CLAYTON, CA (Aug. 15, 2025) — The timing of The Pioneer’s 475th and final edition after more than 22 years is not coming on anyone’s terms, especially editor and publisher Tamara Steiner – who fully expected to keep it going for years to come.

“I was going to write my own obituary,” cracked Steiner.

But now, she acknowledges that life has changed directions. The reality of a fourth diagnosis of cancer in July – this time centered in the lungs that required surgery – dictated the hard decision to hang it up.

“If I wasn’t almost 80, would I keep going? Oh yeah, oh yeah, I got ideas,” she said, adding that her husband, Bob, 93, “needs more time and attention than I have been giving him.”

Discussions about a potential sale or merger may enable community journalism to continue serving Concord, the largest city in Contra Costa County, and its neighboring municipalities of Clayton and Pleasant Hill.

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First few years a cake walk

After the inaugural issue on April 9, 2003, Steiner recalled the initial couple years as pretty smooth sailing for the Clayton-centered newspaper – thanks to a talented staff and a fertile advertising market.

She came out of the gates 30 percent over projections. On top of that, the community was responding positively to the publication. With her small devoted team of Jill Bedecarré and Kim Rutledge, they were firing on all cylinders.

A teacher at Clayton Valley High School referred Rutledge, who had newspaper design experience at the Los Angeles Times.

“She rolled in to the office that first day, said ‘I need a trackball’ and designed our paper,” Steiner said of Rutledge, who is a quadriplegic.

Steiner connected with Bedecarré through church and her husband Jay, who owned a local advertising agency and later joined The Pioneer staff as the sports and schools editor.

Riding on the early success, Steiner co-ventured a new publication called The Concordian in 2007. Focused on Concord, it too started off strong financially – but it became clear that it was stealing revenue from The Clayton Pioneer.

The 2008 recession prompted the first of two major changes. With advertising drying up 30% to 40% for both newspapers, Steiner ultimately turned over The Concordian to her partner.

But in her heart, Steiner knew Concord was too fertile of a market to abandon. In 2014, she decided to start a monthly Concord Pioneer edition.

“We were chugging along coming out of the recession,” she said. “It seemed a good time.”

World changes overnight

March 18, 2020, the day COVID shut it all down, is firmly etched in Steiner’s mind. She remembers the evening phone call from her graphic designer, Pete Cruz, that would further change the newspaper.

“We have to go online with a daily,” he advised.

Never enthusiastic about creating an online paper, she vacillated.

“You don’t understand,” Cruz said. “If we’re going to survive, we must go online with a daily … tonight.”

Her mantra had always been “hire the best people I can and stay out of their way,” so she trusted Cruz. “This is 100 percent his creation,” Steiner said of the online presence.

“We knew we needed to change with the times, but the pandemic forced us to dive head-first into something none of us had much experience with,” Cruz added.

Another by-product of the changing market was going to a single publication. The now-monthly newspaper covering Clayton and Concord later expanded to Pleasant Hill.

Early memories never far away

Before The Pioneer Tamara and Bob Steiner had been operating a 42-office executive suite in Pleasant Hill. With security systems, long distance services, a T1 line and a phone system, it had become far too technologically intensive for Steiner’s taste.

“Several times a week, something would alarm, usually around midnight, and I would climb out of bed, drag myself down there in my jammies and reset something.”

The lack of a concrete result at the end of a long, stressful day also left Steiner unsatisfied. “I wanted something to show for my 10-12 hours of sweat.”

The 25-year resident of Clayton started eyeing the local paper. “I want to do that,” she told her husband. It took two years to convince him she was serious before he approached Clayton Pioneer owner Harry Green with an offer and came home with the keys a few days later. She giggles now when she thinks back to seeing the first edition arrive at the Center Street post office, with 5,000 copies stacked to the roof of the van.

