Florida Flambeau/FSView Photograph Collection

“Around the turn of 1915, Ruby Leach, a young upstart at the Florida State College for Women, approached the editor of the Tallahassee Democrat about their lack of coverage of the College. She was told she could write two columns per week, for which she would be paid the princely sum of $1.

It didn't take long for President Edward Conradi, however, to appreciate that the campus generated enough news to warrant its own paper, and thus the seeds for the Florida Flambeau were planted.

On January 23, 1915, the first issue of the Florida Flambeau hit newsstands, so to speak. Actually, for many years, the paper was delivered to students in a little red wagon, affectionately name the "Flambeau Flier."

For years, the Flambeau was staunchly conservative, rarely running commentaries and only criticizing administration with proper approval.

As society evolved, so too did the Flambeau. When it was first offered advertisements from cigarette companies, the Executive Counsel of Deans and college officials vetoed the potential source of income. However, by 1935, both Lucky Strike and Chesterfield cigarette ads were featured in the paper.

For the next 38 years, the Florida Flambeau remained on campus as a symbol of the University. Then in 1972, the paper lost its funding from the University, but continued to publish off campus as a non-profit educational foundation. It surprised its critics by thriving for the next 20 years without financial support from the University.

By the early '90s, the once- conservative campus paper had produced multiple Pulitzer Prize winners, but had become a wildly liberal forum for anti-University propaganda and a soapbox for biased commentaries. Then in '92, following a series of slanderous commentaries and habitual editorializing, Flambeau staff writer Mary Jane Ryals penned a scalding front page commentary about the vapidity of the Miss Florida State pageant. Her commentary was the beginning of the end for the 77-year-old Florida Flambeau.

One month later the first issue of the FSView debuted. It was everything the Flambeau was not: It focused on the University with more attention to fact than opinion. With the FSView on the scene, the Flambeau fell fast, losing advertisers and accruing six-figure debt.

In 1998, the Tallahassee Democrat refused to print the paper without advance-payment for that week's issue, forcing them to publish only online.

Later that year, the Tallahassee Democrat "called the note," meaning the bankrupt Florida Flambeau would either have to pay their $125,000 to the Democrat or the 83-year-old newspaper would become its property.

Seeing an investment opportunity, John Piemonte, the chief financier of the FSView, purchased the Florida Flambeau's debt from the Democrat, and in doing so, bought the Flambeau and everything that came with it. On October 15,1998 the first issue of the FSView & Florida Flambeau was published.

Four days later, FSView, Inc. (publisher of the FSView & Florida Flambeau) was purchased from Piemont by the FSView's general manager and sales manager, Rob Parker and Blaise Provitola.

These two men, along with Brad Ray, who joined later, are responsible for the issue in your hands right now, along with a staff of about 50 others.

We try to bring you, the reader, the best of both the FSView and the Florida Flambeau: campus and local news with hard facts you can count on, complemented by witty, insightful social commentaries.

Currently, the FSView & Florida Flambeau publishes twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays during the fall and spring, and once weekly on Mondays during the summer. We print 25,000 copies and distribute to 475 sites around Tallahassee, making us the sixth-highest circulated college newspaper in the nation, and No. 1 in terms of newspaper sites. We also have the third-highest ratio of newspapers per students in the nation.”

Note written by FSView & Florida Flambeau staff  (5/31/04.) FSView. Accessed Feb 27, 2007 from website