Quincy Jones: Starts a new series

Quincy Jones: Starts a new series

American musician Quincy Jones, who is one of the three biggest Grammy winners of all time with 27 to his name, joined Tribune Newspapers on Monday as a guest columnist. He is following the lead of U2 frontman Bono as newspapers look for new ways to entice readers and survive an advertising slump.

Quincy Jones has offered his views on Barack Obama as the United States celebrated Martin Luther King Day.

Tribune Company announced on Monday that the debut of a special series of articles and viewpoints, written by recognized figures in music and the arts. The series will be carried by all the group's newspapers and websites including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

Lee Abrams, chief innovation officer at the Tribune Company who came up with the idea, said, "A very small number of artists such as Quincy Jones transcend their success in music and have had a profound impact on American culture. We believe that these icons have a perspective on life that will make for an interesting and unusual reading experience, and a peek at their lives that can't be found in the traditional celebrity-oriented ways they are portrayed".

Quincy Jones wrote in the piece, which is to be published, "as I sat with family and friends watching the election results, I resigned myself to tempering my emotions. Like all of Barack Obama's supporters, I was encouraged by the strength, poise and deftness with which he ran his campaign. I knew that he was the best person for the job. But as a black man in America, I knew from experience to not let what I wanted to happen stray too far from the reality of what I knew could happen".

Quincy Jones' column comes less than a week after Bono began writing an opinion column for the New York Times.

The 48 year old Bono, who is well known for campaigning AIDS in Africa and against poverty, chose not to use his first column for his favored causes but dedicated it to his mentor Frank Sinatra.

Bono wrote, "I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment".