St. Joseph native trades corporate life for community creativity
Prajukta Ghosh
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (KQTV)– St. Joseph native Jay Kerner spent years working for two Fortune 500 companies before realizing the corporate world just wasn’t his thing.
These days, he’s the publisher of The Tenderloin Times — a path that looks very different from where he started.
Along the way, he built a drive-in theater, co-founded The Regular Joe newspaper, launched the JoeStock Music Festival and even found time to write a few books — just to name a few things.
“I have done a lot of things in my time. I always seemed to be going against the flow a little bit. I don’t know what’s next, I might get into eight-track tape repair business or something, who knows,” Kerner said.
The Regular Joe ran for 12 years before shutting down just before the pandemic.
Kerner said even though the world is flooded with digital content, there’s still something powerful about print.
“At one time, there was lots of places you could find this, but nowadays everyone seems to put all their energy into the digital media, and that’s great, but I think there’s still a place for a piece of paper with a schedule on it,” Kerner said.
Looking back, Kerner said he wishes he’d discovered his love for writing sooner.
He’s written a biography, a couple of novels and spent 14 years writing columns — but didn’t really dive into it until his mid-50s.
“But I didn’t start doing this until I was in my mid-fifties. So I wish I had considered that as a career much earlier,” Kerner said.
Kerner mentioned there were a couple of things which he enjoyed about writing, “I lived in fraternity house in college and wrote a few papers for some for them who weren’t so gifted in the area,” Kerner said.
His interest in writing started small. In college, he lived in a fraternity house and occasionally wrote papers for friends who weren’t exactly gifted writers.
He also became known among family and friends for his annual Christmas letter, which helped him realize he had a knack for it.
Eventually, Downtown business owners recruited him to help start The Regular Joe. Over time, Kerner took it over and ran it as the sole proprietor for about a decade.
“This was to help them start The Regular Joe and that’s how we got into it in the first place, but over time I just got things over and was the sole proprietor, operating it for the last ten years or so,” Kerner said.
Now, The Tenderloin Times will be published monthly and anyone interested in contributing can submit their work by the 20th of each month.
Kerner said more information about where to read his publishing in The Tenderloin Times can be found on his Facebook account.