Arts Editor Gardner moves up

Andy Markowitz is leaving the editorship of Baltimore City Paper in August to pursue a dream of traveling with his wife, Barbara Frye. Arts Editor Lee Gardner will become editor.

Markowitz was hired originally as a copy editor in 1995 and a year later was promoted to editor. Prior to coming to the City Paper, the Columbia, Md., native worked for weekly community newspapers in Maryland.

Markowitz said his wife’s “really nice buy-out” from a suburban Baltimore newspaper company owned by the Tribune Co. has made it possible for them to pursue a dream of traveling and perhaps working in Europe.

“This is not a retirement,” Markowitz said. “I love the alternative press and look forward to returning to it soon.”

Markowitz has served on the AAN Editorial Committee since 1999 and won a first-place in arts feature writing in this year’s Alternative Newsweekly Awards. He is also by a large margin the No. 1 poster on the AAN editorial listserv.

“I’m very proud of having the loudest and most pretentious voice in AAN,” he said.

Gardner, who has been at the paper since 1996, has no plans for any radical changes.

“It’s bittersweet seeing [Markowitz] go,” he said. “We were a much better newspaper with Andy. He made it a newspaper for the city. Hopefully I will continue the way things are now, or at least not screw things up.”

Ryan Fox is AAN’s summer intern.