Dan Christensen, Editor
Dan founded Florida Bulldog in 2009 using the name Broward Bulldog. He is an award-winning former investigative reporter for The Miami Herald and Daily Business Review, and one of South Florida’s most experienced reporters. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science from the University of Miami.
Dan’s stories about Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne’s private business dealings sparked a federal corruption investigation that landed Jenne in prison in 2007. His stories about hidden and falsified court records in Broward, Miami-Dade and elsewhere in Florida for The Miami Herald in 2006 led to a pair of unanimous Florida Supreme Court decisions in 2007 and 2010 outlawing those practices.
Similar stories for the Daily Business Review in 2003-2004 exposed excessive secrecy in the federal courts. The executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press later called Dan “the nation’s leading journalist on an issue of tremendous First Amendment importance: the increasing trend toward secrecy in our nation’s courts.”
In 2000-2001, Dan’s reporting about a deadly gun-planting conspiracy and cover-up by Miami police resulted in the indictment of more than a dozen officers and significant governmental reform, including the establishment of Miami’s long sought civilian review panel.
Mel Frishman, Assistant Editor
Mel Frishman retired in 2007 as Broward news editor of The Miami Herald after a 48-year newspaper career. He began working for The Miami News as a senior at Miami High, and served in several key positions there before the paper’s demise in December 1988. At The News, he was news editor, copy chief, assistant city editor, reporter and copy editor – and at age 24 had been executive sports editor (the first year of the Miami Dolphins). For a year Frishman was a copy editor and reporter at Newsday on Long Island. He worked at The Miami Herald for 18 years, where he also had been assistant Dade news editor.
Frishman, a huge baseball fan, graduated from the University of Miami, where he was the first sophomore editor of the college newspaper, and belonged to several honor societies. He later was an adjunct writing and editing instructor at Miami-Dade College and the UM. His favorite word: lollipop.
Mel and Wynne, both native South Floridians, have been married for 28 years and live in Pembroke Pines. Each has three children. Together they have 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Francisco Alvarado, Reporter
Francisco is a South Florida-raised journalist. During an 11-year run as a staff writer for the alternative weekly newspaper Miami New Times won multiple state journalism awards.
During his career, he has profiled a wide array of seedy characters including a crack head snitch, a cocaine trafficking murderer, gay meth dealers, marijuana growers, and shady politicians. His series about North Bay Village activist Fane Lozman led to the arrest, conviction, and removal from office of the city’s mayor and three commissioners in 2004.
His 2008 and 2009 series about Miami’s underground backyard fights served as the inspiration for an ESPN mini-documentary and the upcoming full length feature film, “Dawg Fight,” by the makers of “Cocaine Cowboys” and “The U” documentaries. In 2011, an expose about Miami-Dade College’s police academy prompted the school to terminate the contract of the academy’s director Richard Moss.
Francisco began his journalism career at Miami Today and the Daily Business Review. A Nicaraguan-born Miamian, Francisco has an undergraduate degree in English from Barry University
William Gjebre, Reporter
Bill worked as a reporter for newspapers in Schenectady, N.Y., Paterson, N.J., and Queens N.Y., before coming to South Florida to join the Miami Beach Sun.
He later reported for The Miami News, where he worked for 20 years, handling a variety of assignments, including police, labor and governmental affairs, including reporting on City of Miami government and politics. When The News shutdown in 1988, he worked for Miami Dade County Public Schools, providing information on the district’s construction program and for the past 14 years he worked for the Office of Labor Relations.
Noreen Marcus, Reporter
Noreen is a freelance writer and editor based in Miami whose stories have appeared in U.S. News & World Report, American Lawyer’s Law.com and other publications. A Chicago native, she moved to South Florida in 1979 and has worked for the Miami Herald, the Miami News and the Sun Sentinel. During 11 years with the Daily Business Review, where she was the law editor, the Florida Bar cited an annual special section on the Florida Supreme Court that she wrote for and edited. Noreen has covered Florida courts for more than 30 years. She has a journalism degree from Northwestern University and a law degree from the University of Miami. She has never been a member of the Florida Bar but was a licensed attorney in Illinois from 1986 to 2000.
