INTRODUCTION
Known for his dedication to producing high-quality work, Stephen K. Peeples
is a media veteran whose journalistic experience extends from print to records
and radio to the Internet.
He is a Grammy nominee, award-winning radio producer/writer, and well-known
journalist in the Santa Clarita Valley, in the northwest corner of Los Angeles
County, Calif., half an hour from media centers in Hollywood, Burbank, Beverly
Hills, West Los Angeles and Santa Monica.
TODAY
Since February 2008, Peeples has been Online Editor for The
Signal, the SCV's only daily newspaper, founded in 1919. He also
serves as a news/features writer and contributing photographer for both the
print and online editions of the paper.
He joined The Signal in October
2007 as Assistant to the Editor and Web Content Editor for the paper's Web
site, which had been editor-less for a few months and desperate for attention.
On Monday, Oct. 22, Peeples' first day on the job, three major wildfires ringed
the SCV -- one of them racing through his neighborhood less than a mile away
from his home.
On that day and the next several, his frequent fire updates on The Signal's
Web site, along with those written by his Newsroom staff writer colleagues,
boosted visitor traffic substantially, and helped re-establish The-Signal.com
as the valley's top online source for local news.
As assistant to Editor Lila Littlejohn, Peeples' initial responsibilities
included editing the paper's Opinion page of local and wire commentary, political
cartoons and letters to the editor.
In winter 2007-2008, Peeples was also a member of the team that developed
a redesigned and much-improved Signal Web site launched Feb. 15, 2008. At
that time, he was promoted to Online Editor, invited to join the paper's editorial
board, and relieved of Opinion duties so he could focus on helping to manage
and build out the new site, and further expand The Signal's online
brand.
RECENT HISTORY
Prior to The Signal, from April 2006 to Oct. 2007, Peeples was Editorial
Director and an Account Manager with Santa
Clarita Web Services (eSCV, Inc.), a leading Web site hosting, development
and marketing company founded by Robert M. Gardner, and based in Valencia,
Calif.
Along with account management and working with clients on building and maintaining
their Web sites, Peeples also served as Managing Editor of the company's'
MySantaClarita.com
community Web site, and helped build it into one of the SCV's Top 10 most-visited
sites.
He managed My Santa Clarita's content, wrote or edited all its original stories,
covered local news and events, and served as staff photographer. Site traffic
statistics showed a 291 percent increase in the year between July 2006-July
2007. (See the Other Works page.)
SEMI-RECENT HISTORY
Previously, from Aug. 2004-April 2006, Peeples was a staff writer for The
Signal, in the Editorial/Features Department. His desk was in close
proximity to those of local legends John Boston and Leon Worden, and Peeples
learned as much from them as he could (both are no longer with the paper).
Peeples researched and wrote more than 200 in-depth features on a wide variety
of SCV people, places and events. His editor, Michele Buttelman, an L.A.
Times refugee who also opted to kick the commute and work closer to home,
allowed much latitude in his story assignments. He wrote the occasional feature
for paper's News Dept. and the Opinion section. Check this site's "Stories
for The Signal" page for a sampling (links to Signal pages
were disrupted by the paper's summer 2006 site "upgrade").
NOT-SO-RECENT HISTORY
By the time he arrived at The Signal, Peeples had worked in the music
and radio industries in Hollywood and L.A.'s West Side for two decades.
In 1988, he'd won an International Festival of New York Award as a national
radio writer-producer for a special edition of The Lost Lennon Tapes
series (he was the acclaimed series' original writer-producer, the first 128
hour-long programs, heard worldwide via Westwood One from 1988-1990).
Peeples had earned a Grammy nomination in early 1994 as co-compiler/coproducer
and liner notes writer for the Monterey
International Pop Festival four-CD boxed set (MIPF/Rhino, 1992, now
out of print), and travelled to New York City's Radio City Music Hall for
the ceremony (a Billie Holiday boxed set won the award).
