Asked to remember the most memorable stories during my tenure as the first editor of the Corridor Business Journal, I drew a blank. Too much time has passed, and events begin to blur into one another. But given the chance to write about the early days of the paper, the first days and weeks as […]
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Asked to remember the most memorable stories during my tenure as the first editor of the Corridor Business Journal, I drew a blank. Too much time has passed, and events begin to blur into one another. But given the chance to write about the early days of the paper, the first days and weeks as we got this upstart publication off to press for the first time? Those memories are vivid, seared into a permanent spot in my brain.
I had about as much experience as an editor as John Lohman did as a publisher when we started — precious little. But like Mr. Lohman and the others assembled to create something from nothing, I had a wealth of journalism experience and a burning desire to do something different. Few are given the chance to create a publication from scratch, and far fewer have the chance to see the bones of that creation still visible two decades later.
The two things that drive most of my memories of the first few issues of the paper are our backward planning and our office space. We decided to start a paper and schedule a first issue, and then decided to hire someone to help me write all of that content.
Anyone who has seen the first issue of the CBJ might marvel at the length of those stories. Cicero said, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter,” and the same is true in journalism. Add a few hundred words to an existing story or start a new one? It’s clear from our first issue which was easier. At one point I thought about making up pen names so it didn’t look like we were such a small operation, but my pride at seeing a dozen or more of my bylines won out.
Among the pieces in that first issue are an analysis of a state economic development funding program, a profile of a new chamber president, an interview with a cartoonist to be featured in the paper’s pages, an article about the University of Iowa’s political stock market, a book review, and even a preview of an art exhibition in Grinnell that I somehow convinced Mr. Lohman was tangentially business related. I wrote all of it while waiting for our first reporter to arrive the following week to share the load, and augmented it with columns from experts in their fields and other strong content.
We did all of this while housed in the UI’s Technology Innovation Center at the Oakdale Campus. “Technology” and “innovation” are not the first words that come to mind when entering the former nurses’ dormitory for the state’s tuberculosis hospital, but we — with our pads of paper and pencils — were the odd ones out in that space, passing smart people in the halls who were planting seeds for cutting edge work that spun off into companies that still call the Corridor home. Sweating in our offices that first July, the staff did innovate, drawing on past experience to create something new, even if new laptops that augmented our more rudimentary tools were the height of technology for us.
The CBJ as a publication and a company are very different today. I would have given anything for the current slick paper stock and an actual functional website, though I’m glad we didn’t start out with the various email newsletters, custom publications and events that are now an important part of the CBJ’s world while we were scrambling to create that weekly paper at the start. At the same time, much of what we did from the very first issue continues to serve as the bedrock for the company, and a look at any given issue today will find a similar mix of hard news and analysis.
Many people in the early days told us they didn’t know they needed the CBJ until they held those first issues in their hands. I am proud to have been a part of creating that new tool which has become such an established part of the Corridor’s business community, and congratulate Mr. Lohman and his current staff for their continued success.
– John Kenyon, CBJ editor 2004-2012
Currently executive director of Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature
