Former Daily News publisher enters Hall of Fame

Corbin Wyant, the former publisher of the Daily News, joined the company of journalism greats when he was inducted into the Florida Newspaper Hall of Fame on Friday.

Wyant, 69, attributes his success in newspapers to one main quality.

"Relentless Optimism," — a motto on a plaque he kept in his office for decades.

He had it. And he worked with people who had it, too.

"I would say that the one consistent quality is relentless optimism and I was surrounded by people who displayed that and, if they got knocked down, they got right back up," said Wyant, via telephone after being surprised by the induction. "I was a college wrestler, and when you wrestle you learn you have to get right back up and you learn to continue to strive for excellence."

The honor was bestowed at a Florida Society of Newspaper Editors awards lunch in St. Petersburg. Wyant is now among nearly three dozen newspaper elite, with inductees who include the founder of USA TODAY and the publisher of The Miami Herald for four decades.

The Hall of Fame was established in 1988 and is sponsored by the Florida Press Association, a newspaper trade group that counts every daily newspaper in the state and about 130 weeklies among its members.

Wyant

Wyant guided the Daily News for nearly 25 years. He started as general manager in 1977 and became publisher in 1985 until he retired in June 2002. He also held the posts of vice president and president.

He reared three children in Naples, where he still lives with his wife. He still works as a consultant for the Sun Coast Media Group, publishers of newspapers in Charlotte and DeSoto counties.

Wyant's leadership through almost 25 years of growth has become Daily News lore.

The circulation of the Daily News swelled fourfold and ownership changed from the Collier family to the E.W. Scripps Co., which acquired the Bonita Banner and the Marco Island Eagle under Wyant's reins. And the Daily News switched from a six-day-a-week afternoon paper to a seven-day morning newspaper.

"To have the guy who headed up the Naples newspaper for a quarter century make it into the Hall of Fame — it's pretty special," Phil Lewis, the editor of the Daily News, who started at the paper as a 26-year-old reporter in 1978.

Lewis, who attended Friday's ceremony, said Wyant backed doing whatever was needed to get public records or access to meetings that should be open to the public.

Wyant was great supporter of public service journalism, Lewis said.

Alan Horton, who was editor of the Daily News from 1987 to 1991, said Wyant embraced aggressive, investigative journalism, even when coverage provoked anger. He recalled a series exposing corruption and exploitation in Immokalee, the farming town.

"When the series began to break on Page 1, the complaints were loud and threatening. We never flinched and Corbin certainly didn't," said Horton, who was at the awards lunch Friday.

And there were many more stories like that, he said.

"Corbin really strongly believes in a vibrant, honest, aggressive newspaper and he never, ever, as publisher, did anything but support the most aggressive kind of editorial operations."

His passion seeped into community action. Wyant has done everything from coaching Little League to sitting on the Philharmonic Center for the Arts board.

He led the Florida Press Association and is now president of Florida Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes literacy and newspapers in education, among other goals.

Wyant, after accepting a humanitarian award in 2000, said the best community service is publishing a good newspaper. At the time, Horton said, Wyant was the first journalist since Clark Kent to deserve such an award.

Under Wyant's leadership, the Daily News won two Charles E. Scripps National Journalism awards for supporting literacy efforts and became a model statewide for other newspapers.

Wyant began his newspaper career in the late 1950s at the Leader-Times, a paper in Pennsylvania his family once owned. In 1974, he came to Florida and was publisher of a Punta Gorda newspaper until he joined the Daily News as general manager in 1977 at a time when Collier County still harbored enough corners of Old Florida to have a carrier that delivered papers on horseback.

Wyant also has a passion for music. He plays the trombone and would recruit new employees to join the Naples Daily News Marching Band or the Naples Daily News Traditional Jazz Band. He helped form both and still performs with them.

Dean Ridings, Florida Press Association president, was preparing Wyant's Hall of Fame presentation earlier Friday in tune with music of the Naples Daily News Traditional Jazz Band when Wyant walked in.

Ridings said Wyant rose to the top of the nominees for the selection committee.

"I was personally thrilled they selected Corbin and value his contributions to the industry," he said.

Ridings said he tried to brush it off by saying he just wanted to introduce its music to the crowd. Wyant believed him and kept waiting to hear the music.

"I was a little slow on the uptake," Wyant said, with a chuckle.

Wyant said he was proud of the honor.

"What I'm really proud of is the journalistic quality of our Florida newspapers. It's been a real, real privilege to be a part of that and I've had the wonderful opportunity to be associated with Scripps and Sun Coast Media Group."