Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

Noticeably absent Sunday in a Commercial Appeal story about the daily decreasing the size of its pages was a disclosure about the potential millions of dollars in paper costs the newspaper stands to save after the switch.

The story, penned by the paper’s editor and president Angus McEachran, mentioned several other benefits the smaller paper size will yield, such “less clutter” and being easier to read in cramped spaces. But the paper failed to mention that in reducing the size of the printed page, The Commercial Appeal will be reducing its operating expenses and possibly reducing its news hole Ñ the amount of space available for news stories.

When there’s less paper space, stories must be cut or shortened. And when papers elsewhere have used smaller print to keep from reducing the number of stories, as the CA’s new design does, some readers have gotten upset.

In his column, McEachran maintains that by using a new, smaller, typeface the paper will be able to reduce the size of the paper without cutting into the number of stories. He goes on to write that the “letters will be clearer and appear bigger although their computer-assisted design actually makes each word more compact.”

McEachran did not respond to the Flyer‘s request for comment.

The Commercial Appeal is not the first newspaper to adopt the “smaller is better” logic. Papers nationwide, including USA Today, The L.A. Times, and The Washington Post have already made the switch. Major newspaper publishers have discovered that by going from 54 to 50 inches they can save a bundle on the cost of newsprint. And with the cost of newsprint currently on the rise, many papers have succumbed to temptation and cut back on paper usage. The Boston Globe, which recently reduced its paper size, expects to save about $4 million this year. News industry experts estimate that newsprint can constitute as much as 60 percent of a paper’s total costs, so the Memphis paper’s profitability could improve significantly.

Nationwide, page sizes aren’t the only newsroom causalities. At many of the other shrinking papers the editorial staff has also been cut. At The Asbury Park Press, the second largest paper in New Jersey, newsroom staff has dropped from 240 to about 180 since 1997. And The Akron Beacon Journal announced earlier this month that it will lay off some 60 employees in order to meet financial goals set by Knight Ridder, its parent company.

According to sources at The Commercial Appeal, the paper has a hiring freeze on new reporters and positions left empty after the departures of Sara Derks, Bobby Hall, and Larry Rea. Warren Funk, The Commercial Appeal‘s director of human resources, did not respond to calls from the Flyer, nor did Deputy Managing Editor Otis Sanford.

It’s possible The Commercial Appeal is feeling pressure from its parent company, Scripps Howard, to help maintain the company’s impressive profit margin of nearly 30 percent in its newspaper division. As the second largest paper in the Scripps chain, the Memphis paper would seem to be in a position to greatly impact profit margins. But the newspaper division is the slowest growing of the Scripps ventures. (The cable channels Home and Garden Television, the Food Network, and Do it Yourself are more aggressive properties).

Whether or not the CA will have less news when pages are reduced a couple of inches remains to be seen. And the new size may be indeed be easier to handle in cramped spaces and beneficial to trees. But other beneficiaries will no doubt include Scripps Howard and its stockholders.

A Germantown woman prominent in Republican affairs, Cherrie Holden, has decided to publicly resign from the 32-member Board of Governors of the local chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Holden, who is also a member of the state Board of Education from Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District and was a state coordinator of the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, has for the last year been one of five officers in the local NARAS chapter, holding the position of secretary-treasurer. She is business manager for High Stacks Records, which specializes in gospel recordings but recently did a retro album featuring the music of former Stax artists.

Her resignation is not meant primarily as a statement directed at the local chapter or even at NARAS at large, Holden says. She intends it as a protest against what she sees as alarming tendencies in the popular music industry — notably its acceptance of that nitty-gritty street variety known as rap.

Holden’s letter of resignation from the Board of Governors goes as follows:

“Our chapter has grown so much in the past several years and our industry has greatly changed. Along with these changes has come a very different focus for our organization. We have moved from a representative organization to a membership organization. The recognition of our art has also changed. No longer is there honor in rewarding the music industry’s finest for bringing the world music as a form of art. We find our industry now rewarding and lifting up the avocation of hate and violence through anger-filled lyrics of spoken-word obscenities known as Rap. We applaud beautiful young teenagers dressed up to allure, singing words that imply explicit knowledge well beyond their years. These are the role models that influence the youth of our nation.

