History of the Turret

* First edition: Nov. 4, 1948
* Original weekly distribution: 6,500 copies
* Current weekly distribution: 17,200 copies, with readership estimated to be 40,000
* Founders: Leonard Bean and Floe Bowles founded Bean Publishing Company, who printed the Turret until 1979 when the contract was transferred to Landmark Communications, Inc., the parent company of the News-Enterprise. LCNI has held the contract ever since.
* Longest-serving editor: Larry Barnes, 29 years
* Last Soldier assigned as a Turret reporter: Spc. Michael Behlin, now Staff Sgt. Behlin at 3rd Sustainment Command Public Affairs on Fort Knox
* Number of Turret editions as of Feb. 9, 2012: 3,238
* Number of times the Turret failed to be published since its first edition: 1 - Jan. 29, 2009, due to the Ohio Valley Ice Storm of 2009 which left 609,000 homes and businesses in Kentucky without power - the state’s largest power outage on record.
* State recognition: December 17, 1992 was proclaimed “Inside the Turret Day” in Kentucky by then Gov. Brereton Jones.
* Turret journalists who went on to fame included Gay Talese, a best-selling author; Harlan Ellison, fiction writer; and Doug Poling, a CBS announcer.