“Life offers more to those who say yes.”

This advice from a good friend made 2023 an incredible year. It brought me to The Leader last October. It sent me to Denmark or two weeks over Christmas on the trip of a lifetime. This is my first issue editing The Leader since returning to Port Townsend on January 2.

It’s also my last. Your newspaper is being handed off to new and capable hands. She will introduce herself in the next issue.

I came out of retirement to be managing editor for The Leader because of my fondness for Port Townsend and belief that if there was a future for quality local journalism, it would be found here, in this amazing community.

I still believe that’s true, and that The Leader is the vehicle to serve that need. Quality journalism is a requirement for a healthy community. Quality journalism provides facts we need to make right decisions, choose the right leaders, then examine their actions and hold them to account. It is a way to express and share who we are as a community.

Quality journalism does not promote an agenda. It seeks truth, and attempts to share it. Many newspapers fail in that role, nationally as well as locally. But that does not reduce its critical importance, now more than ever, on a local level.

The public’s business needs to be conducted in public.

Quality journalism is how that happens. It happens through the hard work of professional journalists asking hard questions until facts are found, put in context and shared with the public. Not coffee shop chatter, nor social media.

What a wonderful opportunity this stint at The Leader has been. I think I was the right person for the job at the time and that I brought a few minor changes that were good for the newspaper.

And your response was amazing. In letters to the editor, letters to my personal email, and comments in those coffee shops, you made me quite grateful that I said yes to the challenges, and said yes to the invitation to help out.

My position here was always temporary. If not a place holder, I was a step of transition for The Leader. Still, the owners gave me a very loose rein, which I appreciated immensely.

But my home in Oregon and enterprises elsewhere require my presence as well, and voice that with increasing volume.

I’m trying to keep a foot in Port Townsend. It will take some readjustment, and we’ll see how that goes. There are many unknowns and it will take some time. But one thing I do know is that you offered me a warm welcome over the last several months.

Thank you. Hope to see you soon.