Better to be lucky than smart A look back at two decades with NorthBay biz By Bill Meagher L uck. It’s what you need in journalism. You need to be lucky enough to have editors that make your stuff better. Editors that let your voice shine through while saving you from yourself. You need luck to build a He suggested that I could help him understand Marin and write for his newly purchased magazine. I told him while I was willing to write, I wasn’t nearly smart enough to explain Marin. For the next 17 years, Norm and I were friends, partners in crime and occasional drinking buddies. And in that time, I wrote a monthly column on Marin—Only in Marin—plus many features and stories on a frightening array of subjects.
career in a sector doing its level best to kill itself. You need luck to find stories good enough to write, to entertain and inform. You need luck to find the truth. And your stories better give the truth a stylish ride. Luck. And if you are really lucky, you find a home for your words, thoughts and hopes. I’m really lucky. NorthBay biz has been that home for me many years, some might argue too many years. I remember hearing the magazine had been sold to somebody out of Chicago in 2000. At the time publications of every stripe were in ruin, the streets in Print Town rolling with a blend of red ink and blood. So, I dropped a note to the new owners saying I admired their enthusiasm and confidence. In the old days it was called pluck. But given the media environment at the time, and even now, it could have been labeled arrogance or even a fool’s errand. At any rate, I wished the proprietors well and thought nothing more about it. But I got a call from a guy named Norm Rosinski inviting me to join him for coffee at the Seafood Peddler, a Marin restaurant that doesn’t even exist anymore. Sitting in a booth with a steaming cup of coffee was a guy with a shock of white hair combed back, and a pack of Winston cigarettes sticking out of his pocket. We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries until he confessed that he, his wife Joni and her brother John had bought the magazine, and he had no idea what to make of Marin. I told him not to feel bad, “there’s a lot of that going around.”
I was given a lot of freedom and more than a few of the stories turned out pretty well. The magazine became my place to stretch out as a writer, something my daily deadlines in financial journalism didn’t allow. I wasn’t going to get rich writing for NBb, but while my wallet wasn’t getting much fatter, my soul enjoyed sustenance not easily found. When Norm and Joni decamped and sold the magazine in 2017, I wasn’t sure whether I would continue the words-for-money thing, but Lawrence Amaturo wasn’t cleaning house. He recently gave me a hand locating contacts for a story, an unusual move for a publisher and I was grateful for the assist. In the years that I have toiled for NBb, I have worked for four different editors, and the magazine has had two different homes. Our country has seen planes bring down skyscrapers, at least two monster fiscal crises, a deadly pandemic and now a fight over whether we will continue to exist as a democracy or be led by a king determined to line his own pockets. I’ve been allowed to write what I find, present what I believe without interference, and pursue stories our readers want to see. Like I said at the top, you have to be lucky. Bill Meagher is a contributing editor at NorthBay biz. He is also a senior reporter for The Deal, a Manhattan- based financial news digital portal. Meagher covers a back alley off Wall Street dealing with alternative investments.
24 NorthBaybiz
December 2025
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