Passing the Torch

Teri Saylor

Special to Publishers' Auxiliary

Nov 1, 2025

After 2 generations of publishing a Tennessee weekly, the Gentry family sells to a former employee

For the good folks of Jefferson County, Tennessee, the sale of The Standard-Banner signaled a new era for the newspaper, but it was a full-circle moment for the sellers, Dale and Teresa Gentry, and the buyers, Lesli Bales-Sherrod and her husband, Jimmy Sherrod.

The newspaper, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year, had been in Dale’s family for two generations. His dad, Tom Gentry, bought it in 1956, and as far back as Dale can remember, the office has been home.

Dale was born with newsprint and ink in his DNA. His grandfather, Beecher Gentry, owned the Putnam County Herald in Cookeville, Tennessee, but sold it when he fell ill with Leukemia and gave some of the proceeds to his son, Tom.

Tom Gentry and his family moved to Jefferson City and bought what was then the Jefferson City Standard and the Dandridge Banner. About a decade later, he merged the two newspapers, forming the Standard-Banner. His son and daughter-in-law, Dale and Teresa Gentry, followed in his footsteps and published it until last July, when they decided to sell it and retire.

Today, after 69 years of Gentry ownership, The Standard Banner belongs to a new family — Lesli Bales-Sherrod and her husband, Jimmy Sherrod.

DALE: I grew up at the newspaper and started working there as a 10-year-old kid, sweeping up and hanging around the press. I was about 12 or 13 years old when I started writing and making pictures.

I worked for the paper through my teenage years, and by the time I was 16, I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I went to the University of Tennessee and majored in journalism. I graduated in 1977, came back to the paper and worked there until I retired a few months ago.

LESLI: I'm from Jefferson County, and my whole family still lives there. I was involved in my high school newspaper and was the editor-in-chief my final semester. I started working for The Standard Banner when I was 16. Dale hired me to write a “Patriot Close-up” column about high school happenings during my senior year, and I had a little picture that ran with it. That’s how I got to know the Gentrys.

The summer before I left for college, I did whatever they wanted me to do because I was ready to learn everything, from sitting at a computer localizing press releases, to getting to know the people in the office, to working in the pressroom on the inserting machine. At the end of the summer, I covered my first school board meeting. I left for college, but Dale let me come back to The Standard Banner anytime I was at home.

After I graduated, Dale hired me full time in December 1999. And I stayed until June 2003 when Jimmy and I moved to Washington, D.C., for graduate school. I earned a master’s degree in journalism and political science from American University.

JIMMY: I was born in Knoxville, which is about 25 minutes from Jefferson City, and I went to the University of Tennessee for broadcast journalism. I wanted to be the next Tom Brokaw. I loved TV and radio, and when I was in college, I got my first radio gig at a local station, where I did everything from appearing on air to working behind the scenes to cutting spots to selling advertising. I was planning on going wherever I needed to go to get my first TV job, even if that meant the middle of nowhere. But I started getting involved in a local church and felt called in a different direction. So, I ended up getting my Master of Divinity degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and I have been a local church pastor for 20 years now, currently at Central United Methodist Church in Knoxville.

I attended Jefferson County High School and was on the newspaper staff, where I met Lesli. I was the sports editor and had a great experience with that.

Lesli and I were great friends in high school. We went to different colleges, but we stayed in touch. We would see each other when we were home for the summer or on Christmas break, and we began dating. Last October, we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.

LESLI: My friends say I have ink in my veins. I've worked at newspapers large and small that have been bought and sold and changed ownership and downsized. I have a lot of respect for what newspapers mean to the communities they cover. I’ve always wanted to support that and the people that do that kind of work.

DALE: Growing up around the newspaper, I saw the good and the bad parts of it. I saw the long hours my father worked and all the things he did in the community. And I some of that was a negative. He didn't hire as many people as he needed to, so he worked long hours. When I was growing up, my dad was gone so much it was almost like we didn't have a lot of family life. Everything revolved around the newspaper. I decided it would be different for me, and I’ve worked hard to be involved in my kids' lives. Teresa and I carved out family time and kept it separate from the newspaper, although the paper was always there.

I think my love of writing and photography drew me to journalism, plus the fact that every day is different. I’ve always said even as the world has become more specialized, we are still community journalists. And we're still the folks that know a little bit about everything.

LESLI: I moved from the newsroom to higher education, working in communication and marketing at the University of Tennessee and Pellissippi State Community College. The first year after leaving newspapers, I cried almost every day, even though leaving was my decision. I had been a city government reporter, and I covered three cities, writing on deadline. I was going to meetings at night, then back to the newsroom to write my stories.

We had two small children, and I was never at home in the evenings. Sometimes that meant when I dropped my kids off in the morning at preschool, I didn’t see them until the next day.