“Jill and I did a happy dance around that truck, with Jill cheering, ‘Wow, we just gave birth to the same baby!’ ” said Steiner. “We had something physical to touch, to hold, to love and wash off our skin.

“I will miss having that tangible, touchable accomplishment,” Steiner conceded.

Out of the 35,000 households that receive The Pioneer, just 70 addresses are on the “do not deliver” list.

“People say they don’t read newspapers, but they do. I still believe there is a place for print, but it is expensive to produce,” she acknowledged.

It’s been about the team

In recent days, Steiner has been described as “a tough old bird” to characterize her stalwart approach to running the paper through all its ups and downs. But she is the first to shower praise where it’s due.

“I had professional journalists carrying me every step of the way,” Steiner remarked.

Jay Bedecarré immediately struck up a friendship with Steiner when she walked into his Concord advertising agency, Lewis Benedict Bedecarré, on April 1, 2003, to request a new logo for the Clayton Pioneer. She wanted it to incorporate Mt. Diablo, the town clock in Clayton and perhaps an oak tree.

“My main contribution to The Pioneer during its planning stages was to strongly encourage Tamara, very much a non-sports fan, to include local sports as a key element of the paper’s editorial coverage,” Bedecarré said.

Bedecarré, a journalist right after graduating from Mt. Diablo High School, was right. The sports pages remain the most widely read part of The Pioneer.

He joined his wife Jill and lent his talents for a short time as The Pioneer got its sea legs under new ownership.

“I reengaged after Jill’s passing in the summer of 2007 to help a short-staffed Tamara and to honor Jill’s legacy,” Bedecarré said.

He continued to handle sports coverage along with educational writing from the time of the controversial Clayton Valley High conversion to a charter school as well as other news and feature stories.

“Tamara has been a bulldog running The Pioneer through local and national economic up and downs over the past 22 years to produce a professional, first-class publication for all three communities it has served, bringing local news coverage and advertising opportunities for businesses in the area,” he said.

‘Exciting and chaotic’

Bev Britton, a member of Steiner’s team for nearly 20 years, came on board after taking a buyout as managing editor of The Contra Costa Sun in Lafayette. She had planned to be a stay-at-home mom but decided to apply for the copy editing job after The Pioneer landed in her Clayton mailbox.

She emailed Steiner a resume and the phone rang almost immediately.

“Could you be any more qualified?” Steiner enthused. “When can you start?”

Slowing things down a bit, Britton suggested they meet. And when they did, Steiner’s enthusiasm for community news was contagious and Britton agreed to join her on her journey.

“Her professionalism has always been top-notch, and she always made me feel like I was part of something worth doing,” Britton said.

Cruz, who had stumbled into a career in graphic design that soon saw him the managing editor of a national tech magazine, met Steiner in 2004 when he was looking for a flexible schedule while raising his 3-year-old. The job afforded him the time he was seeking with his son.

“In the early years, I’d spend late nights during our deadline week with Tamara and Jill, all of us working on final proofs. Many times, I’d run from my desk into Tamara’s office – where she and Jill huddled in front of a screen editing articles – so that I could get help fitting a headline or cutting down a story to fit the page. It was exciting and chaotic,” he said.

When the paper expanded into Concord, Cruz said the staff grew and the office was full of creative energy.

“All of us focused on problem solving. For a while, we did three issues per month instead of two,” said Cruz. “It felt crazy at the time, but in a good way.”

As the world slides away from news reported by humans invested in getting the truth out to an AI-created commodity of uncertain value, Cruz echoed his Pioneer peers in being proud of a local paper carrying stories where people could see their own faces and the life of their community.

“It was a worthy effort, and people will miss it when it’s gone,” he said.

Recognizing the importance of what she and her staff nurtured over the decades, Steiner hopes local residents will not give up on community journalism. “Support it when it appears,” she urged.

“I will miss accomplishing something that all of us at the end of the month can pick up and line a bird cage with,” mused Steiner. “I never wanted to give that up.”

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