Martin Dyckman covered local, state and national government and politics and wrote editorials and opinion columns during a 46-year career with the St. Petersburg Times, where he retired in 2006 as associate editor.
From 1969 to 1976 he was chief of the newspaper's state capital bureau at Tallahassee, where his investigative journalism contributed prominently to the resignations of two Supreme Court justices and to a constitutional amendment providing for merit selection and retention of Florida appellate judges. The Florida Bar Foundation recognized his articles on prison reform and judicial reform with its 1984 Medal of Honor award, making him the first journalist so honored. 
He is the author of three books, Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins; A Most Disorderly Court: Scandal and Reform in the Florida Judiciary; and Reubin O'D. Askew and the Golden Age of Florida Politics, published by the University Press of Florida. The Collins biography won the Charlton Tebeau award of the Florida Historical Society and a bronze medal in the Florida Book Awards. The Askew volume was chosen for the Florida Book Awards 2012 bronze medal for nonfiction.
He and wife, Dr. Ivy J. Dyckman, make their home at Waynesville, North Carolina.