John Fox served as the editor at Everybody’s News in the late 80s and early 90s, then co-founded CityBeat, and now is the editor of Cincinnati Magazine.

Everybody’s News and CityBeat were strong supporters of 97X – John and music editor Mike Breen would make the trek to Oxford once a week to highlight local music and arts events on the airwaves, and the 97X air staff had free rein when creating commercials for those publications. John talks about the symbiotic relationship, our shared “weird” audience (spoiler: they weren’t weird, just cool), how both CityBeat and 97X were ahead of the curve, and the magic of the old MidPoint Music Festival (MPMF). We also talk about his current role at Cincinnati Magazine.

If the link above isn’t working, you can listen here: https://woxy.podbean.com/e/john-fox-has-the-write-stuff/

John still has his throwback 97X shirt – he wore it for our interview:

When John came to Cincinnati, he started writing for Everybody’s News, and later became that paper’s editor. Here’s a 97X “Christmas card” ad that ran in Everybody’s News in the early 90s:

In 1994, John left Everybody’s News to co-found CityBeat.

John’s friend Dan Bockrath served as publisher at CityBeat. We spoke with him for Episode #55.

CityBeat took over programming of the MidPoint Music Festival (MPMF) in 2008, letting legendary concert booker/promoter Dan McCabe (our guest on Episode #48) handle the bookings. Check out the who’s who of bands that appeared at MPMF over the years here.

John is now the editor of Cincinnati Magazine.

Yours truly has written a few pieces for Cincinnati Magazine, including a profile of Freekbass for last July’s issue.

The main photo from that feature (taken by Devyn Glista) wound up becoming part of a Jimmy Fallon bit on The Tonight Show.