Okay, so the word “dumpster” does not usually have positive connotations. However, it is a term with a long history in the city of Knoxville.
George Dempster and his brothers, Thomas and John, formed several heavy equipment companies in Knoxville in the early 20th century.
George Roby Dempster was a waste-management visionary, a local inventor who devised a new way to collect garbage: the Dempster Dumpster. You’ve seen his invention all your life even if you didn’t know it had an official name—those large, steel trash bins that trucks skewer with hydraulic lifts and then upend to empty their loads. He and his brothers introduced the innovative receptacle in 1935 and it quickly became a success. Dempster Brothers, Inc. on Springdale Avenue grew to 450 workers in 11 buildings. In the 1950s, they introduced the Dempster Dumpmaster, the first commercially successful front-loading garbage truck, creating a complete garbage collection and transportation system. It was a heady time. Dempster also had a colorful political life as Knoxville’s city manager, tangling with Cas Walker and Knoxville Journal editor Guy Smith Jr. While his namesake company no longer exists, his legacy remains.
What does that have to do with a media blog about Knoxville?
First, I just like the name’s resonance with local history—let us reclaim the Dumpster as a Knoxville icon and be proud of our trash heritage!
Second, “Daily Dumpster” does encapsulate this blog’s general intent. With a staff of only two reporters, we are usually kept pretty busy reporting full-on stories for print and online. However, we do come across lots of interesting tidbits that may not warrant a day’s worth of reporting, but merit pointing out. We’ll be tossing in a lot of random items.
To be clear, not many of these entries will be original news stories, per se. Then again, neither are the posts on most blogs you read, even if they claim be news sites—in reality, blogs for the most part offer commentary and conjecture while linking to actual news stories. But this also allows us more leeway to engage in the sort of irreverence or analysis that might not work in a straightforward news report striving for objectivity.
In other words, the Daily Dumpster should be fun. Stay tuned.
Editor Coury Turczyn guided Knoxville's alt weekly, Metro Pulse, through two eras, first as managing editor (and later executive editor) from 1992 to 2000, then as editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2014. He's also worked as a Web editor at CNET, the erstwhile G4 cable network, and HGTV.
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