While I retired in January as editor of The Almanac, I didn’t want to head into the sunset without expressing my appreciation to everyone who has played a part in creating and sustaining this community resource for 53 years.
Quality local journalism should not be taken for granted, not in an age when news organizations are cutting back sharply on local reporting.
I’m grateful for The Almanac’s founders, three Portola Valley women who in 1965 decided the community needed better local news coverage; for Mort and Elaine Levine, who bought The Almanac in 1980 and expanded it to Menlo Park and Atherton; and for Bill Johnson and Embarcadero Media, which acquired The Almanac in 1993 and took on the challenges and opportunities of the internet age.
In particular I want to thank all the staff members in all the departments who have worked so hard over the years to keep The Almanac relevant and useful. Without their tireless efforts I would not have had the opportunity to do what I enjoy for 29 years.
The Almanac could not exist without the support of the community, from the advertisers to those who contribute information, comments and ideas, and those who back The Almanac through the “Support Local Journalism” campaign (AlmanacNews.com/subscribe). Thanks so much to all of you.
I want to express personal thanks to my wife, Jennifer Brown Hine, an Almanac “widow” who has been abandoned on many nights and weekends while I worked on getting news online, editing stories and responding to emails.
Jennifer is retiring, too, this year. She is closing out a work life made up of many careers. She was a wedding and fashion consultant and buyer for the famed City of Paris department store in San Francisco’s Union Square. She worked in the jewelry business as a gemologist for a San Francisco diamond dealer. She got involved in print media as the West Coast representative for a New York telephone company’s boating directory. That led to her years as an advertising sales associate and manager at The Almanac, where we met.
Then came her high-tech career, with companies such as Hewlett Packard and Advanced Micro Devices. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, she was executive assistant to the CEO of Shutterfly, a startup from that period that survived the dot-com bust.
For the past several years, she has been executive assistant to the CEO of a San Mateo-based commercial real estate company with a history that goes back to the California Gold Rush days. In March, that business will close and Jennifer will join me in retirement.
A final thanks to our readers, without whom, of course, there would be no Almanac. In stepping away from the editor’s desk, I have joined you now as a reader of The Almanac. With our support, The Almanac can continue to provide independent and reliable news and information, which is as important to a community as it is to a country.
