Welcome to the first Tucson Weekly of the new year.
As we plunge into 2010, I'd like to take one last glance back at 2009. While many have bemoaned the general crappiness of 2009, at Weekly World Central, in many ways, it was a pretty good year.
While there were some definite low points (including a couple of painful layoffs and some bleak page counts), there were numerous high points:
• Our 25th Anniversary Issue. We kicked off 10 months of celebration with Vol. 26, Issue 1, back on Feb. 26. This issue is one of the definite highlights of my seven years thus far at the Tucson Weekly, no question.
• The wildly successful launch of the all-new TucsonWeekly.com in March. Throughout the year, we also increased our online-only content (largely on our blog, The Range, and at TucsonWeeklyTV.com) and our social-networking efforts.
• We hosted the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) annual convention back in June, bringing more than 200 altweekly folks to Tucson from around the country. Personal highlights: Seeing people wowed by Sergio Mendoza y la Orkesta at a Rialto-sponsored AAN afterparty; kicking off the convention with my friend Max Cannon, a bunch of editors, a little trivia and a bottle of Herradura; and watching Jim Anderson (aka God) give stunned attendees his tour of the Meet Rack's Duty Hut as part of our dive-bar tour.
• More reader involvement, thanks in large part to January's Obama Issue and July's Fiction 84 issue.
• A total of 53 issues, each of which I was proud of in at least some way.
Thanks to all of the Weekly employees, contributors, interns, advertisers and—of course—readers who helped 2009 turn out to be a surprising success, in many ways.
And now ... on with 2010!
