AAJ @ 30, Continued

Our AAJ @ 30 newsletter section (also below) was created to celebrate our history and highlight key initiatives for the future. One of the most exciting developments is the Coverage Request & Tracking system, which is now in the final stages of development. We expect to make an official launch announcement within the next couple of weeks. We're also working on a major project aimed at improving All About Jazz's visibility in AI-related search results. In addition, our Jazz Forward Award announcement—celebrating the first four recipients—will coincide with Jazz-Con, taking place September 15-16. As always, we're moving full steam ahead, and our 30th year is shaping up to be one of our most exciting yet.

Safe & Secure. Over the past week, we've implemented new security measures to better protect the website. Unfortunately, these changes may have caused temporary access issues. If you had trouble accessing All About Jazz yesterday or today, please let me know.

AAJ @ 30

All About Jazz has always been an active website, and it's not unusual for us to publish 9 or 10 new pieces in a single day—album reviews, radio shows, podcasts, interviews, concert reviews... you name it. Years ago, we set a record by publishing more than 300 album reviews in just one month. Seems crazy by today's standards, but 250 monthly album reviews were common for a good stretch back in the day. We had a larger staff, we were much younger and everyone was jacked up on creatine.

Though we take what we do seriously and work tirelessly at it, we also like to keep things light and not just on April 1st. Our old friend—Southern sage and unapologetic condiment hoarder—Jeff Fitzgerald has returned with AAJ @ 30, a welcome addition to his Genius Guide to Jazz series. And then there's Mr. P.C.'s Guide that's helped us navigate the minefields of jazz etiquette and bandstand decorum since 2009. It's invaluable.

Over the years, we've published hundreds of humor pieces—everything from The Desmond Awards to Yogi Berra Explains Jazz to Careers in Jazz. Many of these articles are scattered across the site, but you'll also find quite a few collected under the Just for Fun section.

Flashback to 1994. Two friends launch Vision X Software, a scrappy startup that developed one of the very first ad-supported apps (DigiDay), then followed it with one of the very first subscription apps (ScreenThemes). Mike Lorenz and I had an absolute blast during the early years of the internet. Thanks to DigiDay, our ScreenThemes application took off immediately, and one of our early customers was none other than Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes fame. You may recall, Ed was also the host of the radio show Jazz at Lincoln Center. Anyway, Ed became a full-on ScreenThemes convert—so much so, he ended up buying a site license for every 60 Minutes correspondent. Soon after, he emailed me and asked if I could provide tech support for one of the crew. I fully expected it to be for Andy Rooney and was surprised when it wasn't. :-) Eventually, I asked Ed if he was up for an All About Jazz interview; he graciously accepted, and we published this piece in 2002. Ed passed in 2006.

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Posted to Publisher's Desk IN THE All About Jazz GROUP
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