Staff
Scott Becker was Option's owner and publisher for its entire history from the mid-1980s until 1998. He created a world-class, innovative, music magazine that quickly became a distinguished icon within both the counter-culture and mainstream rock music worlds. Unlike most other publishers, Becker saw his magazine as a complex organism, a work of graphic art, music, thought, and underground mass communication for the "true" indy music scene. Shunning personal publicity, he gradually became more and more involved in his own personal and spiritual evolution, resisting the growing effects of the internet upon the music magazine business. Becker finally pulled the plug on Option in 1998 as the alternative publishing and indy music markets both began to falter drastically, no longer being the truly independent scenes they were when he first started the magazine in the '80s. Following Option's closure, Becker has since become a full-time artist.
Richie Unterberger served as editor from 1985 to mid-1991, and subsequently became a major contributor to Allmusic.
Mark Kemp succeeded Unterberger as editor from 1991, until being hired by Rolling Stone as an editor in 1996. His successor, Jason Fine, was also hired by Rolling Stone a year later, and remains there to date.
Steve Appleford followed Jason Fine for most of 1997. Becker then edited the final two issues of the magazine himself with the assistance of senior editor Erik Pedersen.
Kristin Bell was Option's art director from its inception as a Xeroxed sheet in the late 1980s through its coming of age in the mid-1990s, creating the incredible style, avant-garde layouts, photography and edgy feel for which the magazine became famed. While at Option Bell was at the very forefront of the then industry-wide shift away from manual compositing to Apple-based digital layouts, her groundbreaking digital compositing playing a great role in the magazine's fresh look, growth and success. Prior to Option, she served as art director of Los Angeles-based Rock Magazine in the mid-'80s. After leaving Option in 1995, she subsequently became co-producer of Lee Lew-Lee's multi-award-winning documentary on the '60s US civil rights movement, All Power to the People, which was broadcast in 24 nations, as one of the few globally watched and acclaimed documentaries on the subject. She now serves as consultant to SFDM, INC., a high-performance super-computing company, specializing in rich media, 3D modeling, HDTV and 3D film rendering, as well as "petaflop scale" scientific R&D and HPC.
Barbara "Bix" Jordan served as Option's Assistant Editor from the late 1980s until early '90s.
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