Our writers
Who writes this
Everything published about Fort Walton Beach on this site carries a name. Here is who those names belong to, what each of them covers, and how to read everything they have written.
Shelby Duval
Senior Editor
Beat: Things to Do, Attractions, Beaches
Shelby has covered the Panhandle from Pensacola to Panama City for eleven years and runs this desk. She owns the pages where accuracy has consequences: which town a park is actually in, what the Brooks Bridge work is doing this month, what a storm changed. She quotes fees as bands because the county revises them, and says plainly when a number is unconfirmed.
4 guides · 3 news posts
Grant Ochoa
Boating & Fishing Editor
Beat: Boat Tours, Things to Do, Destin Day Trips
Grant crewed on Destin harbour boats before he wrote about them and still reads East Pass by the tide rather than the calendar. He covers Crab Island access, pontoon rentals, shuttles and charters, and he is blunt about shoal water, crowded anchorages and boats advertised as something they are not. If the wind is wrong, he tells you to go tomorrow.
3 guides · 3 news posts
Tamika Rowe
Family & Practical Editor
Beat: Beaches, Things to Do, Attractions
Tamika writes the pages people actually open in the car park: which beach lot is free, where the lifeguards and the ramps are, what the double red flag means and what it costs to ignore it. She tests the family logistics with her own children in tow, and she would rather tell you a museum is small than let you drive there expecting otherwise.
3 guides · 2 news posts
These are our own staff bylines. We do not publish guest posts, we do not accept sponsored articles under a staff name, and no page here is signed by someone who did not write it. Portraits are deliberately absent: attaching a stock photograph of a real person to an editorial byline would misrepresent them, so you get initials instead.
Who we are and how we work
- About us
Who publishes this guide, and why it exists.
- Editorial standards
How we research, verify, label and correct what we publish.
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- Contact
Corrections, questions and press enquiries.