by Katherine Renton
I can remember that my time at the newspaper began as a fledgling who was 21 years old and fresh out of university. Instances that stand out in memory from those beginning days include daily happenings at the court, and interviewing evacuees arriving at nightfall from a Hurricane Maria-torn Dominica. Since then, I became audience and participant to the unpredictable tapestry of the Vincentian news scene being weaved week in and week out, revealing a pattern that was at once tricky, thoughtful, powerful, and irreplaceable.
Over the years, I have observed that reactions to us differ based on the outside perceptions of the public. There were occasions a journalist on the job would be met with suspicion and rancour and others when the Searchlight name was respected and recognised as useful.
However, behind the curtain it was and is, simply a core team working uncompromisingly to deliver to the Vincentian public. At the head of this team was someone who encouraged multiple young persons with the chance to learn and contribute, and I was one of the beneficiaries of this.
This person who patiently edited my articles in the inception was, editor and chief executive office, Clare Keizer, who carefully showed me how each sentence should reflect the intricacies of reporting. It always struck me that what hadn’t changed since the beginning was her uncanny sixth sense for recognising when sentences, paragraphs or articles weren’t what they could be. It is because of this that I can say that during five years at the publication the motto of ‘journalism you can trust’ was strictly adhered to. This will no doubt remain pertinent in the new chapter that the newspaper will write, as it has been reimagining itself to provide a modern and digital product. Nevertheless, what the archivist will know from searching through its pages at the request of readers, or the students who quoted it extensively at public speaking competitions – is that the body of work that has been built up one block at a time since 1995 is a stronghold in a world that continues to need this information, and perhaps even more so with increasing avenues of access to false information.
No article written or published through the Searchlight newspaper left the writer, or reader unchanged. While many times tragic, rebellious or sometimes jubilant, the responsibility of writing about the momentous events, faces and characters of St Vincent and the Grenadines left a deep and lasting impression on me.
