Editor-In-Chief
The Portland Anchor Newspaper
Sherry Stewart, a third-generation Portlander, grew up in the neighborhood with early Portland Anchor director Ann Cockrell, and through her was recruited onto the newspaper’s team. “There were just so many people,” Stewart recalled of her first layout session, “and when they’d get the galleys in from the typesetter I’d see typos, so I wanted to correct them, but they’d say, ‘no you can’t do that, you can’t write on them, this is what we have to go with now.’” As you can probably gleam from the terminology, Stewart worked in the typesetting industry for thirty-six years, where one could send back proofs for corrections. This wasn’t an option for the DIY newspaper she’d just signed on to help with. “It was really hard,” she’d jokingly reflect. Thankfully though, the Anchor’s sometimes-chaotic grassroots approach and Stewart’s professionalism would successfully meld into the paper it is today.
After Ann’s departure from the Anchor in 1994 Stewart would on Sundays work with former Editor-In-Chief, and eventual close friend, Alma Wright to manually paste-up the layout of each issue while others would typeset and coordinate ads. Today as Editor-In-Chief, Stewart has taken over all these responsibilities, fielding submissions through email and laying them out in Adobe InDesign. Stewart’s unending dedication to the Portland Anchor was exemplified when she suffered a heart attack in 2010, leaving her hospitalized for a week. In her own words: “All I could think about was that the Anchor needed to go out!” On her first night home Stewart stayed up late to complete that month’s issue, returning to an answering machine full of people asking where the paper was! When your work is so beloved by the community, and you love the community as much as Stewart does, you have to forgive the excitement.