He covered murders and unrest in Haiti as a metro reporter, then wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing, the 1998 Westside Middle School shooting, and the Susan Smith trial as a national correspondent based in Atlanta.

[3] For the story, an account of Florida Gulf Coast oystermen culture he had written the year before, Bragg relied on the reporting of volunteer intern J. Wes Yoder.

The article ran with a dateline of Apalachicola, Florida, and began: "The anchor is made from the crankshaft of a junked car, the hull is stained with bottom muck, but the big Johnson outboard motor is brand new.

Chugging softly, it pushes the narrow oyster boat over Apalachicola Bay, gently intruding on the white egrets that slip like paper airplanes just overhead, and the jumping mullet that belly-flop with a sharp clap into steel-gray water."

A review by the Times found that while Bragg "indeed visited Apalachicola briefly and wrote the article, the interviewing and reporting on the scene were done by a freelance journalist, J. Wes Yoder.