Now at Kudos

So I've been the new managing editor of Kudos for 14 days.

My first two issues went smoothly, the first one getting out about three hours before deadline, the latest one about five hours. My goal is to have each week's issue out and done by Friday afternoon with last-minute clean-up on Monday, before posting stories to the Web site. The more time I can not be in a chair in a newsroom and out in the field, the better the issues become.

I'm also working with Sarrah Wile, Ashley Wintermute and Alice Kuhn to get them to shoot photos. They get a photo credit for the shot and their portfolio, I get a great photo, and the readers get a new view on the story.

I wasn't really prepared for the volume of interest, in comparison to what I did at the Sedona Red Rock News' The Scene. There, we were always fighting to get copy in and always had a shitstorm when doing a cover, because our editor would book covers before we started working on the thing, and we'd be left with how to make a 3x5 web photo fill a 9x9 inch space in two hours. We ran a lot of crap photos on the cover.

But everyone wants to be in Kudos. With 34,000 readers, I can't blame them. We are everywhere and there's a shit-ton of space to fill, so the thing is jam-packed with stories and press releases.

I'm trying to get in all the art we receive because that's what I like to see. At least one photo per page, otherwise, why read the page?

I do like being "the Kudos guy." Power corrupts so sweetly. I am trying to get everything in that we receive, but sometimes, two crystal bowl/digeridoo concerts in a week is simply one too many. I can accept the New Agey nature of Sedona, but just because a person is enlightened, doesn't mean the rest of the ... cares. Nor does it mean they want to pay $400 for an evening to have you tell them you are. People want to be entertained, not lectured to. If your event costs $400, buy an ad.