Seasons of Hope
The year was 1993, and change was afoot. Sandra Olivetti Martin had finished managing a weekly in Washington and had turned to freelancing. Alex Knoll had earned his M.S. in journalism from the University of Illinois and joined us in Chesapeake Country. I was just off the campaign trail after covering the winning election of Bill Clinton.
There was hope in the air (unrelated to Clinton talking all the time about Hope, Arkansas, where he was born.)
So we took a leap.
“You started a newspaper? Are you out of your minds?” we heard from friends who knew business.
Quite possibly we were. But looking back more than a quarter-century later, it can be said that doubters became loyal readers, and new friends came to us along the way. Many new friends.
While I continued in the wilds of daily journalism, Sandra, Alex, Betsy Kehne and our ever-evolving staff built a local institution. Our goal at the start was fostering a community of interests knitted together by the environment, culture and economics of Chesapeake Bay.
That is what happened, for the most part, even as the newspaper industry cratered amid changing reader habits and the rise of big-tech advertising outlets. A decade or so ago, the idea of a family-owned newspaper started looking a tad old-fashioned.
But readers and advertisers stayed with us. Bay Weekly survived and flourished thanks to the editing and storytelling of Sandra — the best writer I know — and the steadfast ability of Alex — the most resilient fellow I know — to put the paper together, get it on the streets and pay the bills.
Now, in the hands of Chesapeake Bay Media — publisher of the elegant and appealing Chesapeake Bay Magazine — Bay Weekly lives on.
Again, there’s hope in the air.
Co-founder Bill Lambrecht, our first editorialist and writer of prize-winning stories throughout the years, has returned to our pages this year with a run of suprising Way Downstreams, reprising his early invention. On December 20 he ended a 45-year career in daily journalism — 35 years in Washington, D.C. In January he joins University of Maryland as a visiting professor and investigative reporter.