I felt like I was missing so much of my kids' childhood that I made the decision to leave the newsroom and work at a college, which was a great decision at the time. But it was so hard for me not to be a journalist.

Now, our son is a freshman in high school, and our daughter is a sixth grader, and they are not nearly as needy for their mama as they were back in the day.

DALE: I've seen almost everything. I've had people yell at me and cuss me out. I've seen how people react negatively to things, and in a small town, sometimes people don't speak to you for a while. But despite that, my biggest challenge was the business end of the newspaper. I've got to give Teresa a lot of credit. She has a business degree and handled that part.

I've always believed one of the things in the last 20 years or so that has ruined our industry is corporate ownership, and I always said I would not sell to a corporate chain.

As I passed 65 and started thinking about retirement, my wife and I had decided if it came down to it, we would rather shut the paper down than sell it to somebody that was going to ruin it. So, my priority always was to find a local owner who would keep The Standard Banner local and focus on keeping it as a vibrant community newspaper — one that was recognized as an outstanding paper, an award-winning paper that people would continue to love and claim as their own and be proud of.

LESLI: Dale grew up in Jefferson City, and so did my mom. They're only a year apart in school, so they've known each other forever. In 2022, Mom asked Dale if he would photograph her 50th high school reunion.

After the reunion, Mom told me that Dale wanted to retire, and he wanted to sell the paper to a local buyer. And she told me she thought I should buy the newspaper. That was outside the realm of anything I had ever thought about.

Then, in February 2025, my mom was sitting a row behind Dale and Teresa at a funeral, and after the service ended, Mom asked Dale if he still wanted to retire, and he told her if he could find a local buyer, he would love to retire. And she said she knew somebody who wanted to buy the newspaper — meaning me. She did this without my knowledge and told us about it after the fact. Jimmy encouraged me to go meet with Dale and Teresa and hear what they had to say.

JIMMY: Prior to meeting with Dale, we would sit around in the living room of Lesli’s parents’ house, and her mom would say things like, “Well, when Lesli owns the paper, I'm going to have my own column.” I sent her a message later without Lesli knowing it, and I asked her to reach out to Dale again. It took another month or so before I heard back from her that she had talked with Dale after that funeral service. I know what drives Lesli and what her passion is, and I always wanted her to be back in newspapers.

After meeting with the Gentrys, we learned that buying the newspaper was actually doable for us, financially. But a lot of other things had to fall into place just the right way. In mid-June, they did.

LESLI: We closed the sale on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, the day the newspaper was put to bed. Dale and Teresa met us for the closing, and then Dale went back and finished the paper. He had not told his staff yet that he was retiring and selling the paper.

When he told the staff, they felt a lot of anxiety. One of the staff told me everybody went quiet until Dale told them they already knew the buyer. And when he said it was Jimmy and me, they were relieved and excited.

I worked with over half the current staff when I started at the paper in 1995. Most of them have been there over 30 years. We have inherited so much institutional knowledge and expertise that the paper could run without me.

DALE: Jimmy and Lesli were the buyers I was looking for — people who valued the kind of journalism we did, who valued putting out a quality local newspaper. They fit my criteria of who I was looking for to follow in my footsteps.

I’ve pretty much backed away from it now. But I told Lesli I would like to do some photography from time to time, and I recently did my first assignment, which was photographing a farm day for second graders. There were animals and tractors and farm stuff at the fairgrounds, and all these second graders were wide-eyed because they’d never seen a cow before. I had a blast, and the newspaper made a two-page photo feature out of it.

JIMMY: Today, I mostly help with the business side of The Standard Banner, but I am writing my first column next week based on my experience as a sportswriter. Tonight is the opening game of the football season, and it's been 30 years since I covered my high–school football team as the sports editor of the high school newspaper. So, I'm going to write about my experience and then tie that into the local community and the importance of our work here.

DALE: When we had made the sale agreement, Lesli asked if I have any advice, and I said, “just make it your own.” I am enjoying just being a reader now. I’m working on little chores that I had been putting off, and we have five grandchildren. They all live close to us, and we've been spending a lot of time going to softball games and gymnastics, and watching our grandson play in his high school band. I'm adapting to retirement pretty well.

LESLI: We know the newspaper’s 100th anniversary is next year, and taking over at this moment in time means a lot of our conversations have been not just about getting started in our new roles, but how we want to commemorate and celebrate 100 years of having the paper in the community.

My dream is that we will continue to be present and that we will grow revenue so we can support the work we're doing.

And my hope is that when we retire one day, we too will be able to pass along the good will that the Gentrys passed to us.

Teri Saylor is a writer in Raleigh, N.C. Contact her at terisaylor@hotmail.com