Randall Fleming
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

Quincy,

I am a former music zine/magazine publisher who started in the 1980s. During that 15-year period as a publisher, I also regularly and frequently worked for and contributed to a great number of other magazines — both “zine” and pro magazine — across the continent. As that was not enough, I helped edit a number of books for local (Los Angeles) authors.

By 2002, I ended the aforementioned rag, moved to NYC, and started a very small publishing house. That didn’t last long as I was hired by a newspaper group and mentored by a former protégé of Ben Bradlee (of the Watergate-era Washington Post) who ran a newspaper group in Brooklyn.

By 2006, I was back in L.A. where I re-opened my small house and re-named it. After a number of full-sized broadsheets, I again let it go dormant — this time to start up a community newspaper. While co-publisher and editor-in-chief of that paper, I also wrote for a number of other news outlets and bureaus (from Sacramento to L.A.) on everything from local politics to weekly crime. A few years later, that newspaper ended with a bang as well as a breaking story in the Washington Post about a South Bay city’s mayor and his attempt to prevent First Amendment rights and fair use: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/03/city-sues-critic-for-supposedly-infringing-citys-copyright-by-posting-city-council-video-clips-with-commentary-on-youtube/?utm_term=.2e59016fc4c6

I am now a contract copywriter and (again) a freelance book editor. I would like to think that as bananas as the 30-year ride outlined above may seem, I learned how to do all that by simply doing it — and I believe I could learn well enough the technical aspect to be a good volunteer editor to freeCodeCamp. (I would also love to be able to say at parties that I am an editor for the fCC! lol)