About
Beyond The Trestle is a blog that provides commentary, context and coverage of news and politics in Northeast Georgia. It is the evolution of the former Safe As Houses blog that covered politics in Athens-Clarke County. Beyond The Trestle combines traditional reporting with commentary through its primary blog, guest commentators, streaming audio broadcasts, podcasts and video.
The name references the famous ‘Murmur’ Trestle, featured on the cover of R.E.M.’s influential album of the same name. The photo in the banner depicts the trestle and is provided courtesy of the Athens-Clarke County Visitors and Convention Bureau.
Writers
Johnathan is the founder and editor of Beyond The Trestle. He got his start in journalism working at the Athens Banner-Herald as a sports reporter before moving to work as assistant news editor. He worked as the public relations director at the Georgia Museum of Art, where he sat just three feet away from fellow Athenian blogger Hillary Brown, as well as a communications coordinator at the University of Georgia. In 2008, he started Front Porch Consulting, a full-service communications and fundraising firm designed to help non-profit organizations, political campaigns and advocacy groups.
McGinty’s first blog, Safe As Houses, covered local, state and national politics from 2004 through 2009. In 2009, he served as a co-editor of Tondee’s Tavern, a statewide progressive blog, before returning to his roots to start Beyond The Trestle. He also pens a weekly column for the Athens Banner-Herald.
Martin is a political consultant and freelance writer who has seen and worked Democratic political campaigns for nearly a decade - from county coroners to Presidential races. After two-and-a-half years as spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia, he recently started his own political consulting firm, called craft, where he specializes in communications strategies for campaigns, causes, and non-profit organizations.
In addition to his work in politics, Martin is a passionate supporter of animal rights, animal protection, and wildlife-related causes. In his spare time, he writes screenplays and blogs about animal welfare issues at change.org. He lives in Athens with his dog.
Carter is a writer for Beyond the Trestle, as well as ModerateWing.com. As someone who has worked on many different levels of politics - from interning on Capitol Hill to working communications on campaigns, to developing political organizations on the University of Georgia campus - Carter brings critical perspective to politics in Georgia, and nationally. Furthermore, as someone who has served in entry level of politics in a variety of different organizations, he makes amazing coffee, and knows the quickest routes to local doughnut and fast food restaurants around the greater Athens area. Currently, Carter also serves as the Secretary and Parliamentarian of the Young Democrats of Georgia.
A native of Lockport, Illinois, Carter is currently a senior at the University of Georgia studying international relations with a minor in history. Alongside his work in politics, Carter is also a brother of Phi Kappa Theta fraternity, where he has served as both president and vice president of risk management.
Our comment policy
We love free and open debate, as long as it stays civil and relevant. We do not and will not censor or remove comments based on ideological or political disagreements. We do, however, reserve the right to edit, move, or delete comments that:
- Are clearly spammy in nature.
- Contain threats or ad hominem attacks on any person, group, or institution, or that we consider unlawful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, or pornographic.
- Are overly tangential or irrelevant to the post being discussed. (These comments might be moved instead of deleted, depending on the content.
- Comments where the user name is "Anonymous," or some other iteration of that. Even if you leave an unregistered comment, please take 5 seconds to use your name or a handle instead of "Anonymous." This helps people respond to individual commenters more directly without wondering which of five different "anonymouses" they're talking to. If you don't take the initiative to make your comment at least somewhat identifiable, we won't approve it.
If a comment violates our comment policy (and we are the sole and final authority on this), we may do one or more of the following:
- Move, edit, or delete the comment.
- Email the commenter with an explanation of our action, however, we are not obligated to do this.
- In the case of particularly egregious offenses, or repeat offenses by the same person, we may temporarily or permanently delete their account or ban them.
How to comment
If you're registered here at Beyond the Trestle, your comments are published immediately. We strongly encourage you to register and are continually brainstorming ways to provide additional value to registered users. While we do not require that you register with your real or legal name, we do encourage you to do so.
We also allow people to comment without registering, but your comment must be approved by a moderator before it is published. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours or more, since there are only two of us and we have other lives too. If you posted a comment and it hasn't shown up after 24 hours, and you're certain that it doesn't violate the comments policy above, please email Martin or Johnathan.
Our privacy policy
We value your personal privacy, just as we value our own. Our privacy policy may be revised or updated at any time and we encourage you to check back often to ensure that you are familiar with the most recent version and the terms of our policy.
You may provide personal information to BeyondTheTrestle.com in one of three ways: (1) by sharing your e-mail address in order to become a registered user, (2) by sharing personal information when you contact us by email, or (3) by sharing personal information when you post comments on our posts or stories.
We may also collect information that is in nt personally identifiable, such as: the operating system you are working on, the internet browser you are using, the domain name of your internet service provider, and the web sites you visit directly before and after your visit to BeyondTheTrestle.com.