“Thomas Carlyle once said, ‘Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine.’ I believe, as did Carlyle, the unique gifts we are given by God are to be used to offer this world refreshment from the daily struggles we face. So strongly do I believe that we have lost our focus that I feel I must resign from the organization that is lauding these things of which I wholeheartedly disagree. Once I believed that my service on this board could perhaps slow down or even reverse this disturbing trend by filling one position to hold an anti-vote. I was wrong and perhaps thought too highly of my personal ability to influence in this matter. I encouraged several of you serving now to join me in this effort. My apologies to you for leaving though I do encourage you to listen to your convictions.

“I hope that one day soon our country will understand the significance of rewarding that which is pure and wholesome and uplifting. I love you all and appreciate the opportunity to have worked with you.”

Holden said she had been somewhat aggrieved when the Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia won a Premier Player award from the local NARAS chapter. “They’re angry and hate-filled,” she said. “We should not glorify that stuff. I’ve mainly been on the board to represent the local gospel community and spotlight them. If that [rap] is what the people want, I can’t approve it. I guess I’ll just make room for somebody that agrees with the philosophy of the organization.”

Holden said she had a telephone conversation Tuesday with local NARAS director Jon Hornyak, who called her from Los Angeles, site of this week’s Grammy Awards celebration. “He understands my position,” Holden said. “He said his position was one of free speech, that he didn’t want to exclude any genre of music. I can understand that, too.”

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous, licentious, abominable, infernal … Not that I ever read them. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Once upon a time, and what a time it was — February 16th, 1989, to be exact — the first Memphis Flyer hit the streets (though at a slim 20 pages, the sound of it hitting the pavement wouldn’t have made much noise). There was a Bush newly installed in the White House and a story in the Flyer about pollution coming from the Velsicol Chemical corporation. Actually, it was a lot like last week’s issue, come to think of it.

But not really. Last week’s issue didn’t have a column by the late Lydel Sims speculating on the feasibility of building The Pyramid. Nor did it have a sports column by Dave Woloshin, or a list of “celebrity birthdays.” (The latter feature didn’t last long. Mainly, I suspect, because Memphis only has about six celebrities. Seven, if you count Elvis.) That first Flyer did have a few — very few — advertisers, including the Sir Laf-A-Lot comedy club (324-JOKE) and eight personals. (Oddly, even in those faraway times the women liked long walks and sunsets.)

That brave little first issue didn’t lack for spunk — or ambition. In a letter to readers, publisher and Flyer founder Kenneth Neill promised that the new paper would be “bold, sassy, controversial, entertaining, and informative.” Those are still the standards we strive for, though there have been some weeks when I’d settle for three out of five.

When I meet someone and they find out what I do for a living they usually ask one of three questions. The most common of these queries is: Where do you find all the stuff for “News of the Weird”? My stock answer is: We have our sources, pal. If you do something weird, our highly paid weird news reporters will be on it in a flash.

This, of course, is a lie. “News of the Weird” is actually a syndicated column, like Ann Landers or William Raspberry. Isn’t that weird?

The second question I hear all the time is: How do y’all make any money since your paper’s free? The answer is simple. Money just isn’t important to us. We’re all volunteers for the great liberal mass-media conspiracy and we do this noble work because we believe in our cause, comrade.

This also is a lie. But you’d be surprised how many people nod sagely, as if I’d confirmed the obvious. The truth is we charge our advertisers a modest fee so they can reach our 200,000 wealthy and influential readers — including you, my dear friend — with their messages. We manage to scrimp by on this somehow.

The third question is: What’s Tim Sampson really like? This is an easy one. Tim is just like he is in his “We Recommend” column. He lives with cats, smokes incessantly, loves Elizabeth Taylor, wakes up in his yard occasionally, and he really doesn’t care what you do. This is not a lie. I should add that he also has a heart of gold and a fondness for the underdog. Tim used to be normal, but four years of editing this newspaper took its toll. He got the first shift, when the Flyer was struggling to become established, which it did in no small measure because of his ground-breaking column and his many long nights in the office burning the midnight, um, oil.

Dennis Freeland followed Tim as editor in 1993 and for eight hard-working years ushered the paper to new heights — and numerous regional and national editorial awards. Last summer, he passed the reins to me. And foolishly, I took them. Kidding. This is a great job, mainly because of all the groundwork done by the two editors who came before me.

