Creative Loafing (Charlotte) has named Mark Kemp – who was editor from 2005 to 2006 – as its editor. He’ll take over for outgoing editor Carlton Hargro, who announced his departure last month.

The move was announced in a staff email from publisher Wendy Goldstein:

Employee Announcement: Mark Kemp joins Creative Loafing Charlotte as Editor In Chief!!

It is my pleasure to announce that Mark Kemp will be joining Creative Loafing | Charlotte on August 29, 2011 in the role of Editor in Chief.

Mark brings a wealth of experience, talent and passion to his role as Editor in Chief. Having filled this role for Creative Loafing in 2005/2006, he knows the products,
the market and the importance of this executive position.

A graduate of East Carolina University, he has served as music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks. In 1997 he received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to the CD Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective of music by ’60s protest singer Phil Ochs. His book Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South was published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster in 2004 and issued in soft cover by the University of Georgia Press in 2006.

Mark began his journalism career as a newspaper reporter at the Times-News of Burlington, NC, and later as an editor at the science magazine Discover. In the late 1980s, he began writing for the alternative music and culture magazine Option. Mark became the editor of Option in 1991 and Option‘s visibility in the early ’90s led to Mark’s hirings at Rolling Stone and MTV.

He left MTV in 2000 and focused on his social/cultural memoir Dixie Lullaby, in which he revisited the southern rock of his youth and examined its social and psychological impact on young Southerners in the years following the civil rights movement. In 2002 he returned to his home state of North Carolina, where he was hired as Editor at Creative Loafing | Charlotte in 2005. Since 2006 when he left the Loaf, he has continued to write about business, music and culture for a variety of media outlets.
Mark’s level of experience, knowledge and talent, along with his love for the city and for Creative Loafing will help take Creative Loafing, Charlotte where it needs to go in both the digital and print space,

Please join me in welcoming Mark to the Creative Loafing team!

—

Wendy Goldstein

Publisher

Creative Loafing | Charlotte