Video and story by Corey Dylan for AliveTampaBay.com
If you’ve spent the better part of your adulthood in the Tampa Bay area, you could be considered a “lifer” who knows this dynamic part of Florida inside and out. But after working 35 years as one of Tampa’s most dogged investigative journalists, no one knows what makes the bay area tick quite like Emmy-Award winner Mike Deeson.
Taking what he knows – and now having the freedom to express his opinions since he recently retired from WTSP TV, the CBS affiliate in Tampa Bay – Mike started posting informed video commentary on his Facebook page. His well-articulated opinions on the hot-button issues of the day are now garnering thousands and thousands of views and comments.
Mike won more than 50 prestigious awards in his more than 50 years in the television news business. But even in retirement, Mike told me in the first installment of a two-part interview for AliveTampaBay.com that he’s still motivated to use his voice to make the place he’s called home for nearly four decades a better place.
Editors Note: Part two of Corey’s video interview with investigative reporter Mike Deeson is on Monday (Nov. 6).
Mike Deeson/Photo courtesy of Deeson Media.
Mike Deeson worked for WTSP TV, the CBS affiliate in Tampa Bay, for 35 years. He retired as the Senior Investigative Reporter for 10 News in March of 2017.
Mike is a 12-time-Emmy Award winning reporter who has been awarded the Silver Circle Life-Time Achievement Award from the Suncoast Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Science (NATAS), the Emmy parent organization. He was the first journalist in the Tampa Bay area to win this prestigious award. Mike has been nominated for an Emmy 40 times.
In 2015 the Society of Professional Journalists chose Mike as the Florida Journalist of the Year, the first time a broadcast journalist was given this honor.
Mike is also an eight-time winner of the Green Eyeshade Awards, the nation’s largest and oldest regional journalism contest.
He is a two-time Edward R. Murrow winner. Mike has won more than 50 awards from the Associated Press, United Press International and the Society of Professional Journalists, including being honored as the outstanding reporter in Florida four times and outstanding reporter in the Southeast
In 2015 Influence Magazine named Mike one of Florida’s top 100 Influencers. The Tampa Bay Times has described Mike as one of the last of the “bare-knuckle style” reporters in the Tampa Bay area.