The Political Whore

Craig PIttman — shown above, right — and Matthew Waite (and I’m going to use a technical journalistic term here) are the bomb. The St. Petersburg Times duo have literally written the book on Florida’s bulldozing of vital wetlands in Paving Paradise:Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss, their new book that grew out of a series of stories in the Times.

Brilliant stuff, from the narrative history of how Florida was dredged-and-filled (yes, I grew up on one of those finger islands off the New River in Fort Lauderdale, so I know all about it) to the computer analysis of satellite photos that (for the first time) documented the loss of 84,000 acres of wetlands to construction since 1988. As Waite points out in the podcast interview, that is a land mass the size of the city of St. Petersburg.

You can buy the book lots of places, but one good indie bookstore where you can find it is Inkwood Books in South Tampa. It is a must-read. Just as this podcast with the authors is a must-hear.

Oh, and you can catch them signing books and discussing their investigation at the Selby Public Library on April 30 in Sarasota.

Listen to a streaming version of the podcast or download it for your iPod, iPhone or iWhatever after the jump.

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I’ve lined up two great journalists, Craig Pittman and Matthew Waite (Pulitzer Prize-winning Matt Waite) of the St. Petersburg Times to come in Monday morning to talk about their book, Paving Paradise:Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss. The podcast of our chat will be No. 7 in the Political Whore podcast series (Poho Podcast, or HoCast if you’re nasty) and should be up for your listening pleasure by Monday afternoon.

Let me know if you have any specific questions I need to pose to them about their book, Florida’s wetlands and the knuckleheads in the state Legislature who obviously haven’t read the book.