Silhouette ProfileSaundra Weathers | La Gaceta Newspaper

From Silhouette by Tiffany Razzano
Originally published on April 19, 2024

In high school, Fort Lauderdale native Sandra Weathers decided to study journalism while driving around Florida A&M University. She wrote for her high school newspaper and had a natural interest in what was going on around her. “I don’t like to say nosy, I like to say curious. I was always curious. I wanted to know more,” she said.
That’s how the Spectrum Bay News 9 reporter began her journalism career. Admittedly, she wasn’t always a model student. “There’s a saying at FAMU, that this is the FAMU way, it really is a family here,” Weathers said. “I had some professors who discouraged me, saying, ‘Listen, girl, pull yourself together.’”
Initially, she wanted to be an entertainment reporter. But after interviewing some celebrities, she realized that she didn’t like the job. Later, under the guidance of a professor, she fell in love with hard news.
Weathers worked at FAMU’s radio station, and her internship led to her being hired as a live television reporter for CBS affiliate WCTV during her junior year. “At that point, there was nothing I could do to stop myself,” she said.
After graduation, she worked in radio for a few months before deciding it was time to leave. “If you knew what it was like to live in a college town after graduation, you’d feel old,” she said. “It was time to leave.”
“Before graduation, I naively told my sister that I was going to move to Atlanta and get a job in journalism as soon as I graduated,” Weathers said. “But that didn’t happen. So I wanted to figure out which path would be the most realistic from a journalism perspective and also close to the water that I love so much.”
She hoped to one day move into the Tampa Bay area, Florida’s largest market, but she first landed at WBBH, the NBC affiliate in Fort Myers. She worked there for two years, covering four counties in Southwest Florida. “I knew I had to stop before I went to Tampa,” she says. But Tampa was “the No. 1 market in the state. That’s where I wanted to be.”
Five years into her career, Weathers was hired by Spectrum Bay News 9 and moved to Polk County. “It’s so much fun there. The journalism is great. It’s unbelievable what’s going on there. There are so many great people in Polk County,” she said. “There’s not a lot to do, but it’s great work-wise.”
About three years later, she moved to the outlet’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, where she worked the night shift. “That meant covering all the news in every county,” she said. “You went wherever the news was.”
She held that position until 2020, when she launched the “Justice for All” column for Spectrum, focusing on issues of equity, inclusion and inequality that emerged after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Amid the protests surrounding Floyd’s murder, Weathers and her then-boss “had long, difficult conversations about reporting and being intentional about it,” she said. “After some back-and-forth, I got the green light. I said, ‘Listen, I want to cover these stories, and I want to cover them in a way that’s impactful.’”
Weathers has always been interested in social justice stories, but in this current reporting, they became her sole focus.
First, she made a list of possible story ideas, but soon she was receiving stories and community members began suggesting topics to cover.
One of her early stories focused on arrests of black children in the local juvenile justice system and the number of black children sent to adult prisons compared with children of other races. “The disparity was astronomical,” she said.
She also looked at stories of underrepresentation in various fields, such as Black male educators. “I was shocked when I saw the numbers,” Weathers said.
She added that she also focuses on the good news.
She was also surprised by the action the community took in response to her reporting, including a study on black students’ reading scores, which had fallen further due to the pandemic.
Spectrum created a graphic around the scores and shared it widely on social media, she recalled. When Weathers read the shared posts, she was relieved. The data supported the anecdotes that many fans seemed to already know. “It felt like, ‘We’ve been saying this; now there’s proof,’ ” she said. “When you have this type of coverage and so many responses, it leaves a lot of room for resolution.”
She said that after the report came to light, many organizations and individuals created reading programs “to try to close the gap for African-American students,” adding that it was a “real catalyst for change and people to contribute.”
Weathers also covers black maternal health extensively, a topic she feels “very close to her heart.” Last year, she aired a special on the issue that received enthusiastic feedback from viewers in the Tampa and Orlando areas.
“After the show aired, a woman contacted me and said, ‘Listen, I lost a baby during childbirth. I already have a nonprofit, but I want to do more. This special gave me the motivation to do more,'” Weathers said.
A few months later, the woman called back and said she had initiated a series of town hall meetings with health care and nonprofit leaders to discuss how to reduce infant and maternal mortality in the black community. “That sparked a big conversation in the Tampa Bay area,” Weathers said.
This year, USF is even celebrating Black Maternal Health Week with a series of lectures, other events and resources for mothers from April 11 to 17. “It’s amazing to see this topic spreading like wildfire right now,” she said.
She was moved by the motivation her story inspired. “I embrace the humanity in my reporting. I never tell a story like a robot. There’s always a person behind the story, and I try to show that in my reporting. I’m not biased; I’m human,” she said. “I hope that when people see this and ask me for help, they feel that it’s coming from a person who wants to help. I do this 100 percent to help people.”