My first day on the staff of The Newtown Bee came in the final week of former Editor Nancy Crevier’s tenure, as John Voket was gearing up to move into her desk and her position as head of the news staff. A news article published in the previous week’s paper noted that John’s government beat would be taken over by “highly capable reporter Jim Taylor.” That was the first time I metaphorically stepped into John’s shoes, and this week marks a repeat of history, as I continue to follow a path he blazed and now step into his role as editor of The Newtown Bee.

We say goodbye to John as he starts the next chapter of his career in a place both familiar and new. As director of economic development for the Town of Newtown, John is keenly familiar with both the town’s flourishing business scene as well as the government apparatus that helps support business in town. John had been with The Bee for more than 20 years before his departure in October and is intimately familiar with Newtown, and has spent more than two decades building up a veritable store of knowledge about Newtown government and business. We are grateful to him for his time with The Bee, serving the Town of Newtown, and wish him the best in his new position.

Equally for me, the position of editor at The Bee is both familiar and new. I come to the position with 17 years of experience at Watertown’s Town Times, 12 of which I spent in that newspaper’s big chair. I plan to bring the same formula that won me the trust and respect of readers and town officials in Watertown — a dedication to seeing both sides of an issue and setting my own opinions to the side, to listening to all voices in the community, and to treating all in the community with respect. It is how I have conducted myself as a reporter and associate editor here at The Bee as well. As a community newspaper, our job is not to muckrake. It is to be what I like to call, “your friendly neighborhood newspaper,” to steal and repurpose a well-known catchphrase.

I also plan to continue the good work John did during his term as editor, and will hold his editorship up as a model to continue. I will be continuing his goals of re-engaging with community stakeholders, of being there for the community, and to keeping the newspaper, as he put it, “a unifying entity in a community in a place where anybody or everybody can turn for experienced, vetted, hyper-local information about their own neighborhoods and their own hometown” that is “critically important for the good news and bad news that it brings.”

I want to offer thanks to Managing Editor Shannon Hicks, who has been the MVP of the staff since John’s departure, serving ably as the interim editor. With some small help from me, she has juggled all the various things left vacant with an empty editor’s seat, and has, with great skill and care, kept all the figurative balls (and chainsaws) in the air. I plan to lean heavily on her many years with the paper going forward, as she offers many insights that are invaluable to those of us with less time on the staff.

While there may be some small changes here and there along the road ahead of us, for the most part we will be carrying on as we have, and I will be looking to carry on the history and legacy of a newspaper that has been in print since 1877.

I am grateful to be entrusted with this great responsibility and honor, and thankful to Sherri Smith Baggett, Scott Baggett, and Helen Smith for believing in me to carry the newspaper forward into the future, along a path both familiar and new.