Beneath the Byline: Interview with Max Chesnes

Max Chesnes is a lifelong Floridian and the environment reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. Joining the Times in 2022, Max reports on public lands, water quality, wildlife and everything in between. In 2024, Max broke the news that Florida’s state parks were under threat of being developed with hotels and golf courses. Prior to working for the Times, Max covered environmental issues for Treasure Coast Newspapers and the USA Today network. He’s a 2023 journalism fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a recipient of several environmental writing awards. Max studied both journalism and sustainability at the University of Florida and is also licensed to fly drones. He uses his aerial photography to bring environmental stories to life.

Your background: Was there a specific moment that made you realize you wanted to be a journalist? If not, how did you end up where you are?

I grew up in Florida. I was born and raised in Florida. I've never lived anywhere else outside of here. But, I don't know, I was always drawn to you know the natural spaces of this state— it's such a wild state, right? There's swampland, there’s beachfront, there's really impressive forest land in the middle of the state— so I know I always wanted to do something centered on the outdoors and the preservation of natural places here. And I always kind of was gravitating towards storytelling as the way to do that, just because I did a little journalism in high school. But I wasn't really quite sure of the direction or how I was going to blend the two— science and conservation, and then journalism.

The change really happened for me when I was in college. A woman who became a long-time mentor of mine— her name is Cynthia Barnett, she's an environmental journalism professor at the University of Florida, which is where I went— she spoke to one of our classes one day. She had a cover story in National Geographic in 2017 about the fate of our oceans and how the time is now to begin conserving as much ocean and marine front as we can. So, she spoke to our class, and immediately a light bulb went off. I was like, “This is exactly how I want to spend my career. I want to be an environmental journalist. I want to devote my life to telling environmental stories and saving my corner of the world by highlighting the change makers and all the policies in my state here.” So that's really what laid the path before me. Then, I got a small journalism job out of college. I was doing kind of an entry-level, breaking news job, but my editor at the time, I told her, “I'm really interested in environmental news. That's really what I want to do in the long run.” She remembered that when our environmental reporter there retired and let me take over for him and then—that was in 2021—  I've been writing full-time about environmental issues now in Florida for four years. (interview conducted in 2025)

What are your favorite types of stories to tell?

My absolute favorite type of story is finding one person or individual who singularly is making a difference in their community. Because you hear all the time, or I write about all these larger policy issues that seem so hard to grasp as an individual, and sometimes people can kind of feel this overwhelming sense of hopelessness looking at the state of the world. But for me, breaking through that mentality and finding one person who has just decided to take matters in their own hands and do something about it are my favorite. The recent example of that is,  there’s a woman— she's a retired woman, she was a special education teacher in Connecticut for decades, but she moved to Florida— and she started visiting this state park here, it’s called Honeymoon Island State Park and sort of fell in love with the place. It has really beautiful white sand beaches, a really vast expanse of protected coastline and there's a tortoise population there— a gopher tortoise population, these are threatened species in Florida— but she started hearing earlier this summer that these tortoises were getting hit by cars at a higher rate than normal because they were crossing the road at high activity periods of the day where lots of people were driving through. So, she took it upon herself to write on a big poster. Basically she wrote, “Please slow down for the tortoises,” like a tortoise crossing. She goes out like every weekend for the past 20 weeks in a row. She spends the full day out there in the sun and among the mosquitoes, holding up this poster and telling drivers to slow down. And she's making a difference. I talked to the park staff and they told me that tortoise mortality is down and that people are paying attention to her. And so, I don't know, for me, it's a microcosm of a much larger issue where cars and roads are contributing to wildlife loss across the state but, this one woman has decided she's going to do something about it in her own little slice of paradise and she's helping. So, people can read that and be inspired by that. And it instills this sense of agency in people, that they can then go on and make a bigger difference on their own.

What story/stories are you the most proud of?

