Tag: Daily Memphian

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Dammit Us!, the Business, Prepare, and IYKYK

Posted at The Daily Memphian

Memphis on the internet.

Dammit us!

Right here last week we poked fun at a big typo in The Commercial Appeal with a legacy headline “Dammit Gannett.” We left off a “t” at the end of Gannett in a typo-inside-a-typo-meta-Inception kind of situation. We regret the error! 

The Business

Speaking of newspapers, The Daily Memphian launched its online marketplace last week. The first item listed was an anti-circumcision book titled “This Penis Business.” History, folks. 

Prepare

Posted to Facebook by The Damn Weather of Memphis

Speaking of penises, “prepare for penetration,” wrote The Damn Weather of Memphis about last week’s bomb cycle weather event that brought cooler temps here. 

IYKYK

Posted to Reddit by u/B1gR1g
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News News Blog News Feature

MEMernet: Daily Memphian Gets Holiday Parody

Credit: Signature

A marketing firm has published an elaborate, holiday-themed parody of The Daily Memphian.

Signature, the Memphis firm, said the online newspaper had nothing to do with the parody. Instead, it was created for clients and friends of the agency for the holidays, according to Charles Marshall, the firm’s chief idea officer. Though, he said, “maybe we made it look too much like the original.” 

The parody, called The Merry Memphian, comes with headlines like “FedEx New Distribution Center at North Pole Runs Into Blizzard of Disruptions” and “Clark Tower Adding World’s Longest Fire Pole.” It also features stories from columnists that parody DM writers like Chris Merryington (Chris Herrington), Geoff Coldkins (Geoff Calkins), and Jennifer Bells (Jennifer Biggs). 

Maybe the most elaborate part of the Merry Memphian site is a poll to cast actors in a fake Craig Brewer movie called Memphis City Council: The Movie.

Credit: Signature

The poll asks who should play council chairman Frank Colvett, wrestler Jackie Fargo, cartoon character Baby Huey, or a potato. The choices to play council member Jamita Swearengen are Taraji Henson, Maxine from Batman Beyond, or Heather Hedley. 

For council member Edmund Ford Sr., the poll suggests either Usher, John Ford Sr., or cartoon character Snidely Whiplash. For Dr. Jeff Warren, the poll suggests Bradley Whitford, Colonel Sanders, or Santa Claus.

Credit: Signature

The site also comes with fake ads for local and national brands. For example, Earnestine & Hazel’s is parodied as “Earnestine & Hazmat: Voted Memphis’ Most Dangerous Place to Eat.” Huey’s is “Chewey’s: Home of The World Famous Gristle Burger.” MemPops is “MEMPups: All-Natural Dog-Flavored Pupsicles.”       

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

After the Deluge …

Sunday, the rains came — in a measurable amount for the first time since early August. September had seemed like an extension of summer dog days, with the heat lodged in the mid-90s under cloudless skies, day after day. The ground was scorched and dusty and hard as bone. But Sunday afternoon, the rains finally came — in a noisy, unruly downpour that sustained itself overnight and into the next morning.

On Monday, coffee made, I walked outside in a rain jacket, squishing across my soaked lawn to pick up the Commercial Appeal, knotted into its tiny plastic bag, sealed against the elements. I returned with wet bare feet and the feeling that fall had finally pushed its way into town.

The morning paper was thin and filled with news I’d mostly read online — sports scores I already knew and not-timely analysis from Saturday’s contests. But game analysis is game analysis, and who doesn’t like reading about their team when they win? Go, Tigers.

I can’t help it. I like a newspaper with my coffee, a ritual I can’t seem to let go of, even though the Chess Quiz guy died and that feature hasn’t been replaced, and even though I’m seldom unable to resist Word Jumble, which occupies more minutes than it should sometimes: NROPE, AZUEG, AUNAGI, HRETIM. The six-letter ones are harder.

And I like some of the CA‘s young reporters — Desiree Stennett, Micaela Watts, Jason Munz, to name three. I think the local coverage is getting better and is pretty solid, most of the time. I learn enough to keep my subscription rolling, despite the paper’s absurd print deadline.

