Yellow Pages
Linda Ensley has seen many changes over the years with Skagit Publishing Co.
Hired on April 1, 1980, Ensley, 63, didn’t plan to stay for long.
After 29 years, she said she blames her lengthy stay on being hired on April Fool’s Day.
“I was really only going to work for a few years,” Ensley said. “I’ve been fooled every year since then.”
Ensley has worked in almost all aspects of the advertising services department, including as the advertising secretary and as the department’s administrative assistant.
Ensley can be found today helping customers at the front desk in the company’s new facility on Anderson Road in Mount Vernon. She also processes legals for the classified advertising department, a new role for her.
“It’s been a whole new perspective for me,” she said. “I think I’ve done everything in the advertising department.”
Katie Sundermeyer, who has worked with Ensley for 23 years, said Ensley is the department’s “jack of all trades.”
Sundermeyer is the advertising co-op manager, but was hired in 1986 as an advertising representative. She said the advertising representatives back then referred to Ensley as “mom.”
Ensley kept track of everyone and was extremely organized, Sundermeyer said.
“You can always count on her,” Sundermeyer said.
Ensley’s responsibilities have constantly evolved, and Sundermeyer adds that Ensley is quick to rise to the task.
“She’s weathered an enormous amount of change here,” Sundermeyer said. “You have to be one flexible person to keep doing that.”
Computer technology was the biggest change Ensley has endured. She remembers manually copying and pasting the advertisements for the newspaper pages in the 1980s.
Technology made the work more efficient, allowing advertisements and text to be placed electronically.
“It’s a lot easier to communicate,” Ensley said. “You just don’t do anything without a computer anymore.”
Aside from technological changes, Ensley has seen the company grow and the newspaper evolve.
Over the years, the newspaper has provided readers with a variety of interesting local stories, Ensley said.
She recalls watching the first Sunday edition of the Skagit Valley Herald roll off the press in November 1999.
“It was something new and very exciting,” Ensley said. “It just offered our readers so much more.”
She remembers when the company received its new insert and stitcher/trimmer machines.
The insert machine allowed advertisements to be placed automatically into the newspapers and expanded the mail room, she said.
The stitcher/trimmer provided the opportunity to print other publications such as Business Pulse, Home Accent and Healthy Living.
The move into the new building on Anderson Road is just the most recent change.
No empty space was left in the old building on College Way, Ensley said, adding that “every little nook, cranny and corner” had a desk in it.
And that was after the news department moved in the mid-1990s into rented space next door.
But Ensley remembers the years when all of the employees worked in one building at the College Way campus.
Oftentimes staff would get excited about their work and animatedly bustle around, disrupting the reporters’ concentration, Ensley said.
She laughed when she recalled the editor at the time hollering to the advertising staff to keep their voices down.
Ensley is happy to see all the company employees working together in the same building again. Her job at the front desk allows her to see familiar faces while greeting new ones at the same time.
“The new building has been a real pick-me-up for me,” she said.
* This report is part of a special section celebrating 125 years of news coverage by the Skagit Valley Herald. To see others, click on the headlines below:
Newspapers have become a multiplatform business
Family’s newspaper lineage dates back to E.W. Scripps in 1878
Longtime carrier learned about dependability
Back in time, A look at some notable businesses of yesteryear
Readers share opinions of the newspaper, positive and otherwise
Newspapers provide link to past, present and future for local woman
