Goodbye to My First Child
Build it and they will come. That’s what we said — my mother Sandra Martin, my stepfather Bill Lambrecht and myself — back in these same end-of-the-year days in 1992, 27 years ago. If it worked for Kevin Costner, it would work for a family of journalists wanting to start their own free community newspaper.
So we built it, and come they did, writers, readers, advertisers, friends, loved-ones for the better part of three decades.
We talked to friends in the business, toured a colleague’s family newspaper in the Midwest, scribbled out projections and just a few months later launched the first issue of New Bay Times. It was chock-a-block full of stories that remain some of our best. There was the interview with Miss Ethel, the 104-year-old matriarch of Shady Side. There was the tragic tale of kayak-enthusiast Phillipe Voss, who went paddling on the Bay alone not to return alive. I wrote a thorough piece on the state of crabbing on the Bay, which you could read today and not know it was nearly 30 years old.
There was never a shortage of stories about the people, places, events, issues, history of Chesapeake Country — though each week we scrambled to gather them in time to fill that edition’s pages.
Ahh, those were heady days.
If Content is King, Advertisers are Divine
Then the bills started coming in, and from a family of writers I emerged as the one to run the business, in charge of finding us the advertisers to pay for it all.
The first person to sign on was Bob Platt, whose restaurant Pirates Cove I’d waited tables at the summer before, earning my last paycheck without my own signature.
“Bob,” I told him, “my folks and I are starting a free community newspaper. Would you be interested in advertising in it?”
“Alex,” he answered, “I’d be upset if I wasn’t your first advertiser.”
And so he was, remaining a supporter of our efforts ever since. Pirates Cove, now under the ownership of Michael Galway and Anthony Clarke, has maintained that support.
Look through this issue of Bay Weekly, you’ll see page after page of advertisers who’ve helped make this paper possible. It is a flattering final salvo, and to those advertisers and anyone who’s ever spent a dime with Bay Weekly, thank you!
But if you have some back issues of Bay Weekly around the house, take a look through them, especially if it’s one of those thin 20-pagers, and you’ll see the heroes who have kept Bay Weekly alive. These are the weekly advertisers, with us year-round, when business is good and when it’s not-so, investing their own hard-earned dollars in the belief that our readers are their customers.
The Right People at the Right Time
If the advertisers invested their dollars, our staff invested their hearts and souls. It’s been a cast of hundreds from writers, delivery drivers, sales reps, freelancers, proofreaders, interns and more. Some were with us no more than a few days. Some lent a hand for a matter of months. Some stayed with us for years, none to be outdone by my right hand for the past 25, Betsy Kehne.
From those earliest days, first New Bay Times and then Bay Weekly drew the people we needed to continue week by week. If any came expecting big money, they were in the wrong business. And come they did. If not wealth, we offered them something they valued. For some it was an adventure. For some it was a bridge to the future. Some found their voice. Others found sanctuary. And then there was the sense of awe and accomplishment each Thursday as the latest issue sprung from our collective efforts into a hold-in-your-hand testament to success.
That shared weekly success built camaraderie. Working in often-tight quarters, collaborating over the lunch table or sharing the trials and tribulations of our lives only strengthened the bond.
We’ve had some great teams over the years, like a gloried baseball franchise that claims a World Series title once or twice a decade.
But at this moment in time, with first the prospect of Bay Weekly’s demise and now its imminent transition, we couldn’t have had a more stalwart crew. All have stayed with us and helped shape this climactic chapter. My great, great thanks for your support to Bay Weekly to Betsy Kehne, Kathy Knotts, Susan Nolan, Audrey Broomfield, Krista Pfunder, Donna Day, and of course my mother and business partner, Sandra Martin. Thanks as well to my wife Lisa Edler Knoll, Bay Weekly’s decade-long advertising director who still maintains accounts, and Bill Lambrecht, my business partner, co-founder and stepfather, whose calm head has always been a steadying force.
The Last Chapter
Keeping a free community newspaper profitable was never easy. Year after year we eked it out, sometimes in the black, sometimes a little deeper in the red.
Time takes a toll, and this summer we realized it was time to write our last chapter.
Rather than just shutter up, we would share our story through the end of the year, hopefully recouping some of our losses in our busiest season. It would also, we hoped, allow our staff time to make their arrangements. And, just maybe, news of our retirement would deliver someone to carry on Bay Weekly’s legacy.
The endline we established was this week’s December 26 issue. We’ve made it with our team intact. They will carry on Bay Weekly’s legacy with the folks at Chesapeake Bay Media, publishers of Chesapeake Bay Magazine.
Thanks again to our advertisers who stepped up to the call. And thanks to Sue Kullen and her Friends of Bay Weekly GoFundMe campaign and the generosity of so many Bay Weekly readers and … well, friends. Without either, we may not have made it to this finish, certainly not without getting deeper in the hole.
Letting Go
The father of three, I’m now watching my firstborn leave home after 27 years. I cry tears of sadness at the parting and tears of joy at how strong and wonderful Bay Weekly has grown to be.
Twenty-seven years at the helm of Bay Weekly has honed my skills as a journalist and taught me how to run a vibrant business. It has brought me friends and extended my family. It has given me a lifetime of lessons. It has made me a better person.
Bay Weekly afforded me the freedom to walk my other two children — Jack, 19, and Elsa, 18 — to and from school, wait with them and for them at the bus stop and be involved in their lives.
Goodbye, my child. Goodbye, Bay Weekly. I will always love you.