Yeah, I think the biggest moment in my career so far has been this series of stories I've worked on over the past 12 months or so. There was a big scandal last year where the DeSantis administration had proposed developing nine state parks with golf courses and hotels and pickleball courts. It was all done in secret. I think the administration knew that this plan was going to be pretty controversial, so they hid these plans in secret. And a whistleblower within the state agency that is in charge of overseeing state parks wrote this memo that was sent to me anonymously that basically outlined the state's plans, and how they were rushing this through, and how there was going to be all these protected habitats that were going to be destroyed because of golf courses, like adding golf courses on protected scrub habitat, which is a very rare ecosystem in Florida. So, we broke that story initially and then we followed up with, I think, the first month we wrote maybe 20 stories, like a drumbeat of stories, keeping the public aware of everything that was happening behind the scenes. And that spurred— there were a couple weekends in August of last year where thousands of people went out to their state parks to protest.  It was a really cool moment as a journalist because the people were hearing about this in real time from our reporting and then acting on it and mobilizing to speak out against the government's actions. So to be the reporter behind that story, to break that news, was really empowering. And then it actually inspired a bipartisan outcry. Some far left Democrats and far right Republicans were unified together, saying, “We should not be building on our state parks. We should be protecting them.” So it inspired this new law that an official created and then was ultimately signed into law earlier this year that now will further enshrine protections for state parks forever. It was a cool moment where  our stories had an impact and then it led to a new state law and was a really big win for not just storytelling, but I think Florida conservation generally. To me, that's the crown jewel of my career so far.

What is your favorite story that you wanted to tell that didn’t get the greenlight or got killed?

 I've had a few collaborations that haven't worked out. I had a story I wanted to tell about undocumented immigrants last year that I was working on for a while, for a couple months, about whether or not people who are not documented that are living in Florida are less likely to seek shelter— like storm shelters— because they may fear for their life or they fear that they're going to be turned away because they don't have the proper documentation. We reported that one out for a while, but just didn't have enough data to prove it. We had some really powerful stories from people, but they were mainly anecdotal and stuff. I'd like to continue to tell that story further and further investigate that, but that one didn't work out at the end which is kind of the name of the game. Sometimes you report a story out and you realize that there's nothing there. It may be that the story's not as fully developed as you thought it would be, and so you have to back away, but that's just the reality of the business.

What have been some of the most challenging moments of your career so far?

That's a great question. For me, access has always been an issue. Especially for government-level employees, the challenge of getting access to employees is at an all-time high because I think a lot of employees are, frankly, afraid to speak with reporters because of fear of potential backlash. To get around that, you have to do a lot of sourcing behind the scenes and getting to know people, like, off the record to build trust with them. But I think two really difficult moments— I cover a lot of hurricanes in the state— last year (2024), our community was hit by two hurricanes, 13 days apart. So, reporting that out, talking to people on the worst day of their life, and kind of putting your notebook down to get on their level and tell them, “I'm here for you, I want to tell your story to hopefully inspire people to help out, provide aid, donate to you,” is a hard thing to do. I'm showing up on somebody's very worst day of their life, where they've just lost, either their entire home or potentially a relative or a loved one. So those are very difficult stories to do, but I think they’re some of the most important too, because it shows, in real time, what not only our vulnerability to natural disasters looks like in Florida but also the reality of intensifying hurricanes and natural disasters that are growing in strength because of warming seas and greenhouse gas emissions.

What writers and authors have influenced your work the most?

I mentioned my mentor, Cynthia. She has a couple of nonfiction books that she's written that are really profound. One is Rain. It's the cultural history of rain through the years, through decades and centuries of civilization and how different cultures rely on rain differently. She has a natural history of seashells as well, the cultural history of seashells, which I find pretty fascinating. So she's a great writer that I look up to quite a bit. In terms of the fiction sci-fi realm, Jeff VanderMeer— he wrote Annihilation— he’s based in Florida, in Tallahassee, and he gets involved in a lot of local Florida politics, conservation issues. It’s interesting to chat with Jeff about current environmental issues in the state, and you can kind of tell there are some of those influences in his books. Like the way he describes really unique scenes or the hints of Florida swampland and coastal infrastructure in a lot of his stories, so that's interesting. Ursula K. Le Guin is a sci-fi writer. She's really good.

