JENNIFER OLADIPO came to Louisville in 2005 after a year of graduate study at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. She holds a B.A. in creative writing from the Universityof Evansville and has interned at magazines and newspapers, including a publication in Honduras. She has settled into the Clifton neighborhood and freelances stories for both Louisville Magazine and LEO. This month’s piece on Production Simple (“Bringing in the Bands,” page 36) gave her a peek into the business of booking live music in the unpredictable Louisville market.
“You just stand in the audience and enjoy and absorb, never knowing all that goes into it,” Jennifer says of the typical concert-going experience. “I was surprised to learn about some pretty aggressive booking practices, like how promoters of a big music festival can embargo their performers from playing anywhere else within 300 miles that year. That can tie up nearly a third of the country!” Jennifer’s last feature for Louisville Magazine, a profile of Urban Fresh, appeared in the September issue.
Originally from Cincinnati, staff writer JOSH MOSS graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, in 2006. After completing a Columbus Dispatch internship, he moved into a Highlands apartment about a year ago. His first story for Louisville profiled University of Louisville women’s basketball star Angel McCoughtry. In the 11 months since then, Josh’s feature subjects have included U of L quarterback Brian Brohm; Penny Chenery, owner of 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat; and Kevin Cogan, president of Jefferson Development Group. Of all the things he has covered, though, the people at West End School were the most inspiring (“A Night-&-Day Education,” page 54).
“Robert and Debbie Blair are in their 60s, but instead of retiring they started a boarding school in the West End and live with eight boys,” Josh says. “One 15-hour day of reporting exhausted me, but I got to sleep in the next morning. The Blairs and the kids had to get up and do it all over again.” In last month’s issue, Josh profiled Heidi Fore, an up-and-coming Louisville realtor.
Having attended co-educational public schools in Southern Indiana before switching to all-boys St. Xavier in Louisville, freelance writer CHRISTOPHER HALL sees much to recomm/files/storyimages/in both approaches. "Personally, I think high school is probably a pretty good time to separate boys and girls," he says. "But I don't think anyone's exactly going to take that as an evidence-based philosophy - and they probably shouldn't." In this issue, Christopher takes a look at the present and the possible future of single-sex education in the Louisville area ("Dividing to Conquer," page 61), focusing on same-gender classrooms at Southern Leadership Academy and Iroquois Middle School.
JOE WARD spent more than six of his 33 years as a Courier-Journal reporter in the newspaper’s Bluegrass Bureau in Lexington, where features occasionally let him dip into the color and tradition of Thoroughbred racing in the heart of the country that produces the world’s most coveted horses. He listened to yarns from such legendary horsemen as Leslie Combs II, who built Spendthrift farm and was the first to syndicate a stallion. Combs yearned for the days when he could put a deal together with a series of handshakes, and was scornful of hundred-page contracts that had come into vogue by the /files/storyimages/of his stewardship. Since Ward’s retirement from the Courier in 2002, he has been a contributor to Louisville Magazine and other publications.
For this month’s issue, he got a glimpse of the future of racing through the eyes of new Churchill Downs CEO Bob Evans (“Updater of the Downs,” page 46), who is trying to make the sport more attractive to people who watch races on their cell phones. Evans would like to see slot machines at the tracks, for one thing, and he thinks this year’s gubernatorial election might determine whether that ever happens, at least in Kentucky. But he doesn’t have any predictions. “I’m an abysmal handicapper of political contests,” Evans said. In his most recent story, Joe profiled philanthropist Sally Brown for the January issue.