I’d like to mention lots of other people who’ve contributed to the Flyer’s success through the years, but their names would fill this column. So I won’t do that. But when you’ve got a moment, turn to page 13 and take a look at the masthead. Without the efforts of every person listed there the Flyer

Finally, there’s you, our readers. I’m not kidding when I say we truly value your input — your letters, phone calls, e-mails, occasional death threats — all of it.

So thanks for helping us celebrate 12 great years. And here’s to being around for a few dozen more.

He was waiting at the reception desk when I came into work last Thursday. He wore dirty jeans, a rumpled sweatshirt, and a fisherman’s cap. He had a shaggy beard and as he shook my hand I noticed his fingernails were dirty.

The receptionist said he had a story for me. This is a line I hear often and it usually makes me duck for cover. But there was something about this guy, something that led me to usher him to my office to hear what he had to say.

“My English, she is not so good,” he began, sounding a bit like Inspector Clouseau. “But I have the story, maybe you would like to buy it?”

“A story you’ve written?” I asked.

“No. I am not the writer, but I tell you my story and maybe you pay me for it.” He set a weathered leather valise on my desk.

“We don’t really do that sort of thing,” I said, looking at the wall clock.

“Oh,” he said dejectedly, fingering the valise.

“Tell me the story,” I said.

And what a story it was.

Jean-Marie Malbranque left Paris on a bicycle in 1981 with 2,500 francs to his name. He cycled — with his dog in a pull-cart behind him — through Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Sudan, and then the length of Africa. After working in South Africa for several months, he caught a freighter to Argentina and then began cycling north through Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and into French Guiana, where he met a woman who would become his companion. They remained in Giuana for several years, where Jean-Marie worked as a gold miner and welder.

Jean-Marie laid photo after photo of his adventures on my desk, along with letters from those he had met along the way and articles from newspapers in Africa and South America. They told of crocodile attacks on the Nile, camping with Sudanese bandits, a 600-mile raft voyage on the Zaire River, and the death of his dog, bitten by a snake in Brazil. I began to understand the magnitude of his journey and the measure of the quiet little man who had wandered into my office.

But there was more. A few years later he and his girlfriend bought a sailboat in Guiana and sailed north. They visited nearly every Caribbean island, then proceeded up the coast of the United States, through the St. Lawrence Seaway, through the Great Lakes, and finally down the Mississippi River — to Memphis. When he arrived here, someone told him the Flyer might want to buy his story, so he bicycled to our office.

After an hour or so, I thanked him for sharing his adventures but told him again we couldn’t pay for such information. “I understand” he said, and turned to go.

“How much money do you need?” I asked. He looked at his shoes and said he had $14 and needed money to buy boat fuel.

Wait here,” I said. I went to a nearby ATM and got $50. When I got back and gave him the money, he embraced me. “I will put you in my book,” he said. “I will not forget this.”

“Godspeed,” I said, and meant it. Then I watched him bicycle up the trolley tracks and out of sight.

That night over a glass of wine I was telling a couple of friends about my encounter with the mad Frenchman. “Yeah, right,” one of them scoffed. “He probably bicycled down from Frayser.”

“No, I saw the photos,” I said. “He said his boat’s down at the harbor. It’s probably still there.”

“Let’s go find him,” he replied. “If this guy’s real, I want to meet him.” And so we grabbed another bottle of wine (the man’s a Frenchman, after all) and headed to the harbor.

“We’re looking for a Frenchman in a sailboat,” I said to the security guard. “I’m a friend.” He looked us up and down, decided we were harmless, and pointed to a weathered but sleek-looking sailboat at the end of the dock.

We knocked on the hull and after a long moment Jean-Marie emerged, looking confused. We suddenly felt like intruders, three slightly lit-up Americans standing in the dark with a bottle of wine. Then he recognized me. “BRUCE! Mon ami! Come aboard, come aboard.”

We sat in the galley for an hour or so, looking at more photos and souvenirs of Jean-Marie’s — and his girlfriend Beverly’s — travels. We drank more wine, toasted each other, and when Jean-Marie brought out some of his leatherwork to show us we bought barrettes and tool holsters and insisted on paying more than he asked for them.

“No, you are too generous,” he said. “You give me too much.”

But he was wrong. What Jean-Marie had given us was worth every cent. Besides, if you can’t pay for a story one way, you can always try another.

The next morning his boat was gone.