After 10 fulfilling years with the Long Beach Herald and Richner Communications, it is with a heavy heart that I announce my last day, Jan. 9, as your local newspaper editor.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I’ve made close friends both at work and in town whom I care about deeply, and working in this community has been an absolute pleasure and privilege.
I will very much miss my colleagues and the many residents in town whom I look forward to speaking to on a daily basis. Without a doubt, working here has been a tremendous growth experience for me, not just professionally but personally, as I formed lifelong, life-enriching friendships. For that I am extremely grateful.
The Herald has truly felt like home for the past 10 years. However, I’m excited to embark on the next chapter of my life, challenge myself and continue to grow as a journalist and as a person.
Over the past decade, I’ve covered two major hurricanes, fiscal crises, at least three murders, payouts to politically connected employees, the iStar debacle and the arrest of a city councilman. I’m proud of all the community-based initiatives we’ve highlighted each year, whether it’s the Surfrider Foundation’s canal cleanups or Thanksgiving food drives at the MLK Center. I’ve also probably written way too much about surfing.
And I had the pleasure to work with some great reporters in Long Beach, including my dear friends Chris Engelhardt, Alexandra Spychalsky, Matt Ern, Ben Strack, Bridget Downes and Darwin Yanes, who did an amazing job covering the community. We made sure to have some fun, whether it was playing beach volleyball or experiencing the thrill and power of the ocean through surfing sessions with the Skudins.
I thank our executive editor, Scott Brinton, for his confidence in me and for all his support over the years, particularly of our work on the payout scandal — which we are very proud of — and having my back whenever we got pushback from officials over sensitive stories we were working on. And I’d be nowhere without our copy editor, Jim Harmon, whom I will miss.
A reporter is nothing without his sources. I may have missed the mark at times over the years, and it was a real challenge competing with Newsday and Patch (at its peak) but I’d like to thank the residents who kept the pressure on me to work harder, dig deeper and put aside any fears of pursuing sensitive stories.
This was particularly true over the past few years, during our reporting on the payout scandal, and I’m grateful to the folks who had the courage to speak to us, demanded answers and called for accountability. Together, I truly believe we made a difference.