Jody Worthington arrived in Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, displaced from New Orleans after having worked at Gambit. Her arrival dropped a sudden dose of professional publishing experience into a Free Press Houston staff that was still learning much of the work as it went. Worthington tried to impose process on the chaos: teaching the crew basic design and publication standards, helping with advertising design, artwork and page layout, and gradually becoming involved in the paper’s events as well. She designed artwork for the 2007 Westheimer Block Party and became part of the visual and production culture that helped the young paper grow beyond a scrappy alternative weekly into a more disciplined publication and events organization.
Worthington later married Free Press Houston layout director Tyler Barber in a ceremony officiated by Omar Afra. The wedding and the account of her post-Katrina arrival, Gambit background, design/process work, and Westheimer role are Omar Afra’s firsthand recollections supplied to this archive; they are presented as recollection and are not independently corroborated by the recovered corpus.
Separately, the held record preserves Worthington’s October 2007 byline on the games review “Sing out Louise!” SingStar: Pop, Rocks!, Amped & '80s Reviewed. Free Press Houston’s announcement of the Free Press Summer Fest Artist Series poster show at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art — the fourth annual show — lists her among its exhibiting illustrators, graphic designers and fine artists. The paper’s 2009 Battle Royale: Seger vs. Cocker poll also records her vote among the friends of the paper it canvassed. The archive assigns no formal staff title beyond these held credits and Omar Afra’s recollection.
