Birthday Thanks

originally published December 6, 2006

After writing nothing but political columns since August, I looked around and realized it’s almost Christmas. That’s why I had been seeing those cars going by with trees lashed on top, and that was why we had the downtown Christmas parade, where the AthFest/ athensmusic.net/ 40 Watt Club/ Flagpole float (powered by Matt and Pierce Alston) won a prize.

As glad as I am to be out of the political thicket, I prefer it to Christmas. More and more I identify with Scrooge, haunted by dreams of Christmas present. Like politics, Christmas piles up a lot of obligations on top of those we already have. Scrooge’s hauntings really have nothing to do with Christmas: he was a pitiful human being until he learned the joy of understanding other people and treating them decently. A Republican, in other words—but this is not about politics. The true test of Scrooge, of course, is whether his conversion lasted past the season.

A lot has happened while politics preoccupied Pub Notes. For one thing, Flagpole had another birthday on Oct. 26. Can you believe this upstart has been around 19 years? Old enough to vote but not to drink. Flagpole started in 1987, and the story is familiar to our readers: the restless and intrepid entrepreneur Jared Bailey, then-owner of the (fabulous) 40 Watt Club (now Executive Director of AthFest) started Flagpole (The Colorbearer Of Athens Alternative Music) in order to publicize his club and the others that were hosting bands and figuring out how to make a living showcasing local talents. Jared had been to Austin and had seen there how much that already thriving scene had profited from local government support. Even in the early Flagpoles, he emphasized the need for a public/ private partnership to promote Athens music.

Since then, the music scene has grown and diversified, and so has Flagpole. Any newspaper is an incredible amalgam of diverse and contradictory skills and talents—a blend of sales and art and writing and delivery, not to mention the high-tech heavy industry that puts the words and pictures on the page and the dot.com digitizing that slings us into cyberspace.

A newspaper, even a weekly newspaper, runs on deadlines. Deadlines are anathema to writers. We want to get it right, no matter how long it takes. And salespeople want to sell as much as they can, too: and we want them to. But there are printing schedules and distribution schedules and composition schedules and editing schedules (and I am writing this column way past deadline), and if it’s all going to come together, we’ve got to stay on schedule.

The task of keeping us on time falls on our Managing Editor, Margaret Moore. All the copy flows across her desk: she copyedits and proofs it all and proofs the ads. All the ads must be in so that she can dummy the paper. Everything must get to the production department on time so that Production Director Larry Tenner can work his compositional magic on the music stories assembled by Music Editor Chris Hassiotis from his freelance writers and the news and features produced by City Editor Ben Emanuel and his freelance writers. Margaret provides a big chunk of the copy, too, editing our Out There! calendar of events and coordinating our art, food, movies, theater, advice and Internet coverage.

Flagpole wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the efforts of Anita Aubrey, Melinda Edwards and Jessica Pritchard and our advertisers who are their clients. It is hard, careful work—a collaboration between customers and reps—to get the message right at an affordable price for advertising that supports their businesses and ours.

Then the ads are turned over to Kelly Ruberto and Ian Rickert, who turn the rough designs into finished ads. Ian later puts Flagpole online and manages our website. Kelly also designs our signature Flagpole covers. Cindy Jerrell, who used to make ads and covers, continues her faithful work for the animals in Adopt Me.

Meanwhile, office manager Emily Waldron has been compiling the classified ads while covering the telephone and the front desk and lining up her drivers to deliver this week’s Flagpole all over Athens, as soon as our downtown distribution landmark Charles Greenleaf rolls in from Greater Georgia Printers in Crawford, GA.

This whole enterprise of producing and distributing Flagpole takes place under the watchful eye and with the active participation of our Advertising Director and Publisher, Alicia Nickles, who, like God, is all over the details.

And on top of the weekly Flagpole production cycle, this same group of stalwarts also produces the annual Flagpole Guide To Athens and The Flagpole Athens Music Directory. And that’s just the in-house staff (with help from our interns). Flagpole is also heavily dependent on all the people around town who write stories and letters, and take pictures and draw the cartoons and illustrations that add to Flagpole’s piquant flavor. And finally, readers, we’re dependent on you to keep on picking up Flagpole and clicking us online and telling us what you think. Thanks for 19 years!