A goodbye and a hello as The Citizen moves into a bright future

When Joyce and I were looking to sell The Citizen, after initial discussions with a couple of potential buyers who contacted us, we thought of Ellie White-Stevens.

Why? Ellie worked for us for seven years as an advertising consultant back in our print days, both selling ads and writing features for our advertisers from 2002-2009. Since then, she’s built an impressive network of clients and contacts throughout our region while running her marketing agency, Dirt1x.

In the last few years since we went online only, some of our best customers are those that Ellie brought us. Her clients who she built great ads for and created sponsored content stories for included Yamaha, Cronic Automotive Group and ProHealth Physical Therapy & Pilates Studio. We feel confident, as we turn over our customers into her hands that they will get solid marketing advice from a true professional who understands our market.

What about this community? Ellie has lived and worked here since her college graduation. She moved here to volunteer her time and energy at Operation Mobilization, a Christian missions organization based in Tyrone. She met her husband Matt there, and soon after that they became like family to us, as her husband gave our son guitar lessons. I even knew his parents from church, before they moved back to California.

Her family all lives here. She has a brother and his family in Fayetteville, her mom in Peachtree City, and Ellie and her husband in Sharpsburg. Ellie’s husband Matt works in her Dirt1x business, and will also work on The Citizen with her.

Ellie has two grown sons, one who who graduated from Georgia Tech in three years with a degree in Math and who went on to get his Master’s in Actuarial Science from the University of Iowa. He graduates in December, and has a job lined up. The younger son will graduate from Georgia Tech this Spring, also in three years, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Currently, Ellie is the President of the Business Women of Fayette and Coweta. She’s a member of the Rotary Club of Peachtree City, the Fayette Chamber of Commerce, the Newnan-Coweta Chamber of Commerce and the American Business Women’s Association Iris Chapter in Griffin. That’s a lot of memberships. Let me tell you a little bit about who Ellie is as a person.

Ellie thinks both creatively and analytically at the same time. She’s an optimist — we always knew we could give her difficult clients and she would handle them with ease at The Citizen. Ellie understands publishing. Her degrees from Calvin are in Communications with a Minor in Journalism. She tells me that she’s actually been doing paid for print publishing since she was nine years old and started her elementary school’s first yearbook.

Some of you will like this editorial transition and some of you won’t. Ellie is more politically moderate than I am. Over our two decades knowing each other, she’s asked my opinion on who to vote for in elections, and sometimes she took my advice. Or so she says.

Ellie’s got some business partners through The Pulse PTC who will be making The Citizen happen.  As of now, she’s the new editor, and the buck will stop with her, as it’s stopped with me for these 31 years since we started The Citizen in 1993.

Ellie has expressed to me that she hopes I think that my legacy will be in good hands. And I think it will. There’s nobody to whom I would rather hand over this labor of love than Ellie. Please welcome Ellie as she takes the helm of The Citizen.

The U.S. Navy has a change of command procedure I deeply respect. The new captain comes aboard the ship, gives and receives a salute from the retiring captain. The new captain says, “I relieve you, sir.” The retiring captain relies, “I stand relieved, ma’am.”

I stand relieved.

Cal Beverly, now the former editor and former publisher of The Citizen