The story that appears on Page 12—our lead As We See It item—marks Kate Silver's last piece as a Weekly staffer. The moment she hit send, she became a staff writer at our sister magazine, Las Vegas Life. It marks the end of Kate's four and a half years in this place.
The story is vintage Kate. It has a seemingly wacky premise (brain-damaged guy goes to City Council meetings as a form of therapy, sees improvements, gets kicked out) that opens out onto some unexpectedly human dimensions. Played for laughs, as it easily could have been, the story wouldn't have merited many column inches. Instead, Kate kept her eye on what matters, as she usually has.
In her time here, she's filled these pages with similar stories. She has unmatched antennae for finding tales that have a veneer of bizarre around a core of meaning. Kate's byline has appeared over stories about worm-farming, polygamy, the supernatural and sewer gasses; she's written about her search for an old bar owner who once promised to leave his rural gin joint to her; and she's gone to NASCAR. These are just things I noticed from looking at the office wall decorated with this year's covers. She's done dozens and dozens of similar pieces over the years. And some of them have gone on to win journalism awards. She nabbed two first-place nods in this year's Nevada Press Association competition, and had a share of a third. Last year, the organization dubbed her Outstanding Journalist. Also this year, she was up for a prestigious Maggie Award—a national honor—for a couple of Weekly pieces about wedding chapel wars. You probably remember those.
We'll miss Kate but wish her well as she leaves the rags and heads to the slicks, a move that will let her work on a whole different set of writing and editing skills. What that means for us, aside from the loss of a good colleague (although she'll be desked just across the office from the Weekly charnel house, so loss is a relative term), is that now we'll have to find all the weird, meaningful and weirdly meaningful stories she used to provide. Me, I don't know where to look, so I—and others—will probably show up regularly at her new digs, seeking advice. You're not getting away that easily, kiddo.