Were always proud of the work we produce along with our clients. But its nice to be recognized for those effortsespecially when the group doing the recognizing is comprised of industry peers.
The Custom Publishing Councils Pearl Awards were announced last week and MyBusiness magazine (the member publication we produce for the 550,000 small-business members of NFIB) won the top award in the Editorial Excellence category for magazines with circulations of more than 125,000.
Woo hoo!!!!…ok, back to work.

For the first time ever, the Country Music Awards left Music City for the Big Apple. Cowboy hats, blue jeans and Southern accents were in full effect at Tuesday night’s awards ceremony at Madison Square Garden. And while you could probably argue that it was a good thing for country music that the CMAs were in NYC (more exposure and all) some of us back in Nashville couldn’t help but feel a little bitter at all the ooohh-ing and aaaahh-ing over the New York affair.
If you haven’t been here you might not realize it, but the Music City is a great city. Often referred to as the Athens of the South, Nashville is hardly a hick town. Below are a few reasons some of us would choose Nashville over New York any day.
We dont have the Yankees!!!
-Patrick B.
Two words come to mind…Pancake Pantry
Oh, and better traffic on Nashvilles Broadway.
Oh, and friendlier people.
And less crime.
And less expensive housing. Okay, I’ll stop…
-Summer
Let me take a contrarian point-of-view, here. The cabs are cheaper in New York than in Nashville and our public transportation is, well, challenged. But in the transportation department, Nashville’s abundant Southwest service makes it a snap for getting to and from most places quickly (and cheaply). Also, the Ryman Auditorium is a world-class venue for live music. (Oh, sure. New York’s not shabby in that category.) Speaking of live music, the Station Inn.
-Rex
One can afford to live alone because of slightly affordable rent.
-Carrie W.
Southeastern conference football is available in Nashville, although the “home” team Vanderbilt isn’t a powerhouse. and Radnor Lake, where my husband and I go hiking and herping (looking for snakes) on Sunday mornings.
-Barbara The Production Director
I can get most anywhere in 15 minutes or less. I can buy more than I can carry when I go to the grocery store. And people dont look at you funny when you say yall.
-Shannon
We have trees and grass within minutes of our homes and they are not full of muggers (just chiggers and ticks).
Jersey is a cow here, not a landmass barely visible through the smog.
A 30-mile commute doesn’t take two hours, and there are no tolls.
$300,000 buys a huge house and land, instead of just a third-floor condo.
We can wear shorts in November.
Our women are prettier. And some can even cook (and will).
-Bill
I can afford to have a car. Loveless Cafe. Great music, cheap cover charges.
-Jamie
More green spaces, parks, trees.
Closer to my family.
-Allison
If fellow drivers see that you’re stuck in traffic, most will actually let you in their lanes.
-Emily
1. Doesn’t reek of roasted chestnuts
2. Many fewer Yankee fans and other people who wear multi-colored, belted leather Giants jackets (and modeled their personal style after Don Mattingly)
3. Nobody here feels the need to announce, hourly, that they live in he world’s greatest city (It’s just understood)
4. Dogs here come in sizes larger than the Norwegian Brown rat
5. Camoflauge is not worn here as an ironic downtown pose (Fort Campbell soldiers, plus hunters, gain value from it)
6. Investment banker guys here don’t get manicures (or at least don’t brag about it)
7. A public display of orange flags isn’t referred to an art installation. It just means it’s “Football Time in Tennessee.”
8. We can visit. You have to live there and spend your free time figuring out when you have to move to Connecticut or New Jersey.
9. Car service? How about the luxury of driving a big-ass car yourself.
10. We don’t have to wait years before seeing someone we know at the grocery store.
-John

BtoB Magazine has just published its “Who’s Who in Business Publishing: Our inaugural list of 100 major players in business media.” We are proud to say that Hammock Publishing’s founder and president, Rex Hammock, is one of those players. We’re even prouder that he’s considered “edgy.” It would probably come as a surprise to him, though, to know that he’s also something of an edger.

