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Sherri Gardner Howell

Publisher

When you sit around and play the "Chat Room" game -- where you ask yourself and your friends the questions Blount Today puts in the Chat Room each week -- the "Why did you choose the career you did?" question is a little hard for Blount Today publisher Sherri Gardner Howell to answer.

Not that there isn't a perfectly good, truthful answer. It's just that the answer is soooo embarrassing!

Truth is, Sherri became a journalist because she's lousy in math. What she intended to do when she came all the way from Lexington, Tennessee, to Knoxville (300 miles, step-to-step because you had to get off at Rockwood), was major in English, write the great American novel and win a Pulitzer by the time she was 30.

But English majors at the University of Tennessee have to take a full year -- 3 quarters, at the time -- of math. Journalism majors didn't have to take any, nada, zippo.

Welcome to Journalism, Ms. Gardner.

Luckily, it was a good fit. Journalism is fast-paced, populated with interesting people on both sides of the notebook and challenging.

Sherri's career centered around the Knoxville News Sentinel for almost 30 years where she was an obit writer, feature writer, entertainment editor, features editor and assistant managing editor.

Although she has always considered her most important job to be that of raising two wonderful sons and being a supportive wife, career has always been a driving force, and journalism a white-hot passion.

Then, in 2004, a strange thing happened. News Sentinel publisher Bruce Hartmann asked Sherri to set up shop in Blount County, where Scripps was beginning a brand new weekly newspaper that Mr. Hartmann would oversee.

Sherri said OK, but only for four months, just for the challenge of helping get a new paper started. She didn't know anything about Blount County, felt quite at home in Knox County, and, besides, there would be math involved in being a publisher.

Blount Today was born on Aug. 26, 2004, and Sherri has never looked back. Community journalism done right, the way it is at Blount Today, has always had her heart, and she loves her team, loves the community and really, really loves OUR newspaper.

Blount Today is Committed to Community. Sherri Gardner Howell, publisher of Blount Today, is so committed to Blount Today that she daily punches up her calculator, pours over budgets and does the math.

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