EDITORIAL

The Weekly Miracle of New Bay Times

This week's issue marks our birthday (six, if you're counting), so we thought it a good time to answer questions about how NBT ends up in your hands each week.

The narrative by J. Alex Knoll, our co-founder and general manager, tells you about our early years when many times in the middle of the night we wondered what had possessed us to create a living, breathing newspaper.

Alex's piece tells you about the New Bay Times family ownership, which is a throwback in this era of media conglomerates. It tells you about a larger family - the people who gather each week on a shared mission of putting out a regional weekly that celebrates the joys of living along the Chesapeake Bay.

It tells you about our even bigger family: our many advertisers who smartly grasp the economic importance of the Chesapeake along with its environmental and spiritual significance; and our loyal readers, who keep the ship afloat by reading and supporting our advertisers.

This extended family of ours at times seems so bursting with ideas and prosperity that it makes us downright giddy. This is exactly what we had in mind, forging a community of interests along a Western Shore stretch of communities that sometimes had been too busy competing to take control of our future.

It has become clear as a sparkling Chesapeake morning that our quality of life along the Bay will depend directly on how we grow in the next few years. Not just the Bay itself but our land, our schools and the traffic we endure all will be governed by how much development we permit right now. Next week, next month and next year.

So among our tasks, we chronicle the efforts by Bay citizens to take charge of how their communities will look and feel. In the coming months, we will be writing even more about the small-area planning commissions and our neighbors who are beginning to chart the destiny of the land around us. We will be your forum not for blocking growth but for deciding what growth is smart for all of us.

Then we can get on to our other tasks: writing about Baysiders going about their rich lives and giving you choices for boating, fishing, exercise and good eating along the Bay.

We are poised, we remind you, for the most glorious months of enchanted Chesapeake Country. And as we answer your questions about New Bay Times, we pause to thank you for being part of our family.

Get ready for a big surprise when we hold our birthday bash May 16. Like last year, the party's at Surfside 7 on the South River, where you're sure to have a good time. Like last year, it's a benefit for the Bay, this time dedicated to helping American Forests in its goal to plant one million trees along Chesapeake Bay.

Now and far into the future, stay tuned for your weekly installments of news, views and ways to groove in the Land of Pleasant Living.

| Issue 16 |

Volume VII Number 16
April 22-26, 1999
New Bay Times

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