My friend Kate Wakerly

I'VE always thought that social work and journalism make a great dynamic duo. Together these two have extraordinary power to carry out that noble instruction to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Of course, this is not an original idea. Our social work founders, starting with Jane Addams, understood this.

So, too, did my good friend Kate Wakerly, who died in 2004. She was a great example of a person with the head of a journalist and the heart of a social worker. It's a combination which has left a big imprint in the communities where Kate worked. It's also a path which has been an inspiration to me and others who knew Kate.

Kate and I met at the SUN Newspapers in 1973. It was a group of about a dozen weekly newspapers in San Jose, Calif. and nearby communities. Kate and I started working there about the same time. We shared a great passion for the communities we wrote about. We worked together on a lot of terrific projects during a wonderful era at those newspapers.

Kate and I, and a lot of other young reporters, got our education in community journalism from Mort and Elaine Levine. They had started in 1955 with a weekly paper in Milpitas, a California town near San Jose. Through
the newspaper, the Levines encouraged the development of Milpitas into a tolerant and progressive community. They carried this same message to San Jose and other nearby communities as they started additional papers. It was a message which inspired and nourished us during the years when we worked at those newspapers. Those were incredible years.

For a time Kate and I even imagined taking over the SUN papers after the founders retired. We talked about it many Friday mornings as we drove to the printing plant to lay out our papers.

But it was not to be. Instead, we found ourselves set adrift after the sale of the papers to Meredith Corp., the Des Moines company best-known for Better Homes and Gardens magazine. The new owners cared little for community
journalism; they exhibited a combination of arrogance and ignorance which eventually resulted in the death of several papers and serious decline for the rest.

I nearly quit the week the Meredith people arrived. But Kate talked me out of leaving, convincing me that we should stay and continue our community journalism as long as we could. That turned out to be about a year. But
eventually, we both left.

When we left the SUN papers, we didn't follow in the footsteps of many of our colleagues who had gone to daily newspapers. Instead, we both ended up starting community newspapers of our own. There was something about this kind of journalism which we liked; something we wanted to continue doing.

In part, it was knowing -- really knowing -- your readers and advertisers. Also, it was being able to have an influence in the direction of a community.

But there were times when writing and editing a newspaper was simply not enough. You had to become more directly involved in your community. Your heart said you have to put down your pencil and notebook and do something.

Kate did this so well, in a way which not only responded to community needs but also strengthened her integrity as a journalist. I recall one example which illustrates this so clearly. While wearing her reporter hat, Kate came across a community conflict over "day laborers." In that community, the day laborers were young Mexican-American men who waited in a parking lot for contractors to come by and hire them for the day. Some members of the community wanted this practice stopped and the parking lot cleared. A classic conflict which had the potential for great stories.

But it was not enough for Kate to simply write about such an issue. She switched hats and went out and started a center for day laborers in her community. It was a great success and now part of her legacy.

Kate did things like this over and over, combining journalism and social work in such wonderful ways. She was an inspiration to many others trying to do similar things, including this writer.