Lewis has worked at the paper since 1978; 29 years. When he started as a reporter, the paper printed Monday-Friday with a big edition on Sunday. The focus of the news was "local, local" with a photo of a car crash or a lost pet on the front page. Readers supposedly read several papers, getting their national and international news from the Miami Herald or nearby Fort-Myers News Press.

In 1986 the paper was purchased by the national publisher, Scripps-Howard, which turned the Naples News into a more metro paper, opening a bureau in a bordering county to compete with the News-Press. All of a sudden, the paper was printing seven days a week, every day of the year and had extended its reach in one of the fastest growing communities in America.

A few years ago, Lewis and Co. realized that the Web was the new platform and re-worked their newsroom to focus on Web-first publishing. The Internet has allowed the paper to get even more local than it was when Lewis first joined the paper. It taps into the resources of its community, initiating debates in online forums and printing news and photos from its readers. Last week, the paper launched its latest project, an interactive weather webcast.

Based on his experiences, Lewis feels that news is going to become even more local, right down to neighborhoods. More freelancers and citizen journalists will be used for the "paper's" content. And in a world of constantly updated international and national websites and stretched budgets at many newspapers, Lewis' educated predictions are probably right.

Source: Naples News