Maybe now when people ask me where I've worked I won't have to say, 'At the real Knoxville Journal' anymore.

I'm not sure what email is going around, but it is very inaccurate. I was one of the last employees, although more than three remained at the end. I worked at The Knoxville Journal for a long time and would like to speak to whoever wrote this email. I think Steve Hunley owns a Auction place and I know we were trying to find someone to sell some furniture and equipment for us, but that doesn't mean The Focus is buying it. It's sad that a paper that didn't try to spread propaganda and rumors couldn't make it. I did work for the "real" Knoxville Journal and I will always cherish it.

I'm never happy to see people lose their jobs, or to see a newspaper fold. This paper had an odd history, though, and I don't think you'll find anyone who worked for the award-winning daily newspaper that closed on Jan 1, 1992 who was not appalled when Phil Hamby subsequently bought the Knoxville Journal masthead and proceeded to call his weekly publication the oldest newspaper in Tennessee.

Hamby even used the same template and typeface for several years, a particular embarrassment to those of us who had been associated with features like the column, "Whispers," (which I, among others, wrote).

When Hamby and his wife were divorced, his habit of evading creditors by putting property solely in her name bit him in the butt. She got the Journal, after a long struggle, and to her credit, in the years that she ran it (I lose track), it was no longer a vicious vendetta-factory. Hamby hurt a lot of people, including his former wife.

It's forever the People's Press, as far as I've ever been concerned.

I remember reading the real Knoxville Journal and it was nothing as spiteful as when Hamby owned it but that's par for the course for him! RIP original Journal!