After nearly two years working in the Kirkland, Bothell and Kenmore communities, I have resigned from my reporting position at the Sound Publishing Eastside Group to pursue opportunities in Boston.
It’s difficult to not write this in the style that’s so intrinsic to news-writing — clear, concise and formal. I’ve been writing news for the past six years of my life and now that I have the chance, I’m excited to break away from that to write for myself as a change.
The Kirkland and Bothell/Kenmore Reporters were my first gig out of college and it’s strange looking back on how much that has changed since 2017. Initially, it was just myself and senior editor Samantha Pak writing for two publications on any given week. Now we’re the Sound Publishing Eastside Group with eight reporters and three editors reporting, writing and producing seven weekly newspapers.
From the northern tip of Bothell in Snohomish County, to the southern edge of Bellevue, across Lake Washington to Mercer Island and down I-90 to Snoqualmie, we cover it all — business, transportation, city government, development, county government, crime, community events, environment, social issues, real estate, local sports, school news, human interest, the arts and now we’re breaking into long-form solutions journalism.
I write all of this to illustrate how much we do with, what I would call, a skeleton crew and while I don’t say this to excuse any mistakes we’ve made or shortcomings in our coverage, I hope it provides some context.
This big shift came in March 2018, throwing me for a loop as I was hardly settled into my original position reporting for Kirkland, Bothell and Kenmore. More than a year later, I’m immensely thankful for each of our readers.
Without the community readership, there is no community newspaper. Every praise, critique and story idea I’ve ever received helped me improve myself as a reporter and a writer. Your support of our newspapers is what gave everyone here the opportunity to work for you.
While we may have our biases — as everyone does — I hope you continue to read and tell us how we can do better. Ultimately, we just want to be the best journalists we can be for the communities we write for and the best way for you to help us achieve that is to engage with us.
So to all my fellow reporters here, keep up the good writing, keep improving and keep your focus on the community.
To everyone reading this, thank you, and if you enjoy local journalism, keep reading, but don’t let them off easy. We need you to improve ourselves and to continue providing a local source of news. In the world I see around me, I think it’s more important than ever to maintain that.