How have you seen journalism/the media change throughout your career? What further changes do you anticipate?

You know, one lesson I learned in college was to bring the news where the audience is. I think audiences are changing so rapidly right now. Every couple of years another social media platform that pops up that people are on. It's almost like a game of whack-a-mole to discover where people are at and where they're getting their news. I think reporters now are, more so than in the past, almost their own brand, right? Like you kind of have to brand yourself as whatever it is that you focus on. I think I've sort of established a bit of a brand in Florida as an environmental reporter that people can turn to for really big environmental issues. I'm on Instagram and I feel like I mainly use Instagram as my main platform to get news out, and go straight to the audience, and actually using social media has helped build trust with sources, and people will message me directly with information that has been really helpful. I think there’s a really big appetite for people to look for really good, trusted, vetted information. We’re in this sort of post-truth era where we have AI, and we have disinformation from even people in power, and people are just looking for truth and for really solid information. So I think journalists can kind of fill that void by meeting people where they're at; showing your work, telling people where you gathered your information from, leaving your cards on the table, leaving no room for doubt, I think it's a really important task that journalists have to do right now. So yeah, social media is a good way to do that.

And then there's sort of this new age of storytelling where— I feel like you can't just be a writer these days, you have to be a photographer, you have to build graphics, or you have to have sort of another side thing. So I also do drone photography. I'll use my drone images for hurricane reporting, or if there's an oil spill or something, I'll fly my drone over it as well. So, people know me to use aerial imagery as well in my stories.

That's a good question. I mean the obvious one in front of us is AI, right? What is AI going to do for local reporting jobs? And I don't know, I'd like to believe that truth will win the day and that people are going to always want truth seekers and accountability finders. I think that core value of democracy, especially in America, will always remain, and the First Amendment is the very first one for a reason. The protection of the press is so important. But then again, where people are going to be finding their news is always changing and so I think it's going to be just a lot of shifting around, changing with the tides, going to different platforms and whatever it might be, different social media things that pop up that I'm just going to have evolve. I would like to think that the newspaper I work for is still here in like 20, 30, 40 years, telling the stories that our community needs.

I'm hopeful for the future, I really am, because, especially in times of uncertainty, I think people seek the truth, and so I'm hoping that people will continue to see the benefit of local storytelling. I'd like to just underscore: local news right now is— the industry itself has been in dire straits for a while, but I think now more than ever, local community storytelling is really important. Being a voice for very specific or hyper-local events is key.

People consume more media than they ever have. How do you think this has changed the world?

 Oh, that is a great, kind of a million dollar question, right?  I mean, we have access to so much information right now, and attention spans are so quick to move on to the next thing. So, I think there's a really important anecdote to that, which is, drawing people back into longer form stories and stories that are deeply personal and connect to humans in a way that a 10-second TikTok isn't necessarily going to do. Local journalism right now is struggling across the country. To fill newspapers with so few reporters is such a challenge, but there's also opportunity in that. There are so few reporters now. There are more important stories to tell than ever. And so, I think, it’s not hard to find a really powerful story these days. And I think it's just a matter of  showing audiences that you are spending really large amounts of time with your subject to prove to people that like you are an expert in your field and like you're worthy of their trust at a time when trust is so hard to find and trust is so hard to give out, is really important. So, just being a voice of reason and also calm— I think people appreciate storytellers that can deliver facts in a way that isn't emotionally charged, because everything is so emotionally charged right now— so if people can just be a cool, calm voice of reason and factual information, I think people will sometimes gravitate towards that. 

What is your advice for younger people interested in journalism?

