EDITORIAL

Eyes on the Prize

Warm, molasses-scented breath blew on my cheek as my horse lipped the top of my head. As I stroked his face, he blew softly through his nostrils into mine. We stood there, nose to nose, inhaling each other.

-New Bay Times, May 15-21, 1997

Elsewhere in this week's paper, we write of the put-down of Maryland literature by Washington Post book editor Jonathan Yardley at a regional conference of Maryland writers last weekend. We assume that Mr. Yardley has been drinking too much of that befouled Washington water.

How else can we explain his words when we regularly see and print such fine writing as the sample above, which appeared in these pages last year as a Bay Reflection by Aloysia C. Hamalainen.

Hamalainen's columns, which appear occasionally as our Bay Reflection on page three, won one of the prizes announced this week by the Maryland, Delaware, D.C. Press Association. It was one of four honorable mentions taken home by New Bay Times in competition among non-daily papers with circulation over 12,000. Judges were members of the New York Press Association; three prizes will be awarded in each category later this month at a luncheon in Baltimore.

Other NBT winners:

• Betsy Kehne, NBT production manager, for her map of Annapolis accompanying our Annapolis Boat Show insert in October;
• C.D. Dollar, in the category of sports columns, for his "Chesapeake Outdoors";
• The NBT staff, for editorials that appear weekly in this space.

We are pleased to share the news of these awards because the support and feedback from you, our readers, make them possible. All your letters to the editor, your phone calls and your support of our advertisers give us the energy to bring you a paper each week that holds its own among periodicals that are much larger.

In April, New Bay Times will celebrate our fifth birthday, proving wrong those who warned that family-owned publications can not survive in this era of corporate news media.

Not only have we survived: thanks to our readers along the Chesapeake Bay we are flourishing, as our 17 awards in our short history suggest. Thanks to you we are flourishing.

Soon, we'll hang this year's four award certificates on the wall alongside 13 others. Tomorrow, we'll unpack 1998's newly received volume book and begin compiling New Bay Times' Volume VI. Next December, when contest time comes again and we page through that by-then four-inch-thick book, we'll rejoice in Chesapeake Country's very rich state of journalism.

Week by week, we bring you the very best paper we can, one that's never without a sentence or two - sometimes, like last week, whole stories - that flutter your breath with pleasure. But that's just passing notice because week after week, there's another paper to get out.

Twice a year - first as we compile our best work, then as we celebrate our awards - we slow down enough to see just how good New Bay Times gets.

We hope you enjoy a bit of that pleasure every week.

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VolumeVI Number 6
February 12-18, 1998
New Bay Times

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