AAN – Memphis Flyer

E.W. Scripps, the media conglomerate that owns the Knoxville News-Sentinel (and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, among many other newspapers), has purchased Knoxville’s alternative weekly, Metro Pulse.

Here is the full text of the note to News-Sentinal employees from publisher Bruce Hartmann:

“I am pleased to announce that the Scripps BC Development Company (the same division of Scripps that bought the Shopper-News and started Skirt! magazine) is now acquiring Metro Pulse and Knoxville Magazine. This is effective July 1, 2007.

“Metro Pulse will keep their editorial and advertising independence. At some point in the future, we will be printing our new weekly product.

“Brian Conley will remain as the Publisher of Metro Pulse but will only be involved in the editorial direction of the paper. Lisa Duncan will work with Paul Abraham and me to help manage the transition as we move forward.

“Metro Pulse is a great product with an established readership and advertiser base. We are glad to welcome them into the Scripps fold. Our relationship with Metro Pulse will be similar to the one we have with the Shopper-News and Blount Today. We will still compete with them for eyeballs and dollars, but we will add their brand to the growing list of products in the News Sentinel Media Group.”

Hmmm. Scripps now owns Knoxville’s shopper, its city magazine, its woman’s magazine, its alternative weekly, a county-wide newspaper, and its daily newspaper. Yep, sounds like “competition” for dollars will really start to boom now in Knoxville. (That is, if by “competition,” you mean every print entity in town competes to see how much money it can make for Scripps.) Sigh.

This is a big week for two big men. One is our own publisher, Kenneth Neill, whose cup surely runneth over. Early in the week he was in Denver, where, at the annual convention of the City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA), Neill — a major force, as onetime editor and as publisher, in Memphis magazine’s more than 30-year history and a onetime president of CRMA itself — received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

As edifying as that experience was for Ken, however, it may actually have taken second place this week to another honor that befell him, this time as current president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN, an umbrella organization of some 125-odd papers, including the Flyer). He was the presenter in New York of the AAN’s first annual Molly Ivins award — named for the late great columnist for The Texas Observer, who won many battles, rhetorical and otherwise, over ignorance, cant, and hypocrisy before succumbing to cancer earlier this year. That first Molly Ivins Award went to MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, who was cited for journalism that spoke “truth to power” in the Ivins tradition.

In the words of the citation: “It’s one thing to shake up the establishment, to play Paul Revere, as it were, within the pages of a progressive magazine, or on a Web site blog where many if not most readers already share the opinions of the blogger. It’s quite another to go against grain on network television, encouraging thousands if not millions of viewers to think for themselves and to dare to challenge the conventional wisdom.”

Challenging the conventional wisdom is the specialty of Olbermann. It is also the full-time occupation of publisher Ken Neill. We congratulate them both.

Keeping Hope Alive

Beginning this week, the Tennessee legislature starts getting down to business on revisions in the state’s formula for lottery-funded Hope Scholarships. There are several proposals. The one we favor is also supported by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) and by major institutions of higher learning here in Memphis.

Back in March, representatives of the University of Memphis and Christian Brothers University journeyed to Nashville to make the case for the THEC proposal.

Local colleges and universities, like those elsewhere in the state, have been experiencing a drastic attrition in their Hope Scholarship-holders from year to year. According to THEC’s figures, the number of Hope students who won scholarships in 2004 and still retained them two years later went this way: U of M, 33 percent; Rhodes College, 57 percent; CBU, 41 percent; and LeMoyne-Owen College, 15 percent.

That’s too much fall-off — disruptive both to the affected institutions and to the career plans of the students themselves. THEC is backing a bill that would stabilize the grade point average required for Hope students at 2.75 for all years. That’s the current requirement for the freshman year; as of now, a 3.0 average is mandated for subsequent years.

Critics call the proposal “dumbing down.” We call it common sense. Keeping the students in school is the best way of maximizing their potential, and the THEC proposal recognizes the longer learning curve that college life consists of in reality.