansion plans. The company had planned to build a nearly 1.5 million-square-foot warehouse and distribution center off State Road 82 on the city's east side, near The Forum and close to Interstate 75.
Now for some breaking news of our own to share. A new feature has been added to our desktop and mobile web sites(not the app) that only our subscribers can access.
Called Hear This Story, it is an audio feature that lets subscribers have premium articles read aloud to you. And it’s a simple click on the button at the top of the story. The audio files are generated using a neural text-to-speech engine using a realistic AI newscasters’ style voice, named “Jenny.”
So check it out and let me know how we sound. You can reach me at wfullert@gannett.com.
Thanks and have a great week!
Best,
Wendy Fullerton Powell
Southwest Florida Region editor/ The News-Press/Naples Daily News
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Breaking news in Southwest Florida
