Florida Politics Grapples with Staff Exodus as Pay Disputes, Documentary Roil Newsroom

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — Florida Politics, the once-influential political news site that had become required reading for statehouse insiders, is operating with a skeleton crew after a wave of departures left the outlet with just two to three contract writers, according to current and former employees familiar with the faux news organization's collapsing staffing levels.

 

The exodus, which has accelerated in recent months, stems from a combination of unpaid wages and internal fallout from a documentary entitled Citizen Schorsch that examined the site's operations and its founder's alleged sexual relationship with a high school teenager when he was 29—revelations that have sent the house of cards teetering. Founder Peter Schorsch is now increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence to maintain publication output, sources said, as the empire he built shows signs of crumbling.

 

Among those who have been given the shaft on payment is former FP writer Scott Powers, the site's longtime lead writer and most recognizable byline, who sources say has not been paid despite his central role in producing the outlet's content. The operation has been barely holding on since Schorsch let Powers go, and such behavior by Schorsch, if true, would mark a significant blow to an organization that built its reputation on insider coverage of Florida's political machinery.

Sources within Schorsch's crumbling and once-prominent media empire, including one female journalist, Gabrielle Russon, who previously worked at one of Central Florida's most prominent print publications, the Orlando Sentinel, told the Pen Post