Opinion Archive

It was a great day for Navarre businesses on Friday, Feb. 17, at the Navarre Beach Area Chamber of Commerce awards and installation breakfast.

After a year of hard work behind the scenes, the two chambers became one again.

There’s something that has bothered me about the way Gov. Ron DeSantis does business since he took office in early 2019 and it has nothing to do with his politics.

I’ve been covering the news in Northwest Florida for close to 20 years now at different publications.

I follow a Florida-based jazz guitarist on Facebook. I learned about him through my online search for other guitarists who play an archtop guitar made by a little-known luthier.

This guitarist has one, and we corresponded briefly about our love for these guitars.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been back overseeing the Crestview News Bulletin and Santa Rosa’s Press Gazette for more than two months now.

There have been some minor hiccups along the way, more on that later, but overall the job has gone better than I could have hoped.

MaxPreps has a much bigger role now in high school athletics than it once did.

That status update is the result of the FHSAA partnering up with it when it comes to calculating rankings that determines who goes and who stays home when it comes to the postseason in all sports.

I have now joined the growing ranks of people whose Facebook account has been hacked.

One Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I received a notification from Facebook that my paid ad was now approved and running. I had posted a paid ad for COMPASS Church where I am pastor, but that ad had been running for several days.

For the last week (and more) we have been gathering stories we have written over the past year to submit to the Florida Press Association for the annual journalism awards.

It has been a lot of fun to look back, and also, it’s been very rewarding to really see the talent we have on our team across the three newspapers.

In a lot of ways, I haven’t minded getting older.

Despite a couple of back surgeries (in fact, I am writing this column on the 10th anniversary of my first), I am a rather healthy guy in my mid-40s.

Last year, the Legislature passed a public notice bill (HB 7049) that went into effect Jan. 1.

The new law gives counties the option to place public notices solely on their own government website and dispense with any such notice in the traditional format — newspapers and newspaper websites.

Occasionally in life, we have watershed moments, some life-defining occurrence that suddenly sends our life or our perspective on life in a different direction.

I have had several watershed moments in my life, and the Apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 1:21 reminded me of one of them.