Seniors

Bailey LeFever

Bailey LeFever reports for the Tampa Bay Times where she focuses on senior citizens who are often overlooked by the media. LeFever examines everything from health care to culture, government policy to family dynamics. Most recently, LeFever covered local government at the Miami Herald, where she wrote stories on the ways the coronavirus has challenged elders and minority groups in the city. Previously she interned at the Palm Beach Post, both on the breaking news and the community teams. Over the past few years, LeFever has traveled to Cuba to cover the illegal Hawksbill sea turtle trade, reported from a canoe on the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, and hung out with tennis star Coco Gauff at teen phenom’s family’s sports bar. She has also photographed NCAA baseball and softball playoffs for the University of Florida Athletic Association. LeFever studied journalism and history at the University of Florida. While in college, she wrote for the local NPR station, WUFT News and interned at the Gainesville Sun. She was also managing editor of her college newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator. LeFever grew up in Ocala, Florida.

Tampa Bay Times

The Tampa Bay Times is the largest newspaper in Florida, with a rich, award-winning history of investigative, narrative and enterprise journalism. We have 150 journalists covering four counties and the state of Florida. That includes reporters and editors across news, investigations, enterprise, features, sports and digital. Ambition runs deep for us. In the past year alone, our reporters uncovered a pattern at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, where children were dying at an alarming rate inside the hospital’s heart institute. Our reporters also found a cemetery in Tampa for black men, women and children that time and development forgot. Residents living in buildings on top of that lost cemetery are being relocated and a community is trying to heal. Our ownership structure is unique in journalism, preserved by our late visionary owner, Nelson Poynter. He bequeathed the newspaper to a school for journalists here in St. Petersburg, now known as the Poynter Institute, to protect our independence. We take that independence very seriously, focusing our resources on distinct, exceptional reporting. Our mission as a news organization traces back to our founding in 1884: to report the truth and contribute to an informed society. That mission depends on maintaining our credibility within the community. Poynter said it best in 1961: “When we turn to history we can draw inspiration from those who risked their necks and their economic lives to keep the free press free. Every year newspapers are cited for Pulitzer prizes and other awards in recognition of spectacular crusades and courage. But we have an even greater daily triumph of American journalism in helping to fulfill less spectacular but imperative needs. Without these self-government cannot endure.”