Clif Garboden, former Boston Phoenix senior managing editor and former AAN president, has passed away at the age of sixty-two.
Last week, the Boston Phoenix's parent company announced it was cutting salaries across the board and laying off six employees. Turns out one of those being laid off is special to AAN: Phoenix senior managing editor and former AAN president Clif Garboden. "This place has given me the opportunity -- on the job, and in AAN -- to work with hundreds of intelligent and committed people you'd never encounter in the real world," he says. "Many of them were also crazy, of course, but that can have its charms."
Both the Boston Phoenix and Boston's Weekly Dig have been "a springboard" for journalists from the university, BU Daily reports. Among the alums on the Beantown alt-weekly scene are Phoenix founder Stephen Mindich and senior managing editor Clif Garboden; Dig art director Tak Toyoshima and staff writer Chris Faraone; and countless others, including former Phoenix reporter Kristen Lombardi, who broke the story of Cardinal Bernard Law's protection of pedophile priests, and former Phoenix media critic Mark Jurkowitz, who is currently the associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "[BU] is a great resource for us," says Dig publisher Jeff Lawrence. "These kids come out with great energy and a sense that they want to do something different."
