The Sunnyvale Sun

Letters & Opinions

First week is hint of the excitement to come

By Sandy Sims

More than three years ago, the day before I took over as editor of the Cupertino Courier and Sunnyvale Sun, my husband was suddenly rolled into the operating room for by pass surgery. I scrambled between the hospital and work, and my new colleagues at the paper had to pick up an extra load.

Now, as I was organizing myself and my desk to turn my job over to the new editor, Carol Bogart, my daughter-in-law suddenly went into labor early. The plan had been to take a week of overlap, show Carol around, introduce her to her new staff and to some of you in the community and give her a little time to understand our system. And I was also going to have a little time to write my goodbyes to you.

But the new baby, Cecelia, had other plans. She was born two weeks early, and of course, that changed everything. Now Carol is scrambling.

I'm sitting in a cafe in Chico (where my son and his family live), trying to find the words to explain what an amazing experience it has been to be editor for these two papers.

I was green, very green when I took over. Our executive editor, Dale Bryant, has been a wonderful mentor, and both communities have been encouraging and supportive and made me feel very welcome. You have let me know how much you appreciate the work we do. I've loved the way you use our letters to the editor as a forum. Some of your letters have actually been quite informative to us. I'm impressed by how articulate they are.

I have learned so much. I've learned how to get a paper out every single week and that things always seem to work out, even when we suddenly have a story fall through at the last minute. I've learned about deadlines, cutlines and all aspects of putting out a paper, and that a newsroom is a wonderful place to work. It's fun; it's exciting, and we all work so so hard.

I have worked with the best and the brightest reporters, most of them right out of college or working at a newspaper for the very first time. For those of you who don't know, we have only one news reporter covering each city and one feature reporter who tries to cover schools, business and so many other things in both cities. The reporters spend evenings (sometimes till the wee hours of the morning) at city council, planning commission and other meetings. They are a dedicated group, as journalists usually are, and they are idealistic and worry about such things as ethics and fairness--in addition to meeting deadlines.

Our production staff that designs and puts the words and the photographs together on the page are a gifted bunch. They work evenings and weekends and sometimes have to make radical changes at the last minute. I had no idea all the work that goes into small papers like ours.

I'm proud of the work we do.

Leaving isn't easy; I've loved this job and the people I work with, but I couldn't continue to give the job the dedication it needs. And my heart is getting a little tug from grandchildren. I need to have the freedom to spend time with them.

I'm not really ready to use the work "retire." I'm not done yet with writing.

But I'm thrilled to be turning the position over to Carol Bogart. She's got lots of experience; she's bright, a wonderful writer and a very nice person.

She showed up her first day to my desk, the one I was going to spend an entire weekend cleaning up. It was a disaster, and she had just spent the entire weekend moving into her new place in San Jose. It seems that's the way this job starts, with way too much going on. Some things just don't change.