Leon Alligood
Writer | The Nashville Banner

Leon Alligood is a state news reporter for The Tennessean, a position he has held since the Nashville Banner, the afternoon newspaper, ceased publication in 1998. He worked there for 11 ½ years. Prior to his arrival in Nashville, he began his career with stints at two weekly newspapers.

Assignments have taken him as far away as Afghanistan and Iraq, but usually he is found covering the small towns of Middle Tennessee. Over the years his writing has won numerous state, regional and national honors. He is a Georgia native and a graduate of the University of Georgia. He is married and his wife, Bertie, is an 8th grade teacher and they have two grown sons, Arthur and Shep, and a dog named U.G. Lee.

Larry McCormack
Photographer | The Nashville Banner

Larry McCormack, a photojournalist with the Tennesseean in Nashville, got his start in small town newspapers. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University in 1980 with a degree in Mass Communications he worked for the Daily News Journal in Murfeeesboro until July 1981. He then moved to the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle until 1983 when he accepeted a position with the Nashville Banner, where he stayed until it closed in 1998. He has been with the Tennessean since 1998 and continues to photograph business, news, sports, fashion, food, and everthing that is required in this challenging field. Though he started photographing in black & white he has advanced through color and for the past 11 years has been producing all his images with a digital camera and processing with a computer.