'Really good reporter, really good guy': Longtime Naples journalist Eric Staats dies at 55

Perhaps Eric Staats was destined to work at a newspaper ‒ but certainly not on the business side.

Michele Staats Feldmann, one of his two sisters, recalled her big brother not collecting money on his paper route in their hometown of Peoria, Illinois. He had the route from about age 12 to 16.

“Eric was always bad about getting money," she said. "He'd be like, 'Come on, you need to help me get the money.' And off we'd go."

She would knock on the door of the subscriber to ask for the money she said, adding: "He would always come with me but step off to the side, by the bushes.”

Staats died May 12. He was 55, and worked all 33 years of his professional career for the Naples Daily News.

'Really good reporter, really good guy'

After graduating from Academy of Our Lady/Spalding Institute (AOL/SI) in 1985, Staats attended Indiana University and graduated in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. While there, he worked as editor of The Indiana Daily Student newspaper.

The same year he left college, he began his career at the Daily News, as a business and real estate reporter. He worked as a city government reporter from 1992 to 1995.

Former Naples Mayor Bill Barnett remembered Staats as a soft-spoken, serious journalist.

"That just seemed to be the kind of person he was," said Barnett, also a former Naples City Council member.

"He was very, very thorough in his reporting. I really liked him. He knew a lot of people and he was there a long time. I’m heartbroken. He was just a really good reporter and a really good guy.”

Bradley Cornell, with the Audubon Florida/Audubon of the Western Everglades, said he knew Staats professionally for more than 20 years.

"He was a valued environmental journalist, a role that he fulfilled with dedication and tenacity," said Cornell, a Southwest Florida Policy Associate with the organization, in an email.

"It's also a role that sadly society is seeing disappear here and many other places.  We are poorer and less informed with Eric's passing ― just when we need him most."

'Unflappable' award-winning journalist

Staats began as an assistant city editor in 1995. After two years, he returned to reporting, covering the environment. It was there that Staats found his passion.

Allen Bartlett, a former Daily News city editor, recalled how Staats was meticulous, focused on doing his very best on every single story he wrote.

“You couldn't rattle the guy no matter what deadline he was on," Bartlett said. "He was so unflappable, even keeled and it carried over to everyone else around him."

Bartlett, who arrived at the Daily News in 1999, said he had a philosophy that reporters should change beats periodically but it would've been foolish to move Staats away from environmental coverage.

“He was a pretty amazing environment reporter," he said

And Staats proved it with daily stories and bigger projects, including the 15-part "Deep Trouble: The Gulf in Peril" series in 2003 that sounded the alarm about declining water quality in the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida Keys to Mexico.

Bartlett was the effort's lead editor.

'He was committed to staying here'

“America’s sea, the once teeming and vibrant Gulf of Mexico, is gravely sick by any reckoning,” the series began on Sept. 28, 2003, following an 18-month investigation by a team of 16 reporters and photographers. Staats was among the three or four lead reporters on the project, Bartlett said.

"Deep Trouble" spanned 118 newspaper pages without advertising that documented the geographic threats in all Gulf rim states and explored trends causing the pollution. The series won many state and national honors, including the Edward J. Meeman Award for environmental reporting.

"One of the things that struck me was he always had the talent to go anywhere else, into a large market if he wanted to, but this has always been his home since I've known him," Bartlett said of Staats.

“He was committed to staying here and dedicated himself to reporting that this was his community.”

More awards near the end of his reporting career included his work in the series "Shrinking Shores" with journalist Ryan Mills. It won various accolades, including first place in 2017 for non-deadline reporting from the Green Eyeshade Awards that recognizes the best journalism in the Southeast U.S.; and the Gold Medal for Public Service from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.

Special report: Shrinking Shores series

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The Florida Wildlife Federation also named Staats its Communicator of the Year.

