Phil Lewis

Each spring, the National Press Photographers Association invites a select group of accomplished newspaper and magazine veterans to Ohio University in Athens to select the year’s best examples of photojournalism. This year, the group picked the Naples Daily News as ...

Editorial boards at newspapers throughout Florida have had busy summers.

Thanks for the emails, notes and phone calls in response to last Sunday's front-page "Letter to Readers" that announced a major Naples Daily News initiative called the Lighthouse Project.

On occasion in Tallahassee, bills are introduced in the State Legislature to amend Florida's Sunshine Law.

Letter to readers: Editor Phil Lewis announces initiative, the Lighthouse Project

Gov. Rick Scott is about to sign a new law that will keep the public from seeing photos or videos of someone being killed.

In the darkness, two dozen war-toughened soldiers had cornered their man.

Trustees at Florida Gulf Coast University will be asked Tuesday to approve a new degree program that’s close to my heart.

If a newspaper has a web site -– and most do -– the editor is familiar with a telephone call that goes something like this:

Those on a death watch for newspapers should take note of what’s happening here at the Naples Daily News. This winter we are registering healthy increases in paid subscribers — both weekday and Sunday, especially Sunday. That’s something we haven’t ...

When a fellow named Mike Trephan came to me eight years back with the idea of having the local Marine Corps League sponsor an "Honor the Free Press Day," I was all for it, yet a bit skeptical.

Registration is open for our 2010 Sunshine Seminar co-sponsored by the First Amendment Foundation and the Florida Bar Association.

The Naples Daily News editorial board has wrapped up its interviews with candidates whose names will be on the Aug. 24 primary ballots in Lee and Collier counties.

The Jackson Laboratory issue is generating dozens of letters to the editor and guest commentaries, hundreds of online comments and quite a few direct e-mails to the news room.

The Naples Daily News is going to co-host a Sunshine Seminar in September to better explain Florida’s public records and open meeting laws. Elected officials and the people who elect them — that would be the general public — will ...

A few months back I devoted a column to the weather, noting that in 2010 Naples recorded the coldest winter on record. It didn’t take long to heat up.

The naysayers of the state-county-federal effort to bring Jackson Laboratory to Collier County have loaded their quiver with all sorts of arrows to shoot holes in the proposed enterprise.

The Naples Daily News editorial board has lots of people to meet in the next 90 days. That’s because it’s an election year and for the past few decades the newspaper has interviewed and endorsed candidates for every local, state ...

One belt-tightening possibility contained in a report this past week to Naples City Council really causes me heartburn.

With gushing oil and a rush to wrap up the annual legislative session in Tallahassee, there’s plenty of fodder for commentary on Sunday, May 9, 2010. Here goes ...

This past Thursday afternoon there were protesters outside Wrigley Field in Chicago shouting “Boycott Arizona.” Think how pleasant that would have seemed this past winter.

Our newsroom can expect a series of emergency alerts from weather forecasters when the tropics spawn hurricanes each year. I’m sure the newsrooms of our peers up north get their own Internet alerts during the winter when blizzards threaten. We ...

Freedom of speech gets undying support from the wide majority, which, as an aside, is more than we can say about freedom of the press.

Senate Bill 6, which cleared the Florida Legislature in the wee hours of Friday morning, was Tallahassee’s version of the health-care legislation that caused such a ruckus in Washington last month.

The winter of 2010 was the coldest ever in Naples or at least since 1942, when the National Weather Service first started recording daily temperatures in the city.

Rogue pythons slithering through Southwest Florida underbrush have earned the most headlines recently, but that’s not the only alien predator we need to worry about. Or, so says the South Florida Water Management District.

I heard a term not long ago that I’m helping spread around. Someone said we were having a “Georgia winter.”

We’ve all heard the phrase “kill the messenger.” In Texas a week ago, it was “steal, hide and heap scorn upon the messenger.”

There’s an old gag that claims few things are safe when legislative bodies are in session. And like most gags, there’s at least a grain of truth involved.

I caught the Bush brothers the other night at the Naples Grande during a unique Town Hall Distinguished Speaker Series session. For those who missed the news reports of the event, President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb ...

I used to be a contributing editor, on a freelance basis, for Cardiology World News. That’s a trade magazine supported by companies that want to market stents, statins and other heart-care products to cardiologists. So, I feel qualified to comment ...

My column in this past Sunday’s Daily News (Perspective) prompted a flood of legal opinions and unsolicited advice on what I should do about a speeding ticket received in the mail. This system has caused quite an uproar in Arizona, ...

Got a surprise in the mail this past week. It was a letter from the Pima County sheriff in Tucson, Ariz. He was charging me with speeding — going 60 in a 45-mph zone — on a four-lane highway somewhere ...

A newspaperman, a television news anchor and an author of 19 novels will speak at this year’s Honor the Free Press Day in Naples. We’re not talking three separate speakers; we’re talking Jim Lehrer.

The eight-member editorial board of the Naples Daily News meets frequently with community leaders interested in gaining editorial support on our opinion pages for a specific program or project.

Newspaper Web sites are giving newspaper editors a clearer picture of which stories grab and captivate readers.

Comic strips continue to be a topic of reader feedback — solicited or not. More than one reader has let us know face-to-face in recent weeks that Mary Worth isn’t worth their trouble and should be dropped from our daily ...

A forecast of Florida’s economic future landed on the editor’s desk this past week with a sobering thud. The prognosticator was the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida. The institute is part of the Orlando-based university’s ...

While the inaugural Naples International Film Festival was winding down last Sunday at the Mercato in North Naples, U.S. Marine Corps veterans and the USO were hosting a “world premier” of their own a few miles north at a church ...

Things can move slowly in Washington, D.C. — slower than it takes to widen an interstate highway. The expansion of Interstate 75 — made possible by the $286.4 billion federal highway bill of 2005 — is almost complete, while little ...

An explosion that shocked Naples nearly 25 years ago and spawned a handful of “true-crime” books is now attracting attention from afar — specifically a British film crew that is scheduled to produce documentaries for the likes of the BBC ...

The First Amendment is holding its own — at least in the arena of public opinion. That’s one of the findings of Freedom Forum’s 13th annual State of the First Amendment survey. Freedom Forum is a nonprofit organization that directs ...

We gave a number of readers a bit of a fright a week ago, due to some hasty, unfortunate editing of our “Florida briefs” column in our main news section. We didn’t mean to scare anyone and it wasn’t some ...

The federal government — your federal government — is finding that old policies and customs involving public information and public access may no longer have a place in the digital age of 24-hour news and citizen journalism. Changes will come. ...

On Friday, a note crossed the editor’s desk that read something like this: "I am a regular subscriber to your paper and have been for 25 years. I am on vacation and trying to read the Naples Daily News online. ...

Last week’s column about the U.S. Military Cemetery in Holland and the Dutch men and women who have adopted and decorate each GI’s grave with flowers got interesting reader response.

While most of us were still in bed today (Sunday, May 24, 2009), taps were sounding at a cemetery marked by more than 8,000 white crosses several thousand miles to the east along the Maastricht-Vaals motorway in the town of ...

A question often tossed my way when speaking to community groups goes something like this: Why do you always report the bad news, but rarely the good?

I usually don’t catch Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” but while channel surfing the other evening I stopped long enough to see Jay’s “Headlines” feature, which follows his monologue one night a week. I think it’s one night a ...

The annual legislative session is wrapping up in Tallahassee and the search for money is at a fever pitch, perhaps more so than at any time in memory. The recession has our elected representatives looking for revenue — i.e., taxes ...