Saying goodbye to a big job in a small town

Published 3:43 pm Tuesday, February 24, 2026

I never planned to become a reporter for The Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber. And yet, there were early indications that this might be a job I would enjoy.

Among the artifacts I recently discovered while cleaning out my mother’s house was an issue of a hyperlocal news outlet I founded when I was about 10 years old.

Trumpeting my determination to succeed at this shaky enterprise, I named my two-page, handwritten newspaper “The Underdog” — written for and about the families who lived on the block where I grew up in Topeka, Kansas.

The issue blasted a timely front-page headline, “Summer is here!” atop an article detailing my neighbors’ plans for vacations and summer camps. I reported the story with gusto, but walked it off with a wry reporter’s lament: “Not many people will get this newspaper!”

No one who knows me would be surprised that page 2 of my newspaper was devoted to the arts: a review of the film version of the musical “Camelot,” which had rocked my world with its fabulous Lerner and Loewe score and shocking, adultery-themed storyline set in King Arthur’s court.

“This movie cost 15 million and you can tell it,” I gushed, oblivious to AP style and even basic grammar, but with, I’m proud to say, remarkable accuracy about the cost of the film (I just looked it up).

I’d like to hug the nerdy child who wrote that, and tell her about all the adventures she’s had since then: studying theater in college, then working in the arts in New York City, Chicago and Seattle before becoming a real journalist in the storybook island community where she raised her own two kids.

I’d like to imagine that I’m holding that little girl’s hand now as I leave The Beachcomber, and quizzing her for ideas about what we might do next.

First, I’m sure, she would instruct me to thank everyone who helped me tell the stories of this endlessly newsy island. A great idea, so here it goes.

I’ll start with my family, Tom, Ellie and Isaac, and my closest friends: oh, how you’ve accommodated all my crazy deadlines and put up with my complete inability to achieve work/life balance.

Next, my Beachcomber family — all the brilliant and passionate people I have worked with over the years. What a cast of characters, too many to name, has populated the Beachcomber office. What a noisy place it once was!

It’s not like that anymore — a reflection of the harsh economic plight of so many other local news outlets. But it is also true that our newspaper has survived while so many other essential outlets for local news have not, because The Beachcomber’s staff has always punched above its weight.

My first editors, Leslie Brown and Susan Riemer, exemplified this work ethic and professional excellence. Thank you, my “ladies of the press,” for teaching me how to be a journalist. And there could also be no finer person to stand with in the trenches of local journalism than Daralyn Anderson, our newspaper’s longtime publisher.

I stand in awe of The Beachcomber’s longtime advertisers for their support of local news.

Another debt of gratitude goes to a long list of brilliant islanders who have heroically pitched in to provide opinion and other content for our newspaper. Bruce Haulman’s and Terry Donnelly’s stellar history columns, which have now appeared in the paper for decades, are perhaps the most shining example of how our newspaper is truly a community project.

My good friend Eric Pryne, a retired journalist who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work at The Seattle Times, has been a key advisor to me on many subjects that were frankly far beyond my skill level. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written about property taxes, zoning issues, real estate or anything involving crime and courts, you can thank Eric, who patiently talked me through the intricacies of reporting on these topics.

Then there is Rick Wallace, who along with the expert team of the VashonBePrepared Medical Reserve Corps, leapt to provide The Beachcomber with life-saving information throughout the darkest days of COVID-19 — a time that exemplified the need for factual local journalism.

I’m leaving this job now to become just another reader of The Beachcomber: a club of passionate and highly intelligent people I can’t wait to join.

My deepest thanks go to every reader who has chimed in during my long tenure, praising my work if they thought I deserved that, but also letting me know, in no uncertain terms, if they thought I got something wrong.

One treasure I’ll take home now is a framed email from an islander who thanked me for my reporting on several exceptionally difficult stories in the spring of 2023 — a time I was completely alone in the newsroom — saying she valued her Beachcomber subscription as much as she did her subscription to The New York Times.

As crazy as this might sound, that was the standard of excellence I was always trying to meet in my work. Because Vashon deserves nothing less than that.

I urge our community to keep supporting The Beachcomber, now led by a wildly gifted and hardworking editor, Aspen Anderson. Vashon is lucky to have her.

And watch for my continued byline, especially on reviews of local theater productions. There’s no way the once and future Liz Shepherd won’t continue to churn those out.

— Longtime Beachcomber reporter and former editor Elizabeth Shepherd (portrait by Pam Ingalls) left the newspaper’s staff on Feb. 25. Stay in touch with her at justasklizshepherd@gmail.com.