I leave in good spirit and, insofar as I am aware, in good odor with my publisher and colleagues. I don't anticipate having any regrets - the decision has been coming on for the better part of a year - but I know I shall miss the job enormously. I love working on a publication, period. The past five years have been the first time I've worked on a newspaper, and every once in a while I've had to fake it; then again, as much as possible I've treated the News as a magazine, and I've worked on a lot of those.
Despite having slipped in by the back door, I've had my respect, and certainly my fondness, for weekly neighbor newspapering strengthened. It's still true, I'm sure, that a lot of papers in this genre are nothing but litter waiting to happen - something you'd pick up and attempt to read only if it was lying on the bus-stop bench beside you and you'd forgot to stick a paperback in your pocket. I never thought of the News that way, and I know my brethren and sistern (hi, Vera!) editing the other Pacific Publishing papers do their utmost to serve their readership a quality publication.
No, the neighborhood weekly is a marvelous and invaluable institution. It should be proud of being what it is, a neighborhood paper - a term often used snickeringly by the downtown daily journalists to cover their own habitual failure to report about what's going on in the nabes. I told Mike Dillon early on that I thought of the News as a running conversation with the community - a conversation, rather than a talking down to, or harboring any pretension toward having the last word. We need to hear back from you as much as you need to hear the news from us.
So please, keep the conversation going. In particular I've appreciated the avidity and diligence with which, more and more in recent years, members of the community have stepped up to apprise us of news we'd never have stumbled over on our own.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping to devote more of my energy to writing. It's entirely likely you might be reading more of my stuff in future issues than I ever managed to get around to as editor.
Thanks. I've had a good time.
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