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125 YEARS
JUNE 2017
Outlook blessed to be part of this community for 125 years I became publisher of The Outlook in 1989, the same year that the Berlin Wall came down. Chicago’s “Look Away” was the biggest single of the year and the next three biggest songs were “My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison and “Straight Up” by Paula Abdul. 1989 was also the year that the first written proposal for something called the “world wide web” was created. Let’s just say it was a while ago. I was 29 – young and green for a daily newspaper publisher having just left the managing editor’s job at The Selma Times-Journal – and I threw myself into the business of The Outlook, the news of Alexander City and Tallapoosa County and the task of promoting and working to improve our community. In 1991, I purchased Tallapoosa Publishers, Inc., from my father’s company, Boone Newspapers, Inc. I have owned the company for 26 years now. Adding in a summer job here as an intern when I was a teenager and the few years when I was publisher but not yet owner, I think I’ve been associated with The Outlook in one way or the other for roughly 29 years. I had two seven-year stints as publisher, 1989-1996 and 2009-2016. Most of that time I was publisher and editor, but I wised up several times and hired good editors in an attempt to get eight hours of sleep each night. For years, people would tell me they saw me at every event in town. That was my goal … and it was a lot of hard work. But I enjoyed it and I saw the newspaper grow and thrive at a time when Russell Corp. was going gangbusters. That’s when Russell was a Fortune 500 company and one of best textile companies in America. Everybody here was on top of the world for a number of years in the early 90’s. I was also sitting in the publisher’s chair when Russell Corp. was moving out of our hometown, a time when many thought Alexander City would wind up a ghost town. That didn’t happen. We – a whole lot of us – worked very hard to rebuild our town. And somehow we succeeded. I don’t know of any other small, rural Southern town that could have withstood the loss of a company that employed the majority of its working residents, yet today Alexander City has record low unemployment, new businesses are popping up every month and downtown looks substan-
Kenneth and Mary Lyman Boone pose in the pressroom at Tallapoosa Publishers. They are committed to being involved in the community and keeping a family atmosphere at The Outlook.
tially better than it did during the golden age. One of my strongest memories and proudest moments as publisher of The Outlook was also one of the worst. It was February in the 1991. That was Parade month back then. We – everybody in the building – had worked extra hard and produced a 100-page special edition newspaper. Most of it was already printed and stacked on pallets on our pressroom floor, waiting to be inserted and delivered to our readers. I didn’t think much about the storm that came through that night. What I didn’t know was that underneath the concrete intersection of Cherokee Road and South Central – and in the storm drain underneath The Outlook’s building – there was a (not literally) beaver dam of sticks, brush and debris. So when the storm dumped rainfall on the city, it filled the storm drains, then hit the clog and backed up in that creek that flows behind the library and under our building.
I got to The Outlook at 8 a.m. that rainy morning and walked back into the composing room. Billy McGhee was putting an ad together with wax and an Exacto knife when he looked into carpeted corner of the room and said, “What’s that?” For a moment, it looked like a dark stain in the gray carpet. Then we noticed it was growing. Billy walked into the pressroom to investigate and came back hollering. The water had backed up over our parking lot and was pouring under the garage door into our pressroom. It was already up to ankle level, which was getting very close to the Parade edition sections stacked on pallets on the floor. At its peak, the dirty water was just below my knees in the pressroom and about ankle-deep as it flowed out through our front door. That’s my worst memory. The strongest and the proudest memory is how every member of The Outlook’s staff stopped what they were doing, rolled up their sleeves and their pant legs, and teamed up to save the parade edition
first, and then our whole newspaper business. Advertising sales reps, writers, composition folks – everybody was hauling paper and equipment to higher ground, or using push brooms to sweep water through the building, or doing what they could to make a bad situation better. We saved the Parade edition. And once the water started to recede, we produced a newspaper for the next day and never missed a beat. It’s hard to convey just how much employees like that mean to a new business owner. That can-do attitude is part of the culture here in Alexander City. I believe it’s the No. 1 reason that Alexander City is thriving today despite major setbacks. For that I’m forever thankful and blessed to be a part of this community, and this business, for 29 years of The Outlook’s 125 years. Boone is chairman of Tallapoosa Publishers, Inc.