In his final years as a reporter before becoming an editor, Staats won for Beat Reporting in 2018 from the Florida Society of News Editors. One was a story about a man who created a nature preserve east of Naples. The other was on a retired Naples botanist who catalogued nature's chaos.

He worked as an editor in various capacities in his last years at the Daily News, from overseeing local government and election coverage to coordinating the paper's watchdog reporting.

His last day at the newspaper was Nov. 15, 2022, after accepting a voluntary severance offer.

Fishing in northern Canada

Staats was looking forward to his annual fishing trip to northern Canada with family, but first he was heading home for Mother's Day weekend.

He never made his May 12 early afternoon flight to Illinois from Punta Gorda Airport. Staats died at his Golden Gate home from heart issues.

The fishing trip was among the highlights of the year for Staats and family members, a 12-hour drive from Peoria to Sioux Narrows, Ontario, on the shores of the Lake of the Woods.

He also vacationed with his sisters, Michele, 53, and Teresa Sager, 50, when each turned 50 years old. And when he was back in Peoria, he made it a point to make time for his nieces and nephews, the sisters said.

“When he was home, he was like, ‘We’ll go to Jack’s football game and the girls' volleyball game," Teresa Sager said, with Michele adding: "He never missed a graduation from eighth grade on. He made them all."

Staats was a mentor, writing coach, friend

The news of Staats' death was a jolt to family and friends, with many sharing their grief and love for him on social media.

"I don't think he ever realized how much he touched the lives of the people he met," wrote Vonna Keomanyvong, a friend and former Daily News colleague, on her Facebook. "Eric's mentorship and coaching helped so many young journalists and producers who came through the Naples and Fort Myers newsrooms."

Longtime friend Victoria Macchi said he was "the core of our little group."

"He taught us what showing up as a friend was," Macchi, also a former Daily News journalist, wrote on Facebook.

"My god, did this guy show up, in the big and small ways that made up a life. Family dinners, holiday meals, road trips, hectic moves, eviscerating breakups, dog emergencies, Halloween parties, pontoon outings, paddle board adventures, Tuesday afternoon back-room bingo at the Parrot."

Music man on Facebook

Away from work, Staats tuned into games of his beloved Chicago Cubs. While he was not a big fan of social media, he posted on Facebook a few times a month about his other passion, music.

He shared videos of favorite songs with usually a short comment like "Cool. Always will be" for R.E.M.'s "Man On The Moon" or "My favorite song. Thank you John," above a video of Tedeschi Trucks Band performing "Angel From Montgomery," written by John Prine.

A sampling of other songs he posted were performed by Merle Haggard, Albert King, Bob Marley, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Stevie Nicks.

Last September, he wrote on Facebook about leaving a grocery store and hearing a song a man outside, in a wheelchair, was playing "on a crackly radio," adding, "It stopped me in my tracks."

Staats shared a video of that song, "Whenever I Call You Friend," a hit for Kenny Loggins and Nicks in 1978.

The song includes the lyrics:

Whenever I call you friend

I believe I've come to understand

Everywhere we are you and I were meant to be

Forever and ever

Services planned in Peoria, Naples

A visitation will be held Thursday, May 25, from 5–7 p.m. at Wright & Salmon Mortuary in Peoria. A Mass of Burial at Holy Family Catholic Church in Peoria will be on Friday, May 26, followed by burial at Resurrection Cemetery.

And his family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, please donate to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida or the St. Jude Midwest Affiliate Clinic in Peoria. Family and friends will gather at a later date in Naples to celebrate his life. An announcement will be made when details are finalized.

In addition to his sisters and their spouses, survivors include parents Michael and Patricia (Wainman) Staats and nieces and nephews Ryan Feldmann of St. Louis; Meghan and Natalie Feldmann of Washington, Illinois; and Jack, Mitch, and Charlie Sager of Peoria.

Dave Osborn, regional features editor of the Naples Daily News and The News-Press, will miss his longtime friend and colleague.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Eric Staats dies, longtime award-winning Naples journalist