Billboard’s awards editor has been writing about popular music since Gerald Ford was president. Paul began writing for Billboard as a freelancer in 1975, when he was a junior at UCLA. He was initially paid the princely sum of $1 per published inch. He graduated in 1976 with a degree in communication studies and joined the Billboard staff the following year. Paul created the popular Chartbeat column, a compendium of the week’s hottest chart news, in 1981. He won a Donaldson Award (named af...