I poured another cup of coffee and checked my email and saw the morning notice from the Daily Memphian. I went to their website and read as much as I wanted to. The DM has the best sports writing in town, for my money ($7 a month), but the utter lack of national news keeps it from being a full news source of record and gives it something of a small-town paper feel. I do think it’s a necessary read for anyone wanting to keep up with what’s going on in the city.

Then I checked Twitter — where the news begins and where the reaction to it is gratifyingly instantaneous. That’s mostly because of President Trump, who drives the national news cycle with his tweets — mostly to our detriment. Still, if you’re a news junkie and you’re not following newsmakers, pundits, journalists, and, yes, the president, on Twitter, you’re doomed to reading secondhand news, after it’s been through the spin filters.

The night before, Sunday, I’d been startled to read a tweet out of nowhere from Trump that stated he had decided to pull U.S. troops from Syria after talking to the president of Turkey, leaving our allies in the fight against ISIS — the Kurds — mostly defenseless against soon-to-invade Turkish forces. It seemed like a terrible idea.

On Monday morning, the critics agreed, including a number of Republicans who saw Trump’s move as impulsive, ill-considered, and a betrayal of a loyal ally. Even Senator Lindsey Graham, who has morphed into a groveling supplicant of the president since John McCain’s death, called Trump’s move “shortsighted and irresponsible.”

He added (on Fox News!): “This impulsive decision by the president has undone all the gains we’ve made, thrown the region into further chaos. Iran is licking their chops. And if I’m an ISIS fighter, I’ve got a second lease on life.”

The president, ever-sensitive to criticism, tweeted in response: “As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).”

And America went nuts — retweeting the president’s comment, mocking it, marveling at it, using it as a punchline, creating memes about “great and unmatched wisdom,” etc. — as America does, these days. So it goes.

I have little doubt that Graham will be back under Trump’s skirt soon, and that the seemingly endless deluge of appalling news and the flood of whistle-blown malfeasance and noisy political bloviating will continue — until whatever fate awaits us in these stormy times comes to pass. Make no mistake: A reckoning of some sort is coming. It is as inevitable as the change of seasons, as unavoidable as an overdue downpour on bone-dry ground.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Pressing On: Why Local News Matters

After I spread The Commercial Appeal on my kitchen table Tuesday morning, the first thing I read was reporter Daniel Connolly’s story on Criminal Court Judge Jim Lammey, who, it appears, is quite the racist. Lammey posted articles on Facebook that called Muslims “foreign mud,” criticized the school “integration craze,” and said, Jews should “get the f—k over the Holocaust.”

Connolly reported that Lammey shared numerous articles and memes of this sort on his Facebook page. Lammey said he accidentally switched his posts to public. Oops. Just the kind of guy you want making decisions about immigrants, right? Which, among other things, is exactly what Lammey does. He did say his best friend was Jewish, so there’s that. Go read the story. It’s nauseating.

This is the part where I tell you that if it weren’t for a local journalist doing some solid reporting, I wouldn’t have known any of this. And if you didn’t read the CA, you wouldn’t have known about it either, until you read this column. The larger point being, stories like this one are why local journalism matters, now more than ever. Without journalists, those who hold public office can get away with just about anything — with your taxpayer dollars picking up the tab.

For another example, read Jackson Baker’s column this week on how fallout from the state’s absurd school-voucher bill could impact Shelby County’s 2020 budget. Where else can you find reporting from someone who spends a couple of days a week in Nashville covering the legislative clown show, then returns to Memphis to cover the county commission? Nowhere but the Memphis Flyer.

There’s also fine local reporting coming from The Daily Memphian website, and at several local nonprofit reporting organizations. They’re all important. They’re all vital to a well-informed citizenry. Give them your support and your money (cough, support.memphisflyer.com). It’s a small amount compared to what a couple of crooked officials can cost you, or a boondoggle geared to a politically connected developer, or, well, you name it. There are any number of ways those in power can quietly utilize public funds for mischief.

It’s the press’ job to keep that mischief in check by bringing it into the light, which is why a report from the Governing.com website this week is so troubling. As the report states: “One in five Americans now lacks regular access to local media coverage. Studies show this is bad for politics, municipal debt — and even the environment.”

