Best Sun-Sentinel Writer

This kid ain't one of those prima donna, two-story-a-year, long-lunch types. He cranks. From Enron to citrus canker to mortgage fraud, he reports the hell out of events and writes 'em like a champ. In just the past couple of years, he's told us that Florida has more lightning per square mile than any other state, that employees of the Miami Seaquarium chowed on a rare leatherback turtle, and that Coral Springs is a particularly easy place to get busted if you don't pay attention to water restrictions. While his prose is nothing flashy, everything's there. Perhaps our favorite recent story of Fleshler's alerted us to the fact that developers were able to win themselves a very good deal on Florida's West Coast by flushing a rare creature called the Big Cypress fox squirrel, Sciurus niger avicennia, down the River of Grass. The point of view was subtle in this piece, but it convinced us that he's on the side of the little guy.