It's Friendly Competition for Two Former Reporters

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John Bayles and Marissa Maier once found themselves at home in the Main Street offices of The Sag Harbor Express, together covering the community, its schools and local government.

Today, the two writers find themselves at the helm of competing newspapers in downtown Manhattan, covering one of the most seminal anniversaries in United States history.

The Downtown Express, where Bayles has served as editor for the last year and a half, and Maier’s recently revived Our Town Downtown will both release commemorative issues dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The event changed the entire country, if not the world, and particularly downtown Manhattan where passenger airplanes struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center, causing them to crumble into piles of smoke, ash and debris while claiming the lives of nearly 3,000 people.

“It is without a doubt the most important issue I have ever had to cover, and the biggest issue I have ever had to put together as an editor,” said Bayles in a phone interview from his office this weekend. “The pressure is immense.”

Publisher and editor John Sutter, who also publishes The Villager, East Villager and Lower East Sider, Chelsea Now and Gay City News, hired Bayles in April of 2010.

“Our paper has covered 9/11 every week since it happened in some shape or form whether politically, the impact on businesses, the re-construction of downtown, the memorial, education,” said Bayles. “It was such a major event. With the rebuilding process, it’s an event that has never stopped being news and is far from over.”

The Downtown Express will focus the whole of its September 8 issue on the anniversary, with a special section devoted to the history of the event, as told through more than 2,000 headlines the paper has devoted to the tragedy and the rebirth of downtown Manhattan.

Maier was hired by Manhattan Media chief executive Tom Allon for a brief stint at the New York Press this summer before Manhattan Media decided to merge the New York Press into the revived Our Town Downtown. Billed as a “hybrid newsmagazine for Lower Manhattan,” the paper will be the first weekly competition for The Downtown Express since 2007 when Our Town Downtown originally ceased publishing.

Maier’s first issue debuted last week, making the commemorative issue on the anniversary of September 11 the second issue she will edit for the newspaper.

“I think it was important for us to launch when we did,” said Maier this weekend in an interview from her Sag Harbor home. “We had to establish ourselves as a new paper and give people a sense of our voice before we covered the anniversary of 9/11.”

Maier said each issue of Our Town Downtown will hold a central theme based around a cover feature story, with this week’s issue focused on five people who directly experienced the tragedy at the World Trade Center.

Arts, something Our Town Downtown plans to celebrate weekly, will be explored through a look at the documentary film project “Rebirth,” which chronicles the aftermath of 9/11. There will also be a conversation with Liz Berger, the president of the Downtown Alliance, as well as reports on growth in downtown New York.

Despite the two papers being different in style and in how they cover news in the neighborhoods below Canal Street — a feat in its own right, with diverse neighborhoods like Battery Park City, Chinatown, City Hall, the Financial District, The Seaport and Tribeca — they will be competing for readers and advertisers. But Bayles and Maier, who once sat next to each other at The Sag Harbor Express, don’t view it that way.

“I was incredibly happy for her and proud,” said Bayles. “This is someone who freelanced for me at The Downtown Express, and I was honestly looking forward to her moving to the city so I could use her as much as possible. She is a strong writer and a good reporter.”

Bayles said just before the news was about to break about Maier’s move into his neck of the woods, the two met for coffee. Bayles said to her what another reporter once said to him when he was hired as the editor of The Downtown Express.

“They are lucky to have you,” he said.

“Obviously, I did go into this with some trepidation because I know what a great reporter and editor John is,” said Maier. “But after it was announced and we talked, we have continued to be friends. What is nice is I now have a friend who can relate to some of the experiences I am having as an editor and vice versa.”

“I think there is room for everyone,” added Maier.

Bayles added that when he first thought about having competition, he remembered the experience of reporting on the East End of Long Island, where there are a breadth of successful newspapers, and therefore a lot young reporters trying to accomplish the same goals.

“I think about carpooling to Pennsylvania with Tim Small from The East Hampton Star the first year the Sag Harbor Whalers made it to the championship game,” he remembered. “We both had to get to that game and were desperate to cover it, and carpooling made sense. Competition wasn’t really an issue.”

“When I think about this, to be honest, what has most come to mind is Bryan [Boyhan, the editor and publisher of The Sag Harbor Express],” said Bayles. “What a testament to the kind of mentor he is that two former reporters are now editing papers in the most important city in the world.”

Bayles and Maier come from varied backgrounds, both with life stories that are worthy of being feature stories in themselves. And the desire to have the chance to discover and tell the stories of the people around them is palpable for both writers.

“Because my step-dad [Spalding Gray, the actor, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist] was essentially a story teller, and my mom was in that world, I grew up hearing those stories and knowing that was his occupation,” said Maier. “It made it something I didn’t even think about. I always wrote in my journals, I always had an interest in history and I think my interest in history is just an interest in stories and how you tell a story.”

“I get asked all the time if I want to move on to a daily newspaper or a bigger paper, and I pause and I say, ‘No’,” said Bayles. “I think it is because you would never have the opportunity to make the connections with people that you do at a community weekly newspaper. Maybe it would be different, if I had cut my teeth in community journalism in another place, at another paper.”

“What was so great about working at The Sag Harbor Express, and what kept me in this field, was that first community I covered,” he added. “I was invested in the community I was covering, and in turn, Sag Harbor is a community that embraced me as much as I embraced it.”

Just as Bayles finished that sentence, during a cell phone interview while walking back to his office on Canal Street, he paused for a moment to have a rowdy chat with a man he recently shot a picture of after catching a really big fish.

“So I guess the same thing is kind of happening here,” he said.