Creative Loafing

Staff Writer / Arts & Entertainment Editor

November 2008 – December 2010

In 2008, Creative Loafing was the second largest publisher of alternative weekly newspapers in the nation, behind only Village Voice. Founded in Atlanta in 1972, they expanded to launch CL editions in Charlotte, Tampa and Sarasota, along with ownership of the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper. These six print newspapers have since been reduced to a single website in ATL.

I was hired as a full-time staff writer at the Sarasota branch, earning a promotion to Arts & Entertainment Editor after my first year. As a general assignment reporter in a bare bones newsroom, I was tasked with producing all facets of a story needed for publishing, not only conducting interviews and corroborating information, but sourcing or taking high-resolution photos to run in the print edition, and formatting content for all physical and digital mediums.

Although I covered all aspects of the Suncoast community, from politics and business to education and recreation, fostering the arts would emerge as my principle focus, with a particular passion for supporting the local music scene. My weekly column “The Local Original” became a beacon spotlighting the impressive collection of original music artists flourishing out of SRQ at that time, well beyond typical for a city of that size. Comparisons were often made to ’80s Athens or ’90s Seattle.

Apart from writing, my duties included compiling event listings, overseeing editorial interns, and engaging with commenters on our WordPress site and social media pages. The editorial team also discussed area happenings on our weekly radio show Creative Loafing Half-Hour Variety Hour, broadcast from the local NPR station.

Ultimately, after CL had borrowed $40 million one year before the Great Recession hit, then was outbid by their creditor in a bankruptcy auction, the founders lost ownership to a New York-based capital management firm. CL Sarasota was the first to be shuttered, a week before Christmas 2010. The brand was sold to The New York Times Company, then-publisher of Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which absorbed our paper into its Ticket A&E weekly, where I would continue writing as a freelancer for the next two years.

The body of work I put out at CL was extensive, so I’ve tried to make it easier to browse. Some highlights are featured below, and the category buttons in the sidebar will sort pieces by topic.

Disclaimers:

1. I transferred the posts featuring my writing work from the CLSarasota.com and ThisWeekInSarasota.com websites to my own WordPress site at some point in 2011. Much of the original formatting did not survive the journey to present day. I plan to clean them up as time permits, but for now you’ll have to bare with me and use your imagination with the funky punctuation, lack of paragraph breaks, broken photos and links to nowhere. I appreciate your understanding.

2. Sarasota is a huge arts town and I was a voice for the young creative community, which was a more left-leaning movement challenging the right-leaning political establishment at the time. Some of these posts will reflect this viewpoint. These days, I am proud to consider myself an extreme far-middle, no-wing, dyed-in-the-wool purple moderate independent. I love living in the heart of East Tennessee and I find common ground conversing with all walks of every stripe just fine.