NewsLanc.com is an e-zine focused on the important issues facing Lancaster city and county. Our mission is to provide an alternative source of coverage and comment from the monopoly Lancaster press. We will provide news without spin, editorials without vested interests and personal attacks, and solicit vigorous discussions from the public.

Over the past year, NewsLanc.com has evolved in several exciting ways, including the distribution of our weekly newsletters downtown at Central Market on Friday and Saturday mornings and the addition of a full-time reporter and editor.

If you have any questions, tips, or suggestions, please write to us at by clicking on this link.

Robert Field

Robert Edwin Field, Editor and Publisher

Graduate of University of California – Berkeley, BA ‘59 with a major in economics.

Builder and longtime operator of apartment complexes and hotels (http://themanorgroup.com).

Partners with son Richard who develops planned communities in Eastern Europe.

Executive producer for award winning motion pictures “Liquid Sky” (1983), “Diamond Men” (2001), the documentary “Stalin’s Wife” (2005), and “Perestroika” (2009).

Finance chair of Arlen Specter’s successful 1980 statewide senatorial campaign.

Co-founder with Melvin R. Allen of Project Forward Leap, for over twenty years providing five weeks of educational overnight summer camp plus year-round academic support for about 300 inner city kids each year.

Co-founder with Kevin B. Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy. See interview.

Founder of Central Pennsylvania Syringe Exchange and Lancaster Harm Reduction Project.

Co-sponsor (2002 – 2005) of a state and federally approved experimental Lancaster Prototype Methadone Program that permitted local prescription fulfillment and medical care for stable patients outside of a Methadone clinic.

Prime mover of the deregulation of the sale of syringes in Pennsylvania.

Originator and sponsor of a CARE program providing approximately three hundred small (approximately 300 books each) community libraries throughout Afghanistan and Guatemala.

Director of the American House Foundation which provides food aid to children in Hungary.

Project Manager for the tragically aborted renovation and expansion of the Lancaster Public Library.

Founder of RealReporting.org  /  NewsLanc.com

Recipient of the Crystal Stair award from the Sociology Department of the  University of Pennsylvania.

Although living in Lancaster for over 40 years, Field only turned his political activism to local issues as he became aware of the misrepresentations and crony capitalism taking place concerning the Convention Center Project. (See mission statement.)

Field can be reached via email by clicking this link.

Kevin Zeese

Kevin Zeese has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980.

He works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy.

As Executive Director of the Campaign for Fresh Air & Clean Politics he directs its key projects including Voters for Peace (www.VotersForPeace.US), Prosperity Agenda (www.ProsperityAgenda.US), Come Home America (www.ComeHomeAmerica.US) and True Vote (www.TrueVote.US). He also serves as president of Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org).

He has been active in independent and third party political campaigns including for state legislative offices in Maryland, governor of California and U.S. president, where he served as press secretary and spokesperson for Ralph Nader in 2004. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and was the only person ever nominated by the Green Party, Libertarian Party and Populist Party.

Bill Keisling

Bill Keisling is author of more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction. His essays, investigative writings, and short stories have appeared in diverse magazines and journals including The North American Review, Rolling Stone, and The Progressive magazines. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for his novel The Meltdown. The introduction to his first nonfiction book, Three Mile Island: Turning Point, was written by R. Buckminster Fuller.

Keisling grew up in close proximity to the Pennsylvania governor’s office, and the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. He has published several books on corruption in Pennsylvania government and the attorney general’s office, including The Sins of Our Fathers, We All Fall Down, and The Midnight Ride of Jonathan Luna.

He is also the writer and editor of Yardbird.com.

Slava Tsukerman

Slava Tsukerman was born in Moscow, Soviet Union.

Best known as the director/writer/producer of a cult classic Liquid Sky, Slava Tsukerman has directed internationally 43 films of different genres. He has received 13 awards from many international film festivals.

Tsukerman made his debut at the age of 21, as the director/writer/producer of I Believe in Spring. This first independently made fiction short in the Soviet Union history, won First Prize in the Moscow Amateur Film Festival, was awarded in the Film Festival in Montreal and was successfully released nationally.

Tsukerman’s films Great Bells, The Heat in Cold Numbers, Professor Alexandrov’s Discovery, Vaudeville On Vaudeville won the highest awards in the Soviet film industry. His documentary Once Upon a Time There Were Russians in Jerusalem, produced by Israeli Television, was a first prize winner at the Tenth Hollywood Festival of World Television.

More recently Tsukerman wrote and director the critically acclaimed documentary “Stalin’s Wife” and the motion picture “Perestroika” which received highly favorable reviews on the West Coast and elsewhere but was later slammed by a young reviewer for the New York Times.

Richard Miller

Columnist Richard H. Miller is a self-employed business person, life-long Western Pennsylvanian and has been a self styled “political junkie” for 45 years.

He was elected chair of Mercer County Democratic Committee in 1970 at age 28 and has followed Governors’ administrations closely ever since. Miller says he struggles to direct his columns to moderate Republicans and ultra-liberal Democrats. “Both groups need to get more in the mainstream of their respective Parties or convince more of their fellow party members to think like they do.”

A former Mayor of Greenville in Mercer County and president or chair of a dozen other governmental and community organizations, he “preaches that everyone owes public service in exchange for the benefits they enjoy living where they do.”

Tom O’Connell

1949-1953 Cornell University, Ithaca NY BA Zoology
1953-1957 New York Medical College NY, NY MD
1957-58: Internship San Francisco Gen Hosp UC Service
1958-59: Military Svc US Army Dispensary Ft Bliss Texas
1959-63: General Surgery Residency Wm Beaumont Gen Hosp, El Paso TX
Sept 1964; Certified American Board of Surgery
1963-67:US Army Hosp Camp Zama Japan Ch/Surgery, Ch Professional Svcs
extensive experience with management of casualties from Vietnam 1965-67
1967-69: Residency Thoracic & CV surgery Letterman General Hosp San Francisco
1969 Certified Board of Thoracic Surgery
19671-1994 Private Practice Thoracic Surgery San Francisco/San Mateo CA
American College of Surgeons
Western Thoracic Surgical Society

From 1995-Became active in Drug Policy Reform; DPFoundation; edited Drug News Weekly from1997-2001. In 2001, I began screening cannabis applicants seeking to use it medicinally and in 2007, published data from 4000 applicants which refutes most of the assertions made on behalf of cannabis prohibition. Same study is ongoing and now includes data from over 7000 applicants, some followed as long as 10 years. It not only refutes federal claims, but has uncovered evidence suggesting heretofore unrecognized mechanism for production of ADD/ADHD syndromes in vulnerable children and adults.

Jilly Harris serves as webmaster.  She attended The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division for two years and now attends Harrisburg Area Community College’s Lancaster Campus.  She formerly was employed as a file clerk for a South Bend, IN law firm. She is also a certified floral designer.