Keeping up with Citizen-Times-ers: Green lands on his feet; Ball is back; Russell writes a farewell; and Ihne’s in at Dillards

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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I’m just trying to keep track of the comings and goings over at 14 O.Henry Avenue, so here were go:

Former Asheville Citizen-Times Publisher Jeff Green, who departed the paper and served as general manager of the Iwanna for about a year, is now the vice president of sales and marketing for the Winston-Salem Journal. 

Long-time Citizen-Times reporter Julie Ball – the best damn police reporter I’ve ever known – was laid off about a year ago after she was shunted down to Fletcher to lead the editorial efforts of the ill-fated Pisgah Mountain News weekly newspaper, which the Citizen-Times started up a few years back. Now Ball is back as the newspaper’s education reporter. She replaces Ashley Wilson, who left to get hitched and move to Hotlanta. There’s got to be some mixed emotions for Julie, but hey – you gotta pay the bills, right?

My buddy Dave Russell, known as the letters-to-the-editor-guy (and rock-stacker extraordinaire) has announced that he’s departing the newspaper to work for RiverLink. Russell is the guy who I blame for getting me into this whole blogging mess. He showed me SquareSpace, and I was enthralled by his Avant Garden. In his farewell column, Russell says long-time reporter Dale Neal will take over for him. Russell says that he’s learned a lot by working at the intersection of strongly held political views:

Where do these two different realities meet? At my desk. As the nation becomes more and more polarized, this job gets noisier and noisier, and the noise gets meaner and meaner. My interest in the letters to the editor job at the AC-T was sparked by my love of the English language, not by any love of partisan politics. Sadly, that’s what this position is increasingly about. It wears on a guy, so I feel it’s time for me to move on and try something different.

It has been interesting, to say the least

Anais Nin and I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

While working this job, I have been told — on the same day — that I am was a “homophobe,” and one of my neighbors told me I was “in bed with the gays.” In the same week, I’ve been told I was anti-Semitic and so pro-Israel that “it’s not possible for (me) to be fair about the current situation in Palestine.” I’ve been called “anti-God” and “just another born-again (Christian).” And so on.

Could it be that I was just a guy working hard to get as many diverse opinions in the paper as possible? Naaaah ….

Finally, I hear that former Citizen-Times editor Susan Ihne is now working at Dillard’s in the mall. Ihne filed a lawsuit against her former employer, alleging discrimination. The two sides settled the lawsuit last fall.