First of all, trust yourself. Be your own advocate, your biggest cheerleader. If you’re told no or you get a rejection, just keep trying. Eventually, you will find a home, you will find a place for your words and your story, and that those stories matter. I think too— I tell a lot of people this— find a specialty, or find a kind of corner of the world that you're really fascinated with. Whether it's something that's super niche, like a subculture, or community, or a topic that you really are into and become that expert because, inevitably, the way the news works is, you might not be called upon every day, but there will always be a day where whatever it is that you're the expert on will be relevant for on a national level or know on a state level and then that's when people are going to turn to you for answers. There will always be a time when your expertise is needed. So for me, like for environmental issues, not every day is an environment story the top story of the day, but there are certainly days where there's some scandal, or drama, or there's big news on the environment front that will ultimately become the biggest story of the day. Just be ready for those moments by positioning yourself in a way where you're the expert and people will turn to you and learn to trust you is important.

Another one is sort of diversifying your skill sets, like I talked about earlier. Finding something else besides maybe words and written text to supplement your storytelling is really important. For me, it's photography, it’s aerial photography. It helps to set apart your work in a field in a crowded field of journalists. Being a writer but also having your own blog or having your own, if you do, you know, graphical analysis or you know how to code, and combining that with your reporting. Doing something to supplement your work is a really important tool to have.

And then, listen to your heart, listen to your gut. Let curiosity guide you and be a compass for you. And find a mentor, because that's really big, too. I had a lot of really big mentors at a time when I really had no idea how to navigate a really difficult industry to be in. I had a lot of people telling me, “keep going” and “keep fighting,” “keep putting yourself out there.” And luckily, paying attention to their advice, I am where I am. I'm so grateful for that.

Part of journalism is paying attention and asking good questions. What are some daily habits or ways of being that promote paying attention and asking good questions?

You know, a big one is just trying to put my phone down and just let the world exist online without me, and be comfortable knowing there are conversations and the daily news is happening without me, and that's okay. In times of really, really kind of pressing moments, where a natural disaster had just passed, if a hurricane just passed, putting down my notebook is a big visual cue to the people that I'm speaking with. I'm gonna set aside my notebook for a second and just talk to you, I just wanna talk to you human to human for a second and not take any notes, and let's just talk together. I think it shows people that you care about what they have to say, and that they can trust you and that you really are approaching their story with empathy and with integrity. It is really important.

For me, I try to get outside as much as I can. If I'm not working, I’m  paddle boarding, I'm hiking, I'm trying to just get off the phone and remind myself of all of the reasons why I do the work that I do, which is the betterment and the preservation of our natural world. I really try to blend in with my life moments of just being outside and immersed in nature. It is really important to me. It’s hard though, I mean, gosh, there's so much information and so much news always happening and people are always emailing and reaching out and calling. It's hard to force yourself to put it all away for a couple hours and just be at peace, butI think it's really important to protect your mental health that way.

What do you read (journalism and not)?

I read a lot of nonfiction, just generally for work and research. It’s usually nature-oriented books or science-oriented books, history of hurricanes in Florida, or history of land conservation issues, books about Audubon, all sorts of natural history books. But, sometimes that feels a lot like work when I'm reading for pleasure, so I'll try to mix in— I really like science fiction books. To me, they push the boundaries of stories of civilization and communities that might be affected by climate disaster in the future or something like that. It kind of helps in my thinking a little bit and helps me think in a different way. So, science fiction is big for me and then nature nonfiction. I'll mainly read conservation or environmental-oriented publications. Examples would be Grist. They're like a magazine. They do some really good climate work. The High Country News is really good for like western land issues. I read them a lot. Outdoor Magazine, Field and Stream. The Washington Post has a really good climate team, so I look up to a lot of their work as well, like a lot of climate writers.The Marjorie was founded in Florida. It’s environmentally focused. I think it's women-run, and it's really good. It's focused on a lot of Florida conservation issues, environmental issues that are really profound and cutting edge. Some of my co-workers and longtime colleagues that I've worked alongside since college will contribute to The Marjorie.

Interview conducted by Grace Mackey.