From Hammock editor Bill Hudgins:
Serendipity: finding something unexpected and useful while searching for something else. One of my favorite words, it sounds like it belongs in an Ogden Nash poem. Im especially fond of it now, as a chance story assignment for a client has given me a new lease on life.
Back in summer 2005, I wrote a newsletter article for one of our clients, StoneCrest Medical Center, about a new procedure that uses a CT scanner to measure the amount of calcium in your hearts arteries  basically, how much, if any, hardening of the arteries you have. This in turn can indicate how likely you are to have potentially nasty clogs in your pipes.
Cool, I thought. Im over 50, have regular checkups, and I try to exercise and eat right, but my family has some heart disease history. Can’t hurt to get one. I live near another TriStar Hospital that offers the test and took it there. Took 10 minutes  less time than registering  and I didn’t have to skip breakfast or even put on a hospital gown.
The results were not what I expected. Instead of clean plumbing, the test ranked me in the low end of moderate hardening in a couple of spots. My doctor recommended a cardiac stress test to find out precisely what was happening in there.
Aside from having to postpone breakfast and that all-important first cup of java for several hours, the test was not bad. All my Stairmastering made the 12 minutes on a treadmill pretty easy. The cardiologist was encouraging but said the many photos they took of my ticker before and after would tell the tale. Just in case it came out bad, afterwards I indulged in a fair number of foods that might soon be off-limits.
This story has a happy ending. The stress test was negative, which is positive news. I still have to do what I can to keep the hardening at bay. But I can quit worrying about this and go back to a more immediate threat to my health: my daily commute on I-65.
I can only hope that the article that I wrote for our client’s newsletter will help someone else.

From Hammock editors Jamie Roberts and Shannon McRae:
In our opinion, New York is the center of the world. During a three-day trip to the Big Apple, we stayed within a city block of some of the week’s biggest news stories: Charles and Camilla attended a MOMA event, the Top of the Rock observation deck opened to the public for the first time in almost 20 years, and the Radio City Music Hall orchestra walked off the job on the opening day of the Christmas Spectacular.
So why were in the center of the universe (other than to eat sushi and take in a show)? We went to attend the 2005 FOLIO show, one of the publishing industry’s leading seminars.
It’s always good to hear about what other people in your industry are doing. And sometimes the best brainstorms come when you’re not in the office. Here’s a top 10 list of what we learned this week (some of which we hope to use in American Spirit and MyBusiness magazines):
1. Some magazines are having great success with online readers’ panels.
2. Creating a summary of stories for designers to read before they begin layout is more helpful than handing them a stack of copy.
3. The editors and designers at Hammock get along a lot better than those at other publications.
4. American Airlines has a tough time getting luggage from Nashville to New York and back again on direct flights.
5. To encourage reader feedback, make sure you consistently remind readers of how to contact you.
6. A magazine is not a community–community is real people connecting…but a magazine can help bring a community together, according to one of our favorite panelists.
7. Encouraging free thinking and regularly recognizing employee contributions is a good way to avoid editorial burnout.
8. Enlist readers to provide content–under certain parameters, of course!
9. Hammock designers do a pretty good job of following the four-point approach to good cover design: Simplicity, Strength, Sizzle and Sophistication. They even win Ozzie awards for their covers.
10. No matter how long you lived in New York, it takes time to harden your feet to pounding the pavement again!
p.s. Is it just us or does the girl in the FOLIO ad look a little like our own Lena Basha?

From Rex Hammock:
At the Folio Awards on Nov. 1, we learned this Ride magazine cover had won a Silver Ozzie in the non-profit/institutional/custom magazine category.
“It’s nice to be recognized by one’s peers,” as they say in the awards world. The Ozzies are a big deal in the magazine world because they recognize the best design of the year.
I’m very proud of our design team’s consistent performance in the Ozzie awards and am especially proud to learn that a cover from one of our magazines, Ride PWC, is one of three finalists for this year’s Ozzie for Best Cover (association, institutional or custom magazine — it is the official magazine of the American Watercraft Association). Being a finalist in this category is a great honor and I have great hopes that this particular cover wins the Ozzie.
I wouldn’t usually say this (I’d be blowing my “humility” cover), but I’m especially proud of this cover as it knowingly breaks many clich rules of “cover design” yet with great craft and success displays how powerful a medium magazines can be.
The interplay of photograph, typography along with the juxtaposition of words and images all connect in telling a wonderful story.
It makes me want to be down there, riding that PWC across the “R” and off into someplace great. I can just imagine those folks in the cars wishing they were on that PWC. I know the cover connects powerfully with the magazine’s readers in a way that only a PWC enthusiast can truly appreciate.
At Hammock Publishing, we think our job is to help our clients tell their stories. Some people may call this “branding.” We call it storytelling.
This is one of those times when I am not only amazed at how well our team helped tell the AWA & PWC story, they created a classic tale.