The
Sarasota Times reported the news, recorded history, and influenced its readers from the time Rose Wilson and her husband first published it in 1899. After his death in 1910, Rose continued to publish the weekly and nine years later became also its editor.
The 1919 compulsory school attendance issue is an example of her journalistic lobbying. Three days before the election to decide the issue, she reprinted a letter from the Manatee Federation of Woman's Clubs, which gave a list of reasons to support compulsory attendance. With compulsory attendance, "Your child will not be retarded in his studies because your neighbor's child is so irregular in attendance as to make backward classes." Voters approved the requirement that children between the ages of seven and sixteen attend school unless they had finished eighth grade. In a post-election article, Wilson shamed the men who failed to pay their poll tax in time to vote. "Every voter...would have considered it his duty to pay his poll tax...in an election that concerned his business interests." "Is it any wonder that women want to exercise the right of citizenship when men are so indifferent to the child?"
When the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the vote, Wilson was the first to register. Heavy registration caused the Supervisor of Elections to hire another worker. On November 4, a record number of voters turned out. "Mrs. C. V. S. Wilson can be credited with a major role in bringing Sarasota's women into the electoral process."
The
Sarasota Times and community leaders from Sarasota to Englewood and Myakka lobbied to form a county separate from Manatee. After voters endorsed the new county in a referendum on June 15, 1921, Wilson immediately changed the name of her paper. The June 16 issue was the
Sarasota County Times.
She sold the paper in 1923.