All in the Family
Bay Weekly has a long wooden table where we all gather round to eat lunch together nearly every day. We celebrate birthdays and special occasions with cakes and pies. We tell our stories that can only be shared in person. That table has witnessed a lot of milestone moments for our office. Back in the fall, though, it witnessed our most heartbreaking meeting.
My stomach lurched that day we were told that the paper was closing at the end of 2019. Bay Weekly was more than just my workplace — it was the site of my renewed love for writing and storytelling. It was where I found the courage to go out and explore this new place we were calling home. It was where I was relearning my craft and shaping my identity as a working mother.
I came to Bay Weekly shortly after moving to Maryland. Our boys landed in new schools, and our family had some adjustments to make in this new state. Working here changed me in ways I only see now.
Eating lunch together was something I had to adjust to. Perhaps I had spent time in too many newsrooms where everyone ate with one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the phone?
I began to see lunchtime as my chance to check in with other people and avoid holing up in my own office with only the computer screen to interact with.
Working with an editor who took the time to go through my stories line by line editing, cleaning up and clarifying my stories was eye-opening. I had never had someone sit down with me like this. Most of my prior employers only performed a cursory spellcheck and then sent it to layout. Sandra expects even the shortest calendar listing to be written with the clearest and most concise word choices. She taught me how to construct and build a story and guided me in finding the heart of a subject.
It means a lot to me that Bay Weekly was family-run and understands how families run.
I was able to put my small children on the bus each morning and be there when they arrived back home in the afternoons. A sick child was not grounds for losing my job; I was encouraged to take care of things as I needed to. My job and my family are both parts of me, and they demand equal respect and compassion.
Bay Weekly has given me a chance to exercise a somewhat atrophied writing muscle and put me in contact with simply the best people in Chesapeake Country. I have learned to love this area through the stories Bay Weekly tells. And I am overjoyed that I will get to continue telling those stories.
Greek philosopher Heraclitus gave us the phrase, “Change is the only constant in life.” It’s true, and sometimes it’s painful. But how we handle the change is what reveals our character. And I can only hope that I will continue to reflect the high character I believe Bay Weekly embodies as we adapt, adjust, change tack and ride the next swell we face — together.
Staff writer and calendar editor since 2015, Kathy Knotts moves with Bay Weekly to Chesapeake Bay Media in 2020.