A Tale of Two Stories
A couple of recent stories have given us just the response we like to hear: You loved them.
Every Wednesday afternoon, we wash our hands of the next day’s paper, just as I’m doing today on the paper of May 18, 2017 — which happens to be one of which we’re all proud.
When our work is done, yours begins. For newspapering is a partnership among those who make it — writers, editors, photographers, designers, ad reps, advertisers — and those who read it. We and You.
A newspaper without readers isn’t even fish wrap.
Our interdependence is just as real on a personal level. Each of us sends our weekly contributions out into the world as foundlings. What will happen to the story we’ve spent so much time on, which belongs to people about whom we’ve grown to care? Will you take it into your heart as we did? We depend on you to finish the story.
Ask Diana Beechener, Mick Blackistone, Audrey Broomfield, Jackie Graves, Sarah Jablon and Kathy Knotts, all writers in this week’s paper. That’s what they’ll tell you. (Dennis Doyle we granted a rare week off.) Even Bay Gardener Francis Gouin thrives on your interest and questions.
Or how about that page Alex Knoll or Betsy Kehne wrestled with to make it call out to you?
One of those pages is why I’m smiling as I write. That’s our May 5 two-page spread of people and their dogs promenading with SPCA of Anne Arundel County.
Appealing as that page looks, bringing it to you is no walk in the park. Just on our side — for I’m not even going to try to imagine all SPCA puts into this annual event — four Bay Weekly humans and one Bay Weekly dog, turned out for the Walk for the Animals. Audrey Broomfield and her husky Misty took the early shift, starting at 7:30am. She and Alex Knoll and son Jack engaged walkers, while Karen Lambert shot photos. From camera to page, Betsy Kehne took over, straining to arrange the montage that had us all wishing we’d been there to see the fun in person.
By 5pm Wednesday, May 3 we’d put that particularly challenging paper to bed, emailing it to our printer in Virginia, which is a high-tech story of its own. Early Thursday, May 4, 20,000 copies were trucked to us and waiting for their delivery drivers.
What happened then?
Did all those people and their dogs put a smile on your face? I’d still be wondering — except that Lou Carter, a woman with her heart in SPCA, phoned to say she was thrilled. What she had to say, you’ll read down the page in Your Say. Because of talking with Lou, I’m smiling, too.
Our May 11 story, The Magic of Song, reaped another kind of reward. All week, emails from fans of that story’s hero, Jeanne Kelly of Encore Chorale, have been flooding my inbox. Clearly, the impresario of elder song has built quite the network, for each one sang her praises.
Standing on the wings of appreciation is writer Diana Dinsick, without whom that story would never have been.
Encore Chorale had been a faint blip on my editorial radar screen for quite some time. For years, we’d reported in 8 Days a Week the Chorale’s regular releases reaching out to singers and announcing concerts. Fans had encouraged us to do a story.
The spark that turned a good idea into a story came early this spring, in the Chorale’s announcement of its May 13 concert at DAR Constitution Hall. Ah-ha! I said, and opened the line to writer Dinsick, herself a Daughter of the American Revolution. The story that pleased all those readers came to be because Dinsick made the calls, did the interviews, listened to performances, researched the science, wrote the story and endured my editing. Now she’s smiling, too.
That satisfied smile is usually what happens when we hear from you (unless we’ve made a mistake!).
The advertisers who bring you Bay Weekly want to hear from you, too. Remember to say, I saw your ad in Bay Weekly!
Sandra Olivetti Martin
Editor and publisher
email [email protected], www.sandraolivettimartin.com