As a weekly newspaper, doing our best to keep up with local news is a huge priority. If a news story—either on a city council decision or a winning game—isn’t covered promptly it may be too stale to print in the next issue.
Our weekly meetings are like the pulse check of our paper. Our team assembles in our Fremont office for yet another discussion on what’s going on in the Tri-City area.
Our Tri-City Voice team has ebbed and flowed like any other business. We’ve seen already-retired reporters who’ve stuck around and continued covering government stories, to TCV’s founders Bill and Sharon Marshak who retired after over 20 years of commitment to their paper, in our weekly meetings.
A few months ago while sitting at my desk listening to my coworkers swing open the front door and shuffle into our meeting room, I made an observation that I was surprised took me so long to discover.
All of the people who were in our office, busy in the midst of another workday frenzy, were women. From our office administrator, who is essentially the first face or voice one hears when coming into our office or calling our phone, to our—now retired—bookkeeper who worked behind the scenes keeping TCV’s numbers in order since the paper’s creation alongside the founders.
In our meeting, we make up production, reporters and editors, who again are all women.
As March being Women’s History Month and my curiosity taking over, I discovered that the creation of Women’s History Month began with a local celebration not far from the Tri-City area: Santa Rosa. According to womenshistory.org, the Education Task Force of Sonoma County’s Commission on the Status of Women planned and created “Women’s History Week” in 1978.
It’s compelling to see women who were recognized as the “first woman” in their field. The milestones made by women deserve recognition.
However, I think the end goal is for the title “first woman” to eventually have made its rounds in all the best situations. For women’s firsts to be followed by the second, third and eventually the norm. For me the continued hope is that every woman can look up and realize how far things have come and not be so surprised by it. Instead have a moment of pride and gratitude in how far we’ve come, and, like me, go back to typing away for local journalism in a woman-run office; business as usual.
