The Press Club of Southwest Florida is proud to announce that Barbara Petersen, CEO of the Florida Center for Government Accountability (FCGA), will be the featured newsmaker speaker at our January 14, 2026, luncheon. At a time when transparency, accountability, and public trust are…
“The loneliest people are often those who see things as they are.” —Source unknown The danger to democracy doesn’t start with lies. It begins when people know something is false and accept it anyway. This difference matters both morally and psychologically. This essay expands on last week’s column about the…
On May 8, Francis Rooney was at the Naples Yacht Club with friends when he received a text from his daughter: “DAD, IT’S BOB!” That meant only one thing: the priest that Rooney had known in the Midwest and at…
People don’t want the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.—Friedrich Nietzsche By the end of 2025, journalists will no longer need convincing that truth is under attack. What we still need to understand, honestly and without arrogance, is why truth…
The Press Club of Southwest Florida is proud to announce that Barbara Petersen, CEO of the Florida Center for Government Accountability (FCGA), will be the featured newsmaker speaker at our January 14, 2026, luncheon. At a time when transparency, accountability, and public trust are…
By the time you read this commentary, you will have attended the Press Club’s Newsmaker luncheon with Francis Rooney, or you’ll read David Silverberg’s account in next week’s edition of SCOOP. My deadline for this edition of SCOOP was yesterday,…
“I’m just trying to go through life without looking stupid. It’s not working out too well.” –Brian Regan Can you relate? Every few years, a headline circulates through our national conversation, asking whether Americans are “getting dumber.” Recently, New York magazine revisited…
On Tuesday, Dec. 16, at the Hilton Naples, the Press Club of Southwest Florida is pleased and proud to present Francis Rooney, a successful businessman, public servant, former U.S. Representative, and U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, as its featured…
There is no gentle way to say this: The America that today’s young journalists will cover is not the America my generation inherited. It is more divided, more suspicious, more anxious, and more openly hostile to truth. We once thought…