ANCIENT HISTORY
Not surprisingly, Peeples is a third-generation media figure. His grandmothers
Mary-Florine Peeples and Z. Ruth Sullivan were avid photojournalists whose
work was published in dailies in Chicago (The Chicago Tribune) and
Milwaukee (The Milwaukee Journal), respectively. Years later, when
Stephen was in elementary school, both taught him the basics of photography
and art direction during visits with his family in North Miami, Fla.
His parents, William A. Peeples and Joan S. Peeples, had met in the late 1940s
as students at the University of Illinois in Champaign. He was editor of The
Daily Illini, she was a writer/reporter. At work, they were dedicated
journalists; it was all business. Romance blossomed nonetheless; they married
in 1948, had Stephen in 1951, and daughter Ruth in 1955.
Bill and Joan provided much in-house training in English, writing and journalism
as their progeny grew up (Ruth went on to earn a Broadcast Journalism degree
from California State University, Northridge). The youngsters had a natural
love for writing, and along with providing encouragement, Bill taught them
the basics of editing while Joan imparted the basics of proofreading. Both
kids absorbed lots more by osmosis.
In the 1960s, Bill and Joan worked for The Miami News, one of the
city's two major daily newspapers. When Stephen was in junior high school,
they took him along when they had to work on weekends. Bill gave him copy
to edit and Joan would have him proof it later, after the copy was typeset.
It would prove to be priceless on-the-job training.
Other News employees were always delighted to show Stephen what they
did -- how hot-lead linotype machines worked, how the huge, deafening presses
ran downstairs, how the ships unloaded the huge rolls of newsprint at the
paper's dock behind the plant on the Miami River.
(More than a decade later, when Bill had returned to newspapering after going
back to college to earn Masters degrees in history and physical anthropolgy,
and Joan had died of cancer at the far-too-early age of 42, he was assistant
editor and features writer for The Los Angeles Times' Travel section
under esteemed longtime editor Jerry Hulse.
(Where Bill had once introduced his son to hot-lead linotype production at
The Miami News, in the mid-1970s he introduced his offspring
to one of the earliest computerized newsroom computer software systems, then
being adopted by The Times. On that visit to The Times in
downtown L.A., Bill also introduced him to Robert Hilburn, the already-legendary
pop music critic. Hilburn happened to need an album reviewed and assigned
it to Stephen; once published, it helped launch Stephen's professional writing
career. After another decade, Bill retired to relax on his sailboat and goof
with his grandkids before sailing off into a Pacific sunset in November 2004
at age 83.)
As a writer, Stephen K. Peeples' earliest published piece was a short story
that appeared in The Miami News (1960, at age 8). His earliest professional
writing on music and entertainment was published in Cash Box magazine
(1975), The Los Angeles Times plus Circus, Rock Around the World,
Rocky Mountain Musical Express, Pickin' Up the Tempo, and Replay
magazines (all 1976) and L.A. Weekly (1977).
Segueing into the record and radio industries, Peeples was Editorial Director
for Capitol Records (1977-1980) then Elektra/Asylum Records (1980-1983) in
Hollywood; programming Writer/Producer and Advertising/Editorial Director
for the Westwood One Radio Network in Culver City (1983-1990, including The
Lost Lennon Tapes series); and National Public Relations Director then
Co-Director of the Media Relations Department for Rhino Entertainment in West
Los Angeles (1992-1997).
During his last two years at Rhino (1997-1998), Peeples drew upon his experience
and early interest in the Internet as Senior Director of Online Media. He
was project manager for the first Rhino.com Web site, then its first content
producer/editor. Next, he moved up to Rhino parent Warner Music Group to serve
as editorial content producer/manager for several promotional music sites
developed by WMG's Burbank-based Warner New Media division.
In mid-2000, following WMG parent Time-Warner's merger with AOL, Peeples was
a Format Producer with FTM Media Inc. (Feed the Monster), also in Burbank,
co-captaining a team of nearly a dozen Web designers, graphics experts, code
experts and QA staff who were building news and talk sites for major-market
radio stations. FTM suffered a less than dignified demise that autumn as the
dot-com boom went bust.
MORE RECENT HISTORY
As the record and Web development industries melted down, Peeples took a break
from the media fray for the next couple of years and worked closer to his
home in the Canyon Country area of Santa Clarita, utilizing his computer/Internet
and organizational skills as IT Director and Project Coordinator for a local
building contractor.
In spring-summer 2004, Peeples returned to radio, this time in front of the
mike, holding forth on Santa Clarita's hometown radio station KHTS
AM-1220 as writer/producer/host of the weekly "Beatles, Etc."
British Invasion program. His son Scot served as associate producer and, eventually,
engineer. Peeples also wrote "Today in Beatles History" daily short
features through the fall.
After joining
The Signal in August for his first tour, he guested on several "Reporter's
Notebook" segments with KHTS air personality Mike Dowler, through 2005.
Since summer '05, Peeples has contributed CD and music DVD reviews to the
AudioVideo Revolution
Web site (Steel Pulse's True
Democracy
& Earth Crisis), daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra's San
Francisco Debut, Cream's Live
at Royal Albert Hall, Les Paul & Friends: American
Made World Played, Herbie Hancock's Possibilities,
Loggins & Messina's Sittin'
in Again Live at the Santa Barbara County Bowl, John Lennon's Working
Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon two-CD anthology, The Beatles'
Capitol
Albums Vol. 2 four-CD set, Jeff Healey & The Jazz Wizards' It's
Tight Like That, and Bob Dylan's The
Best of Bob Dylan.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Peeples and his family have been residents of Canyon Country, one of the four
communities that comprise the city of Santa Clarita, since spring 1988, when
they moved there from Studio City, Calif. He met his wife Nadine (Martini)
in 1977 when they both worked at Capitol Records, and they married in September
1981. Today she is a Collections Specialist at Valencia, Calif.-based Trimed
Inc., which manufactures and distributes precision surgical steel parts
and tools for repairs of broken wrists and ankles to surgeons and hospitals
across the U.S. and around the world.
The couple's two now-adult offspring are bright and media-savvy, but are making
their parents proud by charting their own courses. Nonetheless, they represent
the fourth media generation of the Peeples-Sullivan bloodline.
Scot, 22, is a part-time film-TV-radio student at College of the Canyons,
and a full-time manager at Borders Books & Music at Valencia Town Center.
He and his fiance Jessica Posner plan to marry in August 2008.
Daughter Veronica, 20, is a Bowman High School Class
of '05 Honor Roll student who completed her course work and graduated six
months early. She is in her fifth semester at COC, focusing on developing
her skills as a TV-film writer/producer/reporter and editor, an extension
of her gift and love for creative writing and media.
Peeples is active in the Santa Clarita Valley community. From mid-2001 to
February 2005, he was a member of the Board of Directors and media director
for the Santa
Clarita Community Development Corp., the nonprofit organization which
operates the Santa Clarita Valley's Emergency Winter Shelter from December-March.
He was named Director Emeritus upon his resignation from the board.
In autumn 2005, Peeples was a founding member of the SCV
Disaster Coalition and assists with its Web site. He is also an occasional
volunteer with the Santa
Clarita Symphony and the Theatre
Project/SCV.
Peeples enjoys spending his precious free time with his wife, family and friends;
attending and photographing community events around Santa Clarita, reading
non-fiction; writing; listening to nearly all genres of music; anything to
do with The Beatles; eating fine food and drinking fine wine; far too occasionally
playing rock, blues and jazz and even bluegrass as drummer with Peaking
Duck, West L.A.'s oldest garage band; attending symphony and theatre performances;
watching classic films, documentaries and "Lost" and "Entourage"
on the tube; road-tripping (all over the West); and anything to do with surfing,
which he did on both the East and West
Coasts from ages 13-29 (1962-1980).
Original
Content © 2008 Stephen
K. Peeples.
Updated 02/16/08.
All rights reserved. Reproduction of any kind prohibited without permission.
Site Design & Webmaster: Stephen
K. Peeples • Site Hosting: Santa
Clarita Web Services (eSCV, Inc.)
661.714.2345
or
skp (@) stephenkpeeples.com
