Veteran journalist Bob Lewis joins McGuireWoods

McGuireWoods said Wednesday that Bob Lewis, a veteran Richmond-based politics and government correspondent, will join the law firm as its senior manager for media relations effective Nov. 11.

Lewis will lead the law firm’s communications team implementing internal and external media strategies in support of its more than 900 lawyers in 19 offices worldwide and its public affairs subsidiary, McGuireWoods Consulting. McGuireWoods is headquartered in Richmond.

Lewis, the Associated Press’s state Capitol correspondent for Virginia for 13 years, was let go last month following a reporting error in a story about Virginia’s governor-elect Terry McAuliffe
Lewis apologized for the error, with the story retracted less than two hours after it was posted. Several high-ranking politicians and other journalists came to his defense with statements of support for his reporting over the years, and there was no complaint from the McAuliffe camp on the way the story was handled.  However, the error led to the firing of Lewis and two AP editors. 

“We are extremely fortunate that Bob was available, and we are delighted to be able to bring someone of his talents to McGuireWoods.  He will strengthen our media relations capabilities in both the law firm and for our clients of McGuireWoods Consulting, and are anxious for him to join our team,” Richard Cullen, the firm’s chairman, said in a statement.

As the chief Virginia political writer for the global AP, Lewis covered Virginia’s executive branch agencies, state and federal courts, regulatory agencies, law enforcement, natural disasters and human tragedies such as the 2002 sniper attacks and the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007. For the past three years, he also wrote a widely published weekly politics and state government column titled “South Portico.”

Lewis has served in editing and reporting posts for the past 28 years with AP in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Virginia. He is a two-term past president of the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association.