The Polk County Democrat
newspaper in Bartow, Florida
The Polk County Democrat was a newspaper published in Bartow, Polk County, Florida, United States. It was a semi-weekly paper which began publication in 1931 and is the only newspaper published within Bartow. The Democrat was run by members of the Frisbie family for 75 years.
The paper was sold to the Sun Coast Media Group in 2006, along with several other papers owned by the Frisbie family, namely the Lake Wales News and Fort Meade Leader. The paper was subsequently renamed the Polk News-Sun.
Frisbie family
Louise Kelley Frisbie worked at the paper with her husband for over 40 years, and was a columnist for the Democrat and the Fort Meade Leader from 1970 until her death in 1989.
S.L. Frisbie IV led the newspaper for over 45 years, representing the fourth generation of his family to head the publication. As a sophomore at Florida State University, he was employed as an entry-level reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. Going back to Bartow and joining the Polk County Democrat in 1964, he wrote a weekly column through his retirement in 2009. Frisbie was elected as president of the Florida Press Association in 1976, and inducted into the Florida Press Association Hall of Fame in 2013.
The public source identifies “The Polk County Democrat” as newspaper in Bartow, Florida. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Polk, County and Democrat.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Polk County Democrat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.