Disgraced ex-Mayor JOE BOLES Florida Bar suspension:: GANNETT, St. Augustine Record, delay and neglect coverage

GANNETT stinks on ice.  The St. Augustine Record has been an accomplice to corruption in our town, most importantly ignoring and covering up the September 2, 2010 homicide of Ms. Michelle O'Connell in. the home of Sheriff's Deputy JEREMY BANKS, who remains on the job with a gun and a badge, through the reigns of error of two successive Sheriffs, currently ROBERT HARDWICK, and previously DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994.

As a newspaper cartel, its 21 newspapers in Florida have plummeted in the quantity and quality of news coverage.  In St. Augustine, Florida, our Nation's Oldest (and perhaps Oddest) City, there are no longer any living breathing news reporters covering our City Hall, County Commission, or other local governments and organizations any longer.  Having sucked the populace dry for overpriced subscriptions, the WRecKord, long known as the "Mullet Wrapper," is a shadow of its former self.  It bounced all of our unpaid local columnists, including former St.  Augustine Historical Society Executive Director Dr. Susan Richbourg Parker, Ph.D., whose weekly column on St. Augustine history once made the Record something to which we looked forward.

In 2014, the Record, then owned by right-wing Georgia-based MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS, endorsed JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. for Mayor, preferring "Business As Usual."  We, the People beat BOLES.  We elected reformer Nancy Shaver, whom the Record constantly expected to undermine.

BOLES was a crook.  Folio Weekly exposed his works and pomps.  So did I.  So did other St. Augustine residents. And we're glad we did.  And we'd do it again. 

Still, the Record ignored the Establishment's depredations on our history and nature. 

It ignored blurred ethical lines in these parts, where hick hacks and sad sacks, property owners and developers, conmen and conwomen and grifters xxxx

First Coast News and other local news media promptly covered BOLES' Florida Bar suspension.

"If you want to cover something up, tell the St. Augustine Record." So saith the late photojournalist James David Pleasant, one of my mentors. 

The Recored waited until May 4, 2023, to run a press release from the Floridas Bar, burying BOLES' suspension with cases of other attorneys from throughout Florida.

We laugh at GANNETT's ineptitude. 

We pray for GANNETT to repent of its coverups.

Rogue's Gallery of JOE BOLES photos:

(By Hans Holbein the Younger, with Photoshop art by the late wrongfully arrested artist Greg Travous) 

Defeated Mayor JOE BOLES on election night 2014 (photos by Peter Willott, St. Augustine Record)

Like two peas in a bod, two developer puppets feted at private soiree hosted at Flagler College's Ponce de Leon Hall by Douglas Nelson Burnett and St. Johns Law Group, Mayor JOE BOLES and former Mayor LEN WEEKS.  JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. and CLAUDE LEONARD WEEKS, JR. are co-owners and co-tenants of sweetheart City least for 81 St. George Street, paying less than 20% of fair market rate rent for their lucrative ownership of building housing FLORIDA CRACKER CAFE and SAVANNAH SWEETS, earning a Folio Weekly cover story in August 2014, with this cover art: