LBReport.com

Appreciation

Nancy Wride: Onward



(Aug. 4, 2013) -- Nancy Wride, the veteran L.A. Times journalist who incubated, birthed, nurtured, fed, diapered and raised BelmontShore-Naples Patch from an AOL embryo into a meaningful hyperlocal outlet, exited last week as its local editor.

For two and a half years, she was its tireless captain, tenacious reporter, eloquent photographer, gymnastic videographer and perceptive watchdog, able to spot stories that others didn't see and tell them in ways others didn't do.

The first came before BelmontShore.Patch even launched, when it was merely a Facebook presence, and she broke a national story: that a man reported by a resident and presumed by police to be holding a gun was actually holding a hose nozzle. She got that devastating story on the night of the shooting and didn't flinch at reporting what others were treating as a sketchy officer-involved shooting. After BelmontShore.Patch launched, Ms. Wride went further with video that took readers onto the property, haunting footsteps showing the tragic events in ways that others didn't.

We recall Ms. Wride at press conferences, scribbling furiously into an old school spiral note pad, after being handed releases that sometimes said things officials pretended were sensible but didn't make sense. Ms. Wride was completely unafraid to ask politely but persistently the same question in various ways until she got a responsive response. Reporters are supposed to do this, using the access the press has to ask what readers want to know, not just repeat what officials say.

That was a breath of fresh air in Ms. Wride's coverage of two major stories: chronic impacts of some 2nd St. Belmont Shore businesses on nearby residents and the potential long-term impacts of a development proposed at 2nd/PCH. To some, what area families experienced near some Belmont Shore bars -- strangers urinating and vomiting on their front lawns, multiple drunken disturbances -- were pimples on the rump of progress, belittled by City Hall and given parallel treatment in coverage elsewhere.

To Ms. Wride, what residents experienced was every bit as much a legitimate part of the story as what business interests and city officialdom wanted. In this she was (again) stubbornly old school, giving equal voice to residents balanced with the responses of elected officials, city staff and business interests.

In similar fashion, she treated the proposed 2nd/PCH development as more than EIR verbiage and traffic study numbers. To her, the story went beyond SEADIP versus sales tax; it was about what the public's elected representatives would allow, for better or worse, where her readers and their families live and work.

"I am leaving for another opportunity that will have me writing with national focus on addiction and mental health, and all of its human impacts, which feels important to me at this moment in time," Ms. Wride told her Patch readers last week.

We look forward to reading what she writes on these subjects. We will miss her eloquence, perceptiveness and compassion in writing about what happens here. Thank you, Nancy Wride.


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