2009 – 2015
Before:
This is how the paper looked before I became editor.
Click here to see the entire issue.
After:
Click here to see the entire issue
Above is an example of the redesigned format, including logo and color. In the course of my tenure, the post office had changed their requirements, and insisted the mailing address section, which had always been at the top of the front page, be moved halfway down to the middle of the page, just above the fold! I assumed they didn’t care if the address section was on the “front” page or the “back” page, figuring that it was probably a computer looking at it, and that turned out to be the case. So, I re-designed the paper with a more compact, modern format, basically turning the paper on it’s side, and moved the address section to the back page. In the process, we got more prime, front page real estate then we had in the previous format.
Before:
sponsored by the community group that also published the newspaper;
issues were usually 8 pages each.
After:
I was lucky to have been self-employed virtually my entire vocational life. That lucky string ran out around 2008, and, after a brief stint as a professional dog walker, I was hired to edit the Kensington Outlook – a monthly, small-town newspaper for the town of Kensington, California (sister city to Kensington, England) – in the hills of the East Bay, above Berkeley.
I reported on town meetings, wrote articles on topics as varied as government and politics, the science of cell phone towers, the redesign of existing and proposed town buildings, waste management contracts, neighbor boundary disputes, and the intricacies of the police- and fire departments incorporated into the town’s unique governmental structure as an unincorporated area.
(Kensington has its own police force and shared the fire department with the adjacent city of El Cerrito. It has a Board of Directors which oversees those two departments and the elementary school, and additional civic groups that provide other services needed by the residents – civic improvement, fund raising, family movie nights, etc., – and including publication of the Kensington Outlook.)
Kensington is said to have the largest number of Nobel Prize winners of any city in the world, and is full of rich, educated, and entitled people, who live in one of the most beautiful spots in the world, high in the hills, overlooking the San Francisco Bay; its residents are used to getting their own way, and who, as a result, disagree vociferously, if not violently, with each other in the civic sphere.
I was hired to report the news, write the articles, layout the ads and copy, take photographs of civic events, and arrange for the newspaper to be delivered to local residents and businesses. In the course of my tenure, I re-designed the paper, designed its logo, updated the advertising to provide for more color pages at no additional cost to the publisher, advised the governing board on ways to increase revenue at one of their fund raisers, danced with the single older ladies at their dances, and investigated a Board Director – who, in the course of that investigation, was found to be corrupt – and who was, as a result of that investigation, removed from office by a vote of the residents, along with her protégé – another Board member, who resigned before the completion of her term. (See Election Beat, Kensington Outlook, November 2012, page 9.)
In 2015, I was fired without notice for reporting the news I was originally hired to report – the Board didn’t like the news, so they “killed the messenger” – an oft-repeated trope in the publishing world; editors and publishers don’t always agree on what should go into the publication – the previous Outlook editor just stopped showing up one day, and the one before that quit over a similar disagreement on what should be published, and who gets to decide.
All in all, I enjoyed my stint immensely – the writing, photography, graphic design, layout, and, as divisive as it was, being a valued member of a community. I reported the news as I saw it unfold, and, after six years of service that went above and beyond the requirements of the position, it would have been nice if the publishers would have at least given me the opportunity to consider selling out my integrity and printing what they wanted to read, even when it conflicted with the facts. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t get that opportunity, and I was out of a job, but with my integrity intact.
What People Said About the Kensington Outlook
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