By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
PHOTO COURTESY OF JILL ANDERSON
Billie Anderson, perhaps reflecting on her Marin Scope years
Billie Anderson, co-founder and managing editor of the Marin Scope and dedicated member of the Historical Society, passed away peacefully at home early April 17 following a long illness.
In a tribute, Kim Huff of the Sausalito Woman’s Club wrote: “Billie was a strong voice for the club as well as the community. She joined the club in 1989 and went right to work serving the membership. She served on several committees during her time as a member most notably Budget and Civics, she served as Treasurer for the SWC and as well as on the Board and Chairwoman of the Scholarship Recognition Fund.
“She was also well known to the Sausalito community as the outspoken Editor and Co-Owner of the MarinScope until it was sold in 1998. Billie was never short of words and always had a well-documented point of view. Billie was indeed her own woman and will be remembered for a very long time for the handprint she left on Sausalito.”
Here are some lightly edited excerpts from announcement in this newspaper of Billie’s retirement in 1999:
For the past 29 years, Billie Anderson has been the driving force behind the editorial content of the Marin Scope Community Newspapers. Originally from Washington, Anderson and her husband, Paul, moved to San Francisco in 1965. Both in their twenties, they shared a vision of launching a community newspaper somewhere in the Bay Area. Sausalito proved to be the ideal location.
"We literally drove around the Bay Area looking for a town without a newspaper and found Sausalito," Anderson said. The vision for the Marin Scope, she said, was to create a forum for community discussion. “Our premise was to start a local paper that would allow the community a chance to participate and to be close to what was going on. To become a resource for the community and not to tell them what to do, but to tell them what was happening,” she said. Residents were, at first, suspicious of the new paper, fearing that the Andersons were aligned with a particular political group. “Over time they figured out what was going on,” she said.
Anderson started out on the production side of the paper but with time took an active role in the editorial side. "She's such an absolutely very, very effective smart person. It became very clear after a while that she had all the abilities and skills that it took to be a first rate newspaper editor," said Doris Berdahl, who wrote for the paper through 1980 and served on the Historical Society board with Billie. “She was the person who really saw to it that things got done,” Berdahl said. “She saw to it that it came together and got out to its readers."
In 1984, the Andersons acquired other community newspapers and later founded the Mill Valley Herald. "We tried to continue the traditions that each newspaper had," she said. With the expansion, the staff blossomed to 25 people with offices in each of its communities. They later consolidated all the offices in Sausalito. “I think that the most rewarding thing has been being able to be a really productive part of each of the communities and able to do something that I think was a significant contribution," Anderson said. “My feeling is that the newspapers have their own life and my hope is that they will move in a direction that still keeps them a community resource and provides a place for dialogue... and working out community problems in a neutral space.
"The papers give everyone in the community an opportunity to say what they want to say and work out issues through the newspaper. Hopefully that philosophy will continue. It has kept them healthy and strong."
Berdahl observed that Anderson has made her mark in Marin. “I know that there's been a great deal of respect for Billie for how she has handled community news... She became a very powerful woman in Marin County as a whole. I have heard from various organizations that they all felt she was the person to go to..." she said.
Supervisor Annette Rose, who served one term on the Sausalito City Council before moving on to the Board of Supervisors, praised Anderson for striving to maintain balanced coverage in the Marin Scope. “I think Billie was really responsible for the coverage that the Marin Scope tried to give to the extremely divisive community issues that we've had in Sausalito, especially during times when people are running for office... they covered every candidate equally and fairly," she said. Rose credited Anderson for taking proper measures to keep her own voice out of the balanced coverage of the issues. "When there was an issue that she felt very strongly about, she would sign her name to the article and make it clear that was her opinion," she said. “
In her later years, Billie contributed columns to this Historical Society space in Marin Scope, and edited Dorothy Gibson’s popular guide Exploring Sausalito's Paths and Walkways. She is survived by her husband Paul, son Matt and daughter Jill and their families.