It was a busy week for our newsroom.

Sara Rubin here, taking a look back at the week gone by. We reserve these Saturday newsletters for a bit of reflection; it’s similar to something our editorial team does when we convene for a weekly meeting on Wednesday mornings.

Sometimes, the most recent print edition feels like we worked on it a lifetime ago. (As I write this, we are working on our upcoming Nov. 28 and Dec. 5 issues, with reporting, editing, photography and layout all in various stages of completeness.) We inhabit two very different timelines here—the print Monterey County Weekly is planned out well ahead, while our newly renamed digital realm, Monterey County Now, strives to capture much more of the, well, now.

Some weeks, the pace of news is faster than others, and this was one of those weeks. There’s a lot well worth reading in the print edition of the Weekly (see some of our highlights below), but our team also covered a lot of news online. Dave Faries chased down news about two Monterey restaurants; LouLou’s Griddle in the Middle on Wharf 2 closed abruptly, and on Alvarado Street, ABC revoked Britannia Arms’ liquor license. Agata Popęda delivered an important update on the Salinas Parade of Lights—just a few days after organizers canceled it, it was back. David Schmalz gave a weather forecast about the incoming atmospheric river. And as the Monterey County Elections Department continues counting ballots—a process that can feel excruciatingly long as they invite voters to correct or “cure” ballots with missing signatures, for example—there are still some razor-thin margins we are watching.

There was also a major national story that broke on Wednesday night, centered right here in Monterey. Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, was investigated in 2017 for sexual assault while he and a woman identified as Jane Doe were attending a Republican women’s conference at the Hyatt. We were among the dozens of news outlets—alongside the likes of CNN, Washington Post, The New York Times and Vanity Fair—that had inquired with Monterey PD for information. 

Monterey City Attorney Christine Davi did a meticulous legal analysis to determine that a redacted portion of the police report was indeed a public record, and she sent it to us—along with news outlets all over the country that are covering national politics—at 6:30pm Wednesday night. The race was on for a story that appeared on Monterey County Now within hours.

It’s not often we find ourselves pursuing the same story as big national news outlets, but sometimes we do. There’s a competitive spirit in our industry, a desire to move fast (with accuracy and thoroughness) to get the scoop. 

Some weeks we feel that urgency more than others, or maybe I should say some months; ever since Election Day we’ve been moving at a frenzied pace. Perhaps that means today, a stormy Saturday, is a perfect time to slow down with a cup of coffee and leisure over a print newspaper that was in the works well before all of this fast-paced news unfolded. We are all living in a dual analog and digital world.