When reporter Ben Montgomery was fired last week from Axios after dismissing a Ron DeSantis press release as “propaganda,” he recalled Local editor Jamie Stockwell telling him his “reputation in the Tampa Bay area” had been “irreparably tarnished.” The firing, which came after a Florida Department of Education aide posted Montgomery’s email on Twitter, highlighted the DeSantis team’s adversarial posture toward the press, along with how nonpartisan outlets, like Axios, appear particularly sensitive to perceptions of bias. The incident comes as news organizations, anticipating the Florida governor’s all-but-inevitable presidential candidacy in 2024, are staffing up to cover him.

Already, the DeSantis beat is taking shape. Longtime Florida-based political reporter Marc Caputo, who exited NBC News in January following a reported controversy over his posts on Instagram about evicting a tenant, has been scooped up by The Messenger, Jimmy Finkelstein’s new venture launching in May. Caputo’s move followed reported interest from Axios and Semafor, while NBC hired Matt Dixon, formerly Politico’s Florida bureau chief, as senior national politics reporter—ostensibly to replace Caputo. Politico is still well-positioned with Gary Fineout, who writes Florida Playbook, as well as Alex Isenstadt, who has been covering Republicans for years and is already reporting on DeSantis in the context of the next presidential election. Plus, sources tell me, Isenstadt is writing a book about the 2024 race.

Then there’s The Washington Post and The New York Times. Neither outlet seems to have a designated DeSantis beat reporter yet, even as both are covering his 2024 prospects. I have heard, though, that the Times has been talking to some outside candidates about covering DeSantis on a more day-to-day level. National politics reporter Hannah Knowles seems to have taken on such a role at the Post, as she’s been writing on DeSantis trips and donor meetings. But you’re also seeing the bylines of more senior reporters like Josh Dawsey and Isaac Stanley-Becker—both experienced in covering Republicans—on DeSantis pieces. 

The Times has a trifecta of skilled reporters best known for their coverage of Trumpworld: longtime chronicler Maggie Haberman, along with Michael Bender (whom the Times poached from The Wall Street Journal last spring), and Jonathan Swan (whom the Times nabbed from Axios in November). Swan started out covering Capitol Hill, but it’s always been the plan for him to join the politics team this summer, as the Times noted in his hiring announcement. Swan’s byline, though, has increasingly shown up on DeSantis stories—four with Haberman just in the last week—so the wheels are apparently already in motion. “Everyone here knows that Swan is coming back to the politics team at some point, so it’s just an open question of how all the pieces fit together,” one Times staffer told me. Haberman has been filing pieces on both DeSantis and Donald Trump, as has Bender, who recently went to Iowa to cover visits by both DeSantis and Trump. 

Axios is heading into this cycle not only down Swan but other reporters well-sourced with Republicans: congressional reporter Alayna Treene decamped to CNN earlier this year, and Josh Kraushaar recently announced that he’s departing as senior political correspondent to become editor in chief for Jewish Insider (he’ll remain an Axios contributor).

It can be particularly challenging to report inside DeSantis’s orbit, which makes the jockeying by news organizations all the more competitive. For one, it’s hard to source up inside an operation that appears inherently distrustful of journalists. “It’s almost like they’re running a straight-up opposition campaign against the media,” a political reporter at a major news outlet said of DeSantis’s press strategy. (For a Vanity Fair story earlier this month on DeSantis’s media strategy, a spokesperson referenced recent pieces on DeSantis’s right-wing, culture-war crusade in accusing this magazine of “dressing up wild leftist talking points as truthful analysis and reporting.”)

Despite the fact that Trump has bashed the media for years, he—and others in his orbit—seemed to have reporters on speed dial during his chaotic presidency. DeSantis’s guardedness with the press, another political reporter said, has been “a little bit of a culture shock” for reporters who got used to “swimming in leaks” during the Trump years. “We all took advantage of the knife fighting over at the White House—that’s how everyone got their leaks,” they said.

“DeSantisworld doesn’t leak because DeSantisworld basically doesn’t really exist,” a political reporter familiar with Florida politics and DeSantis’s operation told me. “It’s like four, five people who know what’s going on. That’s going to change as he starts to build out the organization.” (DeSantis is known to keep a tight circle, with his wife, Casey, considered his “closest confidant and adviser.”) “It’s one guy who doesn’t have much of a crew around him, and part of his secret sauce is to poke a thumb in the eye of the media,” the reporter added, suggesting news outlets are going to “need someone who is able to talk the language of Republicans to deal with them.”

“Everyone is coming from a point of deficit. We all have sources in his orbit, but I don’t think there’s anyone who’s owning or dominating the DeSantis beat,” another political reporter at a major outlet told me. (At least, not yet.) 

In my conversations, reporters noted there are a handful of national journalists with Florida experience that could give them, and their organizations, a leg up covering DeSantis in a national election. Bender, for one, covered the Florida governor and state politics for the Tampa Bay Times; The Wall Street Journal’s Alex Leary, who seems to be taking the lead on DeSantis coverage for the Journal, also came from the Tampa Bay Times; Beth Reinhard, a political investigations reporter at the Post, previously worked at the Miami Herald and The Palm Beach Post. In addition to Bender, the Times also has Miami bureau chief Patricia Mazzei, who spent a decade at the Herald and is well-sourced in the state. As one of the political reporters I spoke to put it, “If you’re a Florida reporter, wired into Tallahassee, you’re more valuable.”