The Gulf Coast Business Review is the weekly newspaper for business leaders on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Started in 1997, the Review is the leading provider and most authoritative source of business and economic information affecting the Gulf Coast from Tampa Bay south to Naples. It specializes in reporting on the region’s industry and economic trends; emerging companies; corporate strategies; identifying and profiling the region’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs and top business leaders; and keeping its readers abreast of state, regional and local government actions affecting business and the economy.
When it started, the Review focused solely on Sarasota and Manatee counties. But in October 2001, the Review acquired the 51-year-old Tampa Bay Review and became a regional weekly covering the business scene from Tampa-St. Petersburg to Sarasota. In 2005, the Review expanded again, opening an office in Fort Myers to cover the fast-growing business communities in Lee and Collier counties.
Overall, the Review covers an area that encompasses more than 90,000 business establishments. The Review is committed to providing business owners, senior executives, entrepreneurs, investors and public policy makers with the Gulf Coast’s most authoritative and relevant business information on a weekly basis.
The Review’s perspective is unique among Florida media. In its editorial opinions, The Review strongly supports and promotes laissez-faire capitalism and private property rights. In its news content, The Review is written expressly for business owners and managers by a team of experienced journalists.
The Review Staff
Matt Walsh — Editor and publisher. Walsh has been a business journalist in Florida for 25 years, serving in previous capacities as assistant business editor at The Miami Herald, editor of Florida Trend magazine for seven years and Southeast Bureau Manager of Forbes magazine. Walsh is founder and co-owner of The Observer Group Inc. and serves as the company’s CEO. His economic philosophy sets the tone for the company and its newspapers’ editorials. The newspapers are unwavering proponents of laissez-faire capitalism.
Rod Thomson — Executive Editor. Thomson has been in journalism for more than 25 years, covering state politics in multiple Legislatures, local issues and businesses. He worked at newspapers in Winona, Minn. and Davenport, Iowa before becoming a reporter, and later metro columnist, for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for 14 years. He was named Iowa Young Reporter of the Year in 1988 and has won numerous writing awards from the Associated Press and other media organizations. He became executive editor of the Review in 2006.
Mark Gordon — Managing Editor. Gordon has been a reporter and editor for more than 12 years, working for daily newspapers in upstate New York, suburban Philadelphia and, most recently, in Jacksonville, with the Florida Times-Union. Gordon also worked for SmartMoney magazine in New York City and was one of the first reporters to write and report on publicly traded companies for the magazine’s new Web site in 1999. He has been working for the Observer Group Inc. since 2005.
Jean Gruss — Editor/Lee-Collier. Gruss is the editor for the Lee and Collier region of the Gulf Coast Business Review. He joined the Review in 2005 to open the Fort Myers and Naples offices. Before joining the Review, he was managing editor of Kiplinger’s Retirement Report, a part of the Kiplinger personal-finance and business-forecasting publications in Washington, D.C. From 1994 to 1999, he was a business writer for The Tampa Tribune, where he covered commercial real estate and economic development. He started his career in 1991 covering police and courts for the Panama City News-Herald and rose to the position of business editor.
Alex Walsh — Tampa Bay Editor. Walsh comes to the Review with a strong economics background. Before arriving in Tampa, he worked as an economic consultant for NERA Economic Consulting in Boston, which operates under the Marsh & McLennan family of companies. In his time at NERA, he worked closely with public utilities and their regulators to provide effective cost of equity analyses for utility company rate cases. Walsh studied economics and mathematics at the University of Chicago.
Sean Roth — Real estate editor. Roth has spent the past nine years writing about the Gulf Coast’s development market for the Review. In 2004, Roth was awarded the Best Newspaper Report (Less Than 200,000 Circulation) award and the James D. Carper Award for Best Entry by a Young Journalist from the National Association of Real Estate Editors. In 2003, he was the first place winner of the Florida Press Club’s General Excellence in Business Writing award. Roth is a 1999 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.
Jay Brady, AICP – Government Editor. Brady comes to the Review with a government, business and not-for-profit background, most recently as executive director of a commercial builders’ trade association from 1995-2008. From 1990-1995 Brady worked for as a private planning consultant after having worked for local governments as a city planner on the Gulf Coast from 1979-1990 including two years as Planning Director for the Town of Longboat Key. Brady holds a masters degree in urban and regional planning, and a bachelors in business administration majoring in finance with a minor in environmental studies. While attending Sarasota High School he was a sports correspondent to the St. Pete Times and was sports editor of the high school newspaper.
The Observer Group Inc.
The Review is owned by The Observer Group, the holding company for the company’s four newspapers.
Formed in 1995 by partners Matt and Lisa Walsh and David and Ruth Beliles, The Observer Group Inc. purchased The Longboat Observer from its founders, Ralph and Claire Hunter. At the time, The Longboat Observer had been published as a free community weekly since 1978. It serves the barrier island of Longboat Key (near Sarasota, Fla.) and surrounding barrier islands, as well as portions of Sarasota and Bradenton. Today, The Longboat Observer has an average weekly circulation of 18,000 and more than 36,000 weekly readers. It reaches more than 95% of the 10,000 residences on Longboat Key and specializes in covering news, real estate and events on Longboat Key as well as providing comprehensive coverage of the region¹s arts and social scenes.
In 1997, the company started The Gulf Coast Business Review. In 1998, The Longboat Observer Inc. launched the weekly East County Observer to serve the fast-growing suburban areas of east Manatee and Sarasota counties. The East County Observer has weekly distribution of 20,000 and more than 40,000 readers. It specializes in community news, events, business, real estate and sports affecting primarily East Manatee County.
In 2000, The Observer Group introduced “Season,” a quarterly guide to the Sarasota region’s arts, entertainment and society. Season provides the area’s most comprehensive listing of each quarter’s arts, charitable and social events. It has a distribution of 50,000.
In 2004, the company started The Sarasota Observer, a community weekly that serves downtown Sarasota and the most affluent communities along the bayfront in Greater Sarasota. It has a weekly circulation of 30,000 and reaches more than 60,000 readers.
Altogether, the company’s four newspapers reach a weekly audience of 136,000 readers.
The content of The Observers is often called hyperlocal. They specialize in reporting neighborhood news and chronicling the community news and events in each of their respective regions. One of the philosophies of The Observers is “no news is too small for The Observers.”
At the same time, The Observers serve as watchdogs of local governments. They focus much of their editorial coverage on news and issues affecting taxpayers’ pocketbooks. Some readers regard The Observers as the region’s most thorough newspapers when it comes to watching and explaining local government budgets.
The Observer Group Inc. employs 52 staff members in Tampa, Clearwater, Bradenton, Longboat Key, Sarasota and Fort Myers.
The company is headquartered at 1517 State St., Sarasota, Fla. 34236, Phone: 941-366-3468; Fax; 941-362-4848.
Worth noting
• The Longboat Observer won second place for General Excellence in 2009 in the national better newspaper contest sponsored by the Suburban Newspaper Association.
• The Longboat Observer was named Florida’s Best Weekly newspaper in 2008 in the Florida Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest.
• The Longboat Observer has been judged Florida’s Best Designed weekly in 2007 and 2008 by the Florida Press Association.
• The East County Observer editorial staff has won 19 first-place awards in 2007 and 2008 from the Florida Press Club for outstanding reporting, photography and design.
