Longtime editor of 'The Leader' passes away

The Beaches Leader family is mourning the loss of publisher and longtime editor Kathleen Feindt-Bailey, who passed away March 9 after a brief illness. Bailey, 60, will be remembered as a vocal proponent of the Beaches who demanded accountability from elected officials and worked tirelessly to provide fair and balanced coverage of issues impacting the community.
"The Beaches community has lost a true champion," said Tom Wood, former publisher of The Beaches Leader who hired her as editor in 1994. "Kathleen Bailey was one of the finest journalists I have ever known. She believed with all her heart that a community had to have good information in order to act in its own best interests.”
“It takes a strong ethical foundation to do good journalism in a community that one loves and calls home. Kathleen had it. She loved her craft and accepted the responsibility that it compelled. Her love of the Beaches community and her commitment to making it better will be missed.”
Bailey’s style was aggressive but thoughtful. She was not afraid to ask the tough questions and challenge policies in a way that inspired those on both sides of an issue to pursue the truth. At the heart of her work was a passion and a commitment to the community she called home.
“She believed in the role of journalism, and freedom of press and democracy," said former Jacksonville Beach City Manager George Forbes. "It was just in her DNA. If you really wanted to tick her off, as a government official, try not to give her something she asked for. She would go ballistic on you. But to me, it was more than just that. She believed in the Beaches. She grew up here. She went to Fletcher. She totally believed in the Beaches communities and keeping them separate from Jacksonville.”
“She had tremendous integrity but she also had compassion. If you explained something to her and gave her a good reason why, you could often work it out. But anyone who tried to get past her or didn’t have integrity, she had very little use for. She was a huge part of our community and she’s really going to be missed.”
During the formative years of Beaches Watch, Jacksonville Beach City Councilor Sandy Golding found an ally in Bailey and The Beaches Leader. Both were grounded in the responsibility to preserve and protect the quality of the life at the Beaches.
“Kathy obviously had so much passion for the community with everything she did with The Beaches Leader. I personally was grateful for all the stuff she did and how she stayed on top of things,” she said. “When we started Beaches Watch and in all the years Beaches Watch has been in existence, our focus has been educating and engaging citizens in what’s happening in the community so that decisions can be made with citizen input, and she and The Beaches Leader [were] an important part of that.”
Golding said she could count on Bailey to share information of upcoming meetings and topics of discussion, which encouraged more people to come out and get involved.
“She helped engage people in the issues that are so important to our community. Even though she couldn’t come to some of our meetings, she would watch the videos and write something about it, whether it was the state of the Beaches or a candidate forum,” she said. “She knew how important it was to make sure people were informed. It’s transparency at its best. For a small paper, I think that was really so valuable. I really feel like we have really lost a very important part of our community.”
Bailey pored through the weekly public records, minutes of public meetings and police reports, examining the details of construction permits, adherence to city policy and even challenging police performance if she felt an issue compromised public safety.
Bruce Thomason had the opportunity to work with Bailey, both as former chief of police in Jacksonville Beach and later as an elected member of the City Council. He had been at the department for just three years when she assumed the editorship and “her feet hardly even touched the ground. She was off and running and never slowed down,” he said.
“I’ve known a lot of people in the reporting business going back to being interviewed by reporters when I was a patrol officer back in my hometown, and she ranks right up there as one of the most professional, the most ethical, and the kindest and most thoughtful people I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with over the years. Every single newspaper that came out had her imprint on it.”
Bailey once shared the words Thomason delivered to new recruits. The “Six  O’clock  Rule”  mirrored  her  own expectations for her work family, city officials and Beaches citizens.
“In essence, if you’re ever thinking you’re going to do something or say something, ask yourself if I did it and it becomes the lead story on the 6 o’clock news, would my family be proud of me? Would my department be proud of me? Would I be proud of myself? And I said if you can clearly answer yes to all of those questions, clearly, you’re making a good decision,” recalled Thomason.
“Kathy wrote this up in her article and I thought it was a really nice way of bringing up that whole idea of integrity. It’s our most precious possession. If you lose your integrity, you might as well pack it in. You don’t deserve to wear the badge. You don’t deserve to be a reporter. In anything you do, you always have to be open and above board and do the right thing for the right reason.”
Bailey often shared her thoughts on such issues in her Leader’s Opinion editorial. Thomason looked back on an editorial that called into question tactics used by members of department’s Community Response Team to execute a search warrant.
“She objected to the way that was handled because they went into a public place in order to make the arrest and they came in wearing masks to prevent [revealing] their identity because some of them were working undercover at the time," noted Thomason. "I was in total agreement. I didn’t know that it had been handled that way. I spoke to the officers involved with it and shared with them that Kathy’s concerns were correct and it should’ve been handled in a different way.”
“But at the same time, it wasn’t an attack on the Jacksonville Beach Police Department or any individual within the department. It was, ‘Hey, I don’t think this was handled well. I think it could’ve been handled better.’ And I called her and told her she was right. There are people I’ve encountered in my career, every time they put their fingers on a [keyboard] there was going to be a spin associated with whatever they were writing. It was so refreshing to know someone like her and be able to work with her throughout my career."
Jacksonville Beach Mayor Charlie Latham said he could always count on her editorials to deliver an unbiased approach to any issue.
“I really enjoyed reading her editorials. Sometimes I was on the right side and sometimes I was on the wrong side, but she had salient points and it was refreshing. I don’t even know what political party she was a part of and I don’t care. You never knew if she had a bias because she was always that fair.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever find anybody that will be such a straight shooter on editorials as she was. Her legacy will be that she always found the truth and she was always unbiased and she was always interested in the betterment of the community.”
Latham and Bailey shared a common thread as “locals,” both attending Fletcher High School and planting their families' roots in Jacksonville Beach.
“She was a very nice person," he said. "She was a year behind me at Fletcher. We had the same Humanities class. She was a very fair person. She wasn’t really very different in high school. She was kind of the same way. She looked at both sides and told the story the way it was and I respect that.
“We had a pretty good relationship keeping each other up to date on what was going on. A lot of times I’d call her thinking I had all the information I needed to give her a good update, and I’d find out very quickly I didn’t. She was digging even deeper and I respected that about her. She was always looking for all the details she could find to put out there for everybody. She was a good friend and an asset to the Beaches. I am going to miss her a lot.”