Metro Pulse's ninth birthday this month also marks a changing of the guard in our editorial leadership
by Joe Sullivan
Coury Turczyn, who has been our executive editor almost since the beginning, is going to be leaving us. His better half, Hillari Dowdle, has accepted a post as managing editor of magazine, based in Birmingham. This seems like a perfect spot for Hillari who, it can now be revealed, served so well for most of those years as our award-winning restaurant critic, Bonnie Appetit. In taking Coury with her to a still-to-be defined future, she's depriving Metro Pulse of its balance wheel, the man who preserved our sanity amid sometimes schizophrenic tendencies while continuing to reap repeated awards as a movie critic. We wish them both the best.
Succeeding Coury at the editorial helm is Jesse Fox Mayshark. As our senior editor for the past three years, Jesse has demonstrated superb journalistic skills as well as exemplary leadership qualities. The national awards he has received from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies attest to the caliber of this work, and his versatility enables him to give direction to stories covering the full range of Metro Pulse's diverse offerings. While he and I don't see eye-to-eye on everything (most notably on the Worsham Watkins plan for downtown revitalization), we share a vision for lifting Metro Pulse to ever higher standards of journalistic excellence.
To complement Jesse, we are fortunate that Barry Henderson has agreed to rejoin Metro Pulse as our managing editor. Barry was our editor from 1993 through 1995 when wanderlust lured him to Prague as editor of its English-language weekly. Barry is a proverbial old pro, steeped in the workings of the community and in pulling together everyone and everything it takes to make the editorial side of a publication tick.
With an art director, an arts and entertainment editor, four staff writers and a dozen other regular contributors, that would mean a lot of pulling except for the professionalism with which each of them does their job. Metro Pulse, it's worth noting, has the largest editorial staff of any AAN publication with comparable revenues.
Our pride and joy is, of course, Jack Neely who's become a near legend in his time at the age of 41. His "Secret History" column, illuminating cover stories and insightful commentary have earned him selection as the best writer in Knoxville five years running in our annual Best of Knoxville Readers' Poll. Lest his columns get lost to posterity, his two volumes of compilations remain on sale at nearly every local book store.
While we're on the subject of books, it is also noteworthy that our award-winning art director, Lisa Horstman, is the author of two children's books, with another on the way.
Publications—especially free publications—don't live by the prowess of their printed words alone. Advertising revenues pay the printing bill and the wordsmiths, and their growth will determine our ability to augment our editorial resources. Since Nora Jones joined us as general manager in the fall of 1998, revenues have increased by 17 percent in 1999 and by a further 33 percent so far this year. Nora has also initiated two meaningful additions to the Metro Pulse family of publications: the Annual Manual, which is a community compendium, and dish, which is meeting Knoxville's need for a first-class restaurant magazine. Be on the lookout for the next edition of dish on Nov. 16 and of the Annual Manual on Dec. 28.
Nora's sales manager, Brig Samson, his sales staff, our ad design team headed by Jill Knight and our business manager Sharon Long also deserve credit for these successes.
Because our Best of Knoxville shindig and our dish launch party have exhausted our party budget for the year, we're not planning a ninth birthday occasion. But we'd like to express appreciation to all our advertisers all the same, along with the prospect of a monumental 10th birthday celebration in August 2001.
No mention of our birthday would be complete without acknowledgment of the one member of our staff who was part of the original gang of four who kicked off Metro Pulse on a shoestring from a loft in the Bijou Theatre. That would be our systems manager, Ian Blackburn, who's become the creator of our web site, architect of our network and procurer of all the hardware and software that supports our operation. He's the closest thing to an indispensable person we've got.
This month also marks the eighth anniversary of my return home to Knoxville after more than 30 years spent working in Atlanta, Washington, Chicago, and New York. It was as a boy growing up here that I developed my bent to be a journalist and also an abiding sense of my deep roots in this community. While I strayed from journalism for more than 20 years to become involved in the financial markets, I retained the pipe dream to some day have a publication of my own in Knoxville.
Metro Pulse is the embodiment of that pipe dream and the source of enormous personal satisfaction. But owning a publication is not an end in itself, but rather a means to something. That something for me is contributing in every way we can to making Knoxville a better place to live, a city we can all be proud of while always being sensitive to the needs of the less fortunate among us.
August 3, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 31
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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