Change And Continuity

originally published November 7, 2007

Amid all the nostalgic recollections of how we got started and became a part of Athens, Flagpole is still evolving and changing and trying to improve. This week, in celebration of our 20th Anniversary, the cover has a new look that still incorporates the rich resources of local art, while giving more information about what’s inside the paper. We’ve got a new calendar, “The Calendar!,” that combines music listings with all the rest of what’s going on in town and presents them in a daily format so that you can see everything occurring every day. “Bulletin Board” is still a handy compendium of all the classes, meetings, auditions, service opportunities and other regular community happenings. City Pages has a new look, and City Dope is back, to provide news bites and comments for a quick read detailing things you want to know about in Athens. And The Calendar! will be updated frequently online to keep it current with the latest information as it comes in.

Nobody likes change—either those encountering it for the first time or those producing it—but we think you’ll quickly get used to the new look of Flagpole and the newly combined daily calendar listings, and we think we’ll recover from bringing them about.

Even after 20 years, Flagpole operates with a small, highly skilled staff. We’ve got our hands full every day of every week producing the paper—selling the ads that underwrite our operation, designing and composing them; assigning, writing and editing the stories, the calendar, movie listings and regular features; composing the pages and getting the finished paper to Greater Georgia Printers in Crawford to be printed in time for Flagpole to be distributed all over Athens. By then we’ve started on the next issue.

To interject into this process the business of re-designing any of the elements means that the same people who are busy producing the paper have also got to find the time for endless meetings on what to change, how to do it and how to make it work in the computers that carry the load.

Combining our music events with all the other happenings into a daily listing means that our web/ tech guy Ian Rickert has to write a completely new database program tailored to the needs of Music Editor Chris Hassiotis and Managing Editor Margaret Moore, who compile The Calendar. For six weeks Ian has been down in the basement immersed in computer code, surfacing for the meetings where the rest of us are looking at Production Director Larry Tenner’s designs and hashing out the organization of The Calendar! and changes in the rest of the paper. Everything we decide upstairs has to be translated into code in the basement. Through this process, we save thousands of dollars that could have been spent on an off-the-shelf program, and we get one tailored exactly to Flagpole’s needs. If it works, of course. As I write, Ian is down there de-bugging code and fighting last-minute glitches, which even at this point could delay the launch of our new calendar.

We’ve had a grueling few months of double duty at work while trying to keep our lives going at home. Meeting constantly in my office, Publisher Alicia Nickles, City Editor Ben Emanuel, along with Larry, Margaret, Chris and Ian have worked out every detail of the new design, because they all know exactly what it takes to get Flagpole out and how vital it is to make the changes fit. Meanwhile, Anita Aubrey, Jessica Pritchard and Melinda Edwards are out there selling the ads to pay for all this, Kelly Ruberto is designing the ads and our covers, Nicole Haysler is helping sell the ads and assemble the calendar, and Paul Karjian is managing the office and the classifieds and the distribution which Charles Greenleaf delivers all over downtown.

If these changes work and serve our readers better, we’ll gradually get over our tension and exhaustion and begin to feel good about what we’ve done. Twenty years from now, when we’re pulling together another anniversary issue, one of us may include this experience as an amusing anecdote… or not.

Party

Now we’re having a party to celebrate Flagpole’s first 20 years on the planet, and we hope you’ll join us. It’s The Paper Ball; it’s free and you’re encouraged to decorate yourself with costume items made from Flagpoles. There’ll be a variety show of local people who want to show off their talents and win a prize (and a gong to get them off the stage if necessary), and there’ll be music from Down With The Woo and the legendary Five-Eight. That all happens at the 40 Watt Club on Wednesday night, Nov. 14, with the variety show beginning at 8:30 p.m. and the music following.

We hope you’ll join us, and we hope you like the new and improved Flagpole.

Pete McCommons, Editor & Publisher

editor@flagpole.com