Bill Cotterell, a reporter and columnist who covered Florida government and politics for more than four decades with a blend of doggedness and humor, died Monday as he tried to recover at a rehabilitation center from norovirus and a bleeding ulcer.
Cotterell, 82, who for the past two years wrote a once-a-week column for The News Service of Florida that was distributed statewide, was a newshound. He could be curmudgeonly and sometimes wasn’t politically correct. But he also stood behind the First Amendment and tried to tell the truth about what was happening in government.
Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican political operative and lobbyist who was a friend of Cotterell, told the News Service on Monday that Cotterell “was an institution in Tallahassee political coverage.”
“I never detected bias in anything Bill wrote and never had a reason to complain about his work, other than, like I said, he just insisted on telling the truth, which can be damned annoying,” Stipanovich said. “There’s not that many people like Bill Cotterell left in my life and I’m sorry to lose him.”
Cotterell, who grew up in Miami and served in the U.S. Marine Corps after high school, was inducted into the Florida Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2017.
After starting out as a copy clerk at The Miami Herald, he became a reporter for the United Press International wire service in 1967. Cotterell worked in Tallahassee from 1969 to 1974 for UPI before returning in 1984, according to information on the hall of fame website. A year later, Cotterell began a 27-year stint with the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper.
During that period, Cotterell became a go-to source for news about state employees and agencies — a big issue in a government town. While he retired in 2012, Cotterell never really stepped away from the keyboard, as he continued to write columns, including the past two years for the News Service.
In July, Cotterell received a first-place award for his columns in the Florida Society of News Editors’ annual journalism contest. And while in the rehab center last week, Cotterell was still writing and sending emails to an editor.
“He loved his family and his son and his seven grandchildren, and they made his life very busy and very complete,” his wife, Cynthia Fuller, told the USA TODAY-NETWORK-Florida on Monday. “I’m gonna miss him. He was a journalist who believed in the facts, not the alternative facts. He was very strong and believed in the ethics of true journalism. And if he had opinions, they were in his opinion column.”
In a social-media post Monday, former Gov. Jeb Bush offered condolences.
“Very sorry to hear of Bill Cotterell’s passing,” Bush wrote. “I enjoyed many conversations with him during my time running and serving as governor. He was smart, professional and never afraid to challenge us. A true old school newsman! Columba and I send our condolences to Bill’s family.”
Cotterell had a knack for telling sometimes-not-pleasant truths about politics while also adding a dash of humor. As an example, in a column this month, he wrote that redistricting “is about winning, not representation.”
“Some well-meaning reformers won approval for a pair of ‘Fair Districts’ constitutional amendments in 2010, requiring Florida lawmakers to draw legislative and congressional boundaries honestly, but the decisions are still made by elected politicians with party loyalties and self interests,” he wrote. “Which is like sending lettuce by rabbit. The politicians still pick their people, instead of the other way around.”
Cotterell was willing to challenge the positions of liberals and conservatives. In a July column, for instance, he wrote that opposing transgender women participating in female sports was a “winning” political position for Attorney General James Uthmeier.
“The laws and individual cases can be thrashed out in courts and legislative committee rooms, but voters seem to have made up their minds on this stuff,” Cotterell wrote. “Gender identity is what some campaign consultants call, at best, an 80/20 issue. Do Democrats really want to bet a statewide campaign on the side that has maybe — maybe — 20 percent public support?”
But in an August column, Cotterell criticized the state for painting over rainbow-colored crosswalks, writing that “what’s really going on here is state government’s long-running hostility toward gay people.”
“It goes back about 75 years to the old Charley Johns committee, which ran a witch-hunt on state college campuses, and continues right up to the DeSantis administration’s parental-rights-in-education (dubbed ‘Don’t Say Gay’) law,” Cotterell wrote.
Cotterell and Stipanovich were among a group of men who met every other week in Tallahassee to swap stories and catch up on the latest news. The informal club was dubbed the “Geezer Lunch Bunch.”
The veteran newsman “was a cut above his peers, in my judgment,” Stipanovich said.
“More than that, he was a good friend who you could always count on if you needed anything, including the truth, even when you didn’t want to hear it,” Stipanovich said.
Rick G says
I will miss Mr. Cotterell’s columns on Sunday. I can remember reading his pieces going back to the 70s. RIP