Bob Norman (born April 12, 1969) is a journalist in South Florida who joined

WPLG WPLG (channel 10) is a television station in Miami, Florida, United States, affiliated with ABC. The station is owned by Berkshire Hathaway as its sole broadcast property. WPLG's studios are located on West Hallandale Beach Boulevard in Pembrok ...

-Channel 10 in 2011 as an on-air

investigative reporter Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years res ...

. Previously he worked for several years as a weekly newspaper and online columnist. He broke the corruption story of $1 billion

Ponzi scheme A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, the scheme leads victims to believe that profits are comin ...

operator

Scott Rothstein Scott W. Rothstein (born June 10, 1962) is an American disbarred lawyer, convicted felon, and the former managing shareholder, chairman, and chief executive officer of the now-defunct Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm. He funded an extravag ...

's October 27, 2009 flight to Morocco under suspicious circumstances. Rothstein, who returned to face inquiries, is a former Fort Lauderdale attorney investigated by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

and arrested on 1 December 2009. In 2008 Bob Norman reported an unusual circumstance following the murder of Melissa Britt Lewis, employee of Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler (RRA) law firm, wherein the prosecuting attorney in the Lewis murder case came to work with RRA two months after the murder. Rothstein has not been connected to the murder, however murder victim Ms. Lewis had been close to Debra Villegas, RRA Chief Operating Officer, whose husband Tony Villegas was identified as the murderer by the City of Plantation Police represented by Scott Rothstein. Bob Norman, who has also exposed other public corruption such as illegal activities of

Broward County, Florida Broward County ( , ) is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with over 1.94 m ...

public officials, formerly wrote for

New Times Broward-Palm Beach ''New Times Broward-Palm Beach'' is a news website that until 2016 also published a weekly print newspaper; it is part of the Voice Media Group chain. The original paper split off from the ''Miami New Times'' in 1997, under the auspices of th ...

, and browardpalmbeach.com as well as the Miami New Times, all owned by

Village Voice Media Village Voice Media or VVM is a newspaper company. It began in 1970 as a weekly alternative newspaper in Phoenix. The company, founded by Michael Lacey (editor) and Jim Larkin (publisher), was then known as New Times Inc. (NTI) and the publicati ...

. His work exposing wrongdoing at the North Broward Hospital District (Broward Health) prompted then-Gov. Jeb Bush to fire the CEO and General Counsel as well as remove six of seven members of the board from that agency. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Norman reported on chronic failures of the federal Immigration and Naturalization Services department. Mistakes made here in South Florida led to Mohamed Atta's being allowed into the U.S. -- to subsequently live in Broward County and train at Florida flight schools—when he could have been deported had rules been followed. The piece also detailed the undue influence and pressure on immigration agents by the airline industry to rush their work, sometimes at the expense of safety. For that reporting, Tom Brokaw presented Norman with a prestigious

Livingston Award The Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan are American journalism awards issued to media professionals under the age of 35 for local, national, and international reporting. They are the largest, all-media, general reporting prizes in Ame ...

for Young Journalists in 2002. His reporting is also credited with leading to the criminal conviction of Hollywood City Commissioner Keith Wasserstrom, criminal corruption charges against Deerfield Beach Mayor Al Capellini, Broward County Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin and the removal of Broward Circuit Judge Ana Gardiner for improper conduct and the resignation of Broward County Judge Claudia Robinson from the bench after Norman's work prompted a Judicial Qualifications Commission investigation into alleged favoritism on the bench. Until 2006, Norman maintained his online column The Daily Pulp (former site). Norman then moved his posts to The Daily Pulp: Bob Norman's Blog on browardpalmbeach.com. Norman's blog remained with New Times Broward-Palm Beach until 2011, when his blog then became part of WPLG-Channel 10's website A resident of Plantation, Florida, Bob Norman is married to South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigations editor Brittany Wallman. and is a graduate of the University of Kentucky. Bob Norman moved to Broward County in 1998, after working 5 years as a crime reporter in Fort Myers, Florida.

Journalism awards

Bob Norman has won several journalism awards, for example, 1st Place in the National Association of Newspaper Columnists awards, 1st Place in the 2007 "Column-Political" by the Association of Alternative Weeklies, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, in National Reporting, 2001, 1st Place in the Society of Professional Journalists in 2002 for Print Weekly/Monthly (Non-Deadline Reporting), and 1st Place in the National Association of Black Journalists, 2005.

Bob Norman's blog: ''The Daily Pulp''

Describing his blog in 2007 as doing "fair to middling", by 2009 it surged in reader engagement, based on the volume of online postings, over allegations of public corruption in Broward County School Board construction which preceded the arrest, removal from office and conviction on corruption charges of former School Board Members Beverly Gallagher and Stephanie Kraft. The

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

format allows online readers to publicly post inside information and diverse opinions. Readers interested in news stories can review original evidence with links to court filings, emails, and videos. In respect to technology, Bob Norman's blog, the Daily Pulp, is not novel compared with competing media which typically have blogs such as the

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a List of communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida, city in western Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County and the M ...

, the

South Florida Sun-Sentinel The ''Sun Sentinel'' (also known as the ''South Florida Sun Sentinel'', known until 2008 as the ''Sun-Sentinel'', and stylized on its masthead as ''SunSentinel'') is the main daily newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as well as surrounding Br ...

, and

the Palm Beach Post ''The Palm Beach Post'' is an American daily newspaper serving Palm Beach County in South Florida, and parts of the Treasure Coast. On March 18, 2018, in a deal worth US$42.35 million, ''The Palm Beach Post'' and ''The Palm Beach Daily News'' we ...

. However, for those interested in politics and public corruption, in contrast to other local online media the Daily Pulp is only one click from the home page, and posting is not impeded by a registration process. Ease of blog use and focused community attention to current stories on politics and public corruption enabled Bob Norman's Blog to reach high frequency of public participation for the limited number of subjects covered. For example, in response to columns on Scott Rothstein's Ponzi scheme, readers often submitted 100-200 online postings within the first 24 hours. According to Alexa, the weekly

'
browardpalmbeach.com
is ranked 7,917 in web traffic rank in the U.S., compared with newspapers that cover a wider variety of subjects, ranked 797 for the daily

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miamiherald.com
922 for the daily

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sun-sentinel.com
and 1,919 for

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pbpost.com

Exposing Corruption

Bob Norman's articles have focused on

public corruption Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption m ...

, often with early and relentless pursuit of officials who are later arrested and removed from office, for example former Broward County Commissioner Josephus "Joe" Eggelletion and former City of Deerfield Beach Mayor Al Capellini. Bob Norman has lamented staff downsizing and the weakening of traditional daily newspapers such as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Miami Herald, and the Palm Beach Post, competitors to the New Times. He has offered congratulations to reporters in competing media outlets when they are prompt and accurate, and criticism when they are slow or inaccurate in exposing public corruption. Bob Norman has criticized the connections between lobbyists and public officials, for example State Attorney Michael J. Satz, elected and reelected since 1976, for slow action in dealing with corrupt Broward County officials who are ultimately brought to justice by Federal investigators, including officials who have received campaign contributions from the same lobbyists as Mr. Satz.

Books

''Florida Pulp Nonfiction: True crime in the Sunshine State'', 2006

References

External links