Gregory Lewis

Gregory Lewis, a former San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle reporter who most recently had worked at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, died Tuesday at a hospital in Pembroke Pines, Fla., after a two-year battle with prostate cancer. His specialty was the small story scooped from the street, or the din of a barbershop, that took readers into worlds they had never visited, his Chron obit said. Lewis, 57, was recruited to the Florida newspaper by Sharon Rosenhause, former Examiner managing editor who took the same position with the Sun-Sentinel in 2001. She said he was as comfortable covering state legislators in Tallahassee as chatting with patrons at one of his barbershops. “And he didn’t think the people in Tallahassee were any more important,” Rosenhause said. (Photo credit: Brant Ward, Chronicle)

UPDATE, 4:10 P.M.: From BeyondChron.org:

Lewis was part of a cadre of Black reporters, editors and columnists at the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle in the 1980s and 90s; a group that included reporters Perry Lang, Venise Wagner, Thaai Walker, Austin Long‑Scott, Yumi Wilson, Paula Parker and Clarence Johnson. 

Lewis wrote stories about Willie Brown’s two terms as San Francisco’s first African American mayor, the impact of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake on the Bay Area’s African American communities, the Million Man March, the gentrification of San Francisco’s African American communities and many other issues during Lewis’ time at the Examiner. … 

Lewis made a point to not only become acquainted with then Mayor Willie Brown and other Black community leaders, but everyday Black people who hung out in the Fillmore, Bayview‑Hunter’s Point, East Oakland and other Bay Area African American communities.