I came to work at the paper’s previous incarnation, Weekly Planet in 1997, when I was married to skateboarder extraordinaire “Super Dave” Richardson. I was hired as copy editor (or is it copyeditor — we could never agree on the official appelation), and the editorial staff comprised Managing Editor Susan Dix Tibbits (now Lyons), Senior Editor John Sugg, Associate Editor Roxanne Escobales, Features Writer David Jasper and Music Editor Eric Snider. Creative Loafing’s current publisher, James Howard, was a sales rep, which explains my sense of cognitive dissonance whenever he speaks as the guy in charge at staff meetings. The only other current CL staffer there at the time was longtime pal/sales dynamo Scott Zepeda.
It was the first job I loved. We were independent, unconventional, fun, fair and a close-knit family. My boss Susan taught me more about writing in the two and a half years I worked under her than I learned over the course of an entire career. Then-owners Ben Eason and Terry Garrett encouraged organizational skills by requiring us to map out our schedule in Franklin Planners while directing us under a Utopian Hippie-Dippie regimen called Management by Responsibility, which fostered communication and frowned on “drama triangles.” Things unfortunately changed when Eason decided to go corporate.
I decided to go freelance for a spell, but I’m happy to be back and report that the paper (though owned by another batch of suited overlords) has gotten back more of the feisty irreverence it had when I started, and the new team, likewise, is another happy family.
Julie Garisto is the Arts & Entertainment Editor of Creative Loafing.
This article appears in Apr 18-24, 2013.