Wednesday, May 2, 2007
News Boxed in
Posted by John F. Sugg on Wed, May 2, 2007 at 8:33 PM
This is a tale about missing newspaper boxes. To sort out the players, Creative Loafing's readers will recall that Debby Eason founded this newspaper 35 years ago. In 2000, her son, Ben, took over the group. Debby went off and started several community newspapers called the Story. She recently stopped print publication, although the Story still has a Web presence.
Meanwhile, J. Patrick Best was once CL's ad director. When he left … well, it wasn't pretty. Best started a publication called the Sunday Paper. It's either a sorry imitation or a spunky competitor to CL, depending on your point of view (or who signs your paycheck).
Back to Debby Eason. When she quit publication of the Story, she wanted to sell her 850 distribution racks and boxes. Best bargained with Debby to get the boxes for the Sunday Paper, and we also wanted them. Since we're owned by Debby's son, we won. Blood is thicker than water, as you've heard.
The Story had already plastered its boxes with CL's logo -- just so there wouldn't be confusion about who owned them. But when our circulation department went to pick up nine of the boxes at Atlantic Station, they weren't there. Nope, they were missing in action. So we filed a police report.
It turns out the Sunday Paper had the boxes, and, despite our logo on them, had painted them. A big oops on their part. They say the incident was a mistake, that an overenthusiastic independent distributor had erred in kidnapping our boxes, according to a voicemail message Best left with our publisher, Dave Schmall. "I want nothing to do with them," Best said.
We got the boxes back with no bloodshed, and we're not accusing anyone of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, we're out inventorying the rest of the Story's former boxes and racks to see if any others are MIA.
The good news is that you'll find CL in hundreds of more places when we get the boxes out on the street.
Comments (4)
Showing 1-4 of 4
"we're not accusing anyone of wrongdoing." Okay, so what's the point of the post? It certainly sounds like you are. You spend the five previous paragraphs telling a story that, if you're really not accusing Best of anything, is of no interest to anyone not in the business of weekly newspapers in Atlanta. Seems awfully fishy to me. If the point is really that you'll soon have hundreds more boxes, you could have said that without mentioning the incident. So clearly, you want to create a perception, and then step behind it and say "Hey, I'm only reporting what happened." You've got more integrity than that, Sugg. You're a proven muckraker, so why the passive-aggressive "I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'" tactics? Honestly, this is beneath you.
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Yeah, if the purpose of the post was not to place blame, it was an absolute waste of a read.
Does this mean you guys will finally have at least one CL box on Peachtree between 3rd St. and 11th St.? That's a long stretch of a heavily pedestrian street without any CL presence. I hope you emplace at least one! C
This article is aboslutely ridiculous. What's the point in printing a article without intent. Stand behind what you believe in. Write what you mean without deception. It sounds like the Paper has ambition. Personally I think I will read the Sunday Paper from now on.
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