About the Editor

Chief Content Editor Garland Pollard began working in newspapers at Richmond’s Style Weekly in 1985, where he wrote a pop culture and local interest column called Fast Talk, as well as features. After Style Weekly, he revived the 150-year-old broadsheet newspaper The Richmond State, which was a leading newspaper in Richmond from the Civil War until the early 20th century.

He started Black Cow Press to help companies and nonprofits build content and audiences. The name Black Cow Press, derived from the Steely Dan song of the same name, has no particular meaning. (A “black cow” is an ice cream/root beer float.)

Old newspaper hand

He has worked as a staff editor at The Progress-Index in Petersburg, where he redesigned the weekly real estate section and edited the business page. He covered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Langley as transportation and technology reporter at Dolan’s Virginia Business Observer in Norfolk. He dug into real estate and urban planning at Richmond’s Inside Business, where he wrote about commercial real estate and New Urbanism. There, he won numerous Virginia Press Association awards; favorite achievements were launching a comprehensive survey of Richmond Brand Names and writing a definitive history of the Reynolds Metals EXO headquarters building.

In Virginia, he was the launch editor of Virginia Living, the magazine about Virginia that debuted in November 2002. He was launch editor for the magazine, which proved the viability and relevance of old-style, large format magazines like Look and Life. He was most recently senior editor for the Visit Florida family of products at Miles Media in Sarasota, where he revamped their 60-year-old Official Florida Vacation Guide and a suite of ancillary publications, as well as supervised the editorial side of the re-launch of their multimedia website, VisitFlorida.com.

Historic preservation and branding

His volunteer interest is historic preservation and historic brands, and speaks regularly to groups on these subjects. He has had a long support of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, where he served on the board of its Historic Richmond branch. With the help of the APVA, he helped to save two important neo-classical Richmond buildings, the Second Baptist Church and the Hotel Richmond.

In his study of branding, he set up the website BrandlandUSA.com to help the American public and branding community assert the value and tradition of America’s legacy brand names. The site, and its companion blog, receive over 13,000 unique visitors each month.

Got questions about web content? Email Content Editor Garland Pollard for insight and ideas. Or call me at (703) 745-8602.