House floor leader in Alabama, dis-employed by news coverage, starts his own paper

Alabama House Majority Leader Ken Guin, right, likes to wear multiple hats. Forced by news coverage to give up no-work jobs at a state community college, is now a newspaper publisher who says he will emphasize good news. Guin has founded The Corridor Messenger in Walker County, reports The Associated Press. Guin gave up the jobs recently, reported The Daily Mountain Eagle in Jasper, the main newspaper for the county.

The Corridor Messenger debuted last week and will be distributed to homes in Walker County for free during October. Guin said the name comes from Corridor X, a long-term Appalachian Regional Commission highway project to create a first-class road between Birmingham and Memphis. Much of the road, which will become Interstate 22, has been built near Jasper.

Guin told the AP that the newspaper will draw on his undergraduate days at Auburn University and his interaction with the school's newspaper, The Plainsman. Guin, who has a law practice in Carbon Hill, has hired a news editor to help. His wife, Tanya, is the managing editor and his mother, Barbara, writes a recipe column.

"I'm convinced we can fill a newspaper every week with good news stories," Guin told Kent Faulk of The Birmingham News, which revealed community colleges' employment of legislators and other officials, forced changes in the system and won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. The Daily Mountain Eagle, published by Cleveland Newspapers of Cleveland, Tenn., declined to comment to AP. (Read more)