An Odd title, but the best way to describe it, IMO.
Fairly recently Derek Powazek and Heather Powazek Champ association with JPG Magazine came to an end (read response here, here , and here).
I'm not going into details about what happened because, among other things, I wasn't there. If I had to take a Really Wild Assed Guess: People made assumptions and/or were really unhappy with one thing or another.
I do think that Paul Cloutier (the CEO, publisher and now editor) really screwed up how he handled the aftermath. When the founder of a company is no longer with said company, at the
least, some announcement needs to be put out. Other than pulling ALL
reference of Derek and maintaining that this is a "New" JPG Magazine (I disagree, I thought it was a growing endeavor),
there was no information other than what Derek and Heather put out. Some of the staff of JPG have expressed their consternation at Derek and Heather going public with what they consider an internal problem. I think that's wrong as JPG Magazine is a community based business. IMO, that means the community are like shareholders that need to know what's going on.
Paul's
initial lack of any damage control was a big mistake. To make life more entertaining, when he finally did say something, it was, IMO, lacking to say the least.
As of this writing, I don't think I have answers to questions I posed:
Did Paul force Derek out? If so, Why??Did Paul invent a new story about how JPG came to be that was all about 8020?Did Paul tell people not to speak of that walk in Buena Vista, Heather, or anything that came before 8020?
I'm not the only one that wants to know. Part of the appeal of JPG Magazine was this it is a startup by two interesting people. I was pleased to see it grow and evolve into a mature company with a great submission system and a great staff of people working there. Knowing that the creator of such an endeavor was forced out without any explanation put forth by Paul leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That's why I deleted my JPG account.
As I said on a flickr discussion, Regardless of whatever happened that led to Derek's departure, JPG was originally Derek's and Heather's creation. I may be naive, but I'm still really hoping for a resolution that include Paul and Derek working it out.
I'm not marginalizing the Staff. As a programmer, I can say the site is a great work, as an amateur photographer, I certainly appreciate the behind the scenes work of all the staff.
I just think they (Paul and Derek both) need to work it out where Derek can have a role in JPG Magazine especially since Derek owns a part of it.
Update: I will say this: I'm very close to re-creating my JPG Magazine account. Rather than deleting them, I've struck out the questions above (IMO, It's part of the record and I think it would be wrong to just delete them). I don't have them directly answered, but I feel they are no longer relevant to the issue.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"New Thing" by Fuel from "Sunburn"