In 2018, more than 2,000 journalists lost their jobs, a trend that has been ongoing for more than a decade: “… newspaper closures and declining coverage of state and local government in general have led to more partisan polarization, fewer candidates running for office, higher municipal borrowing costs, and increased pollution.”

That’s a hell of a laundry list. More from the report: “Since 2004, some 1,800 newspapers have closed entirely. … In many other places, newspapers are ‘ghosts’ of their former selves. … Nearly half the counties in the U.S. have only one newspaper.”

And as local media coverage dies, the void gets filled by national news and opinion, most of it spread through social media; that’s all those links to politically charged stories that appear on your friends’ Facebook pages. And that means we are becoming less informed about local issues — the ones that affect us the most — and less engaged with local government. The corollary is that we’re more engaged with national issues, which has led to more political polarization — why you now get in internet fights with that guy you used to like in high school.

Making matters worse is the fact that more and more people (including nine out of 10 Republicans!) don’t trust the media. The mantra of “Fake News!” is taking its toll. And we’re all the worse for it.

But no matter how often a certain president says it, the press is not “the enemy of the people.” Quite the contrary. America’s Founding Fathers made freedom of the press a part of the First Amendment, and there’s a reason it was the first. An uneducated and uninformed public is more vulnerable to demagoguery and more easily manipulated. So, please support your local press. It’s more important now than our forefathers could ever have imagined.

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

News Makers 3: Media Talk with Wendi Thomas of MLK50 and Storyboard’s Mark Fleischer

This post is supplemental to the Memphis Flyer cover package Going to Pieces about the state of print journalism in Memphis. This, and other posts featuring additional commentary by Wendi Thomas of MLK50, Jacinthia Jones of Chalkbeat.org, Eric Barnes of The Daily Memphian, and Mark Fleischer of StoryBoard Memphis were created to include voices and ideas that didn’t make it into the main story.

Wendi Thomas

Every day I wake up and discover I’m not on the wrong side of Wendi Thomas’  Twitter feed, is a good day.  I kid, but  when I typed that I’m pretty sure I heard a faint chorus of voices from Memphis’ political and business communities saying “Amen.” And that’s a good thing. Whether she’s dragging area media because newsroom diversity (and its lack), determines content and perspective, or calling out bosses who won’t pay a living wage, Thomas is one of Memphis’ most critical journalists — castigatory, elucidative, and vital.

In spite of her long history as a columnist and editor for The Commercial Appeal, I didn’t sit down with Thomas to talk about struggling dailies or the print journalism business. We didn’t get too deep into discussing the reporters she’s cultivated and work she’s published online as founder of the digital “Justice Through Journalism” forum, MLK50, either. I asked Thomas to help me develop a working definition of “information justice,” a topic I’ll come back to in future posts. But some of our conversation did overlap with the Memphis Flyer cover story, Going to Pieces, so I’m sharing some lightly edited excerpts that complement both Jacinthia Jones’s vision for mass partnership and Madeline Faber’s thoughts about transparency and engagement.

Like Jones and Faber, Thomas thinks outside the traditional newspaper bundle. She shared some common sense ideas for distributing less commodified, hyper-local news directly with those the news most likely affects.

Memphis Flyer: I want to talk about information justice but I’m not completely sure I know what I mean by that.

Wendi Thomas: I think information justice starts with “just us” — and who the “us” is. The media doesn’t provide everybody with the information they need to live better lives, or make better decisions about things that are critical — housing, shelter, you know… I read a story about FedEx expansion plans. There’s new tech for getting boxes on planes but not a word about how this might affect employment. When you’re writing with an eye toward justice, these are the kinds of questions you’d ask. So that story wasn’t written for people who work in the hub, or even worried that they might have to ever work in the hub.


I try to imagine a media environment where the information people —low income people in particular — need to make better choices is accessible without too much expense or hassle. And I wonder who profits from the current media environment, where you have to make an effort to get information.

WT: I’ve never found out much about it, but you’ve probably seen a quote I tweet: “If you want to solve any problem in America, don’t study who suffers from it, study who profits.” That’s a huge gap missing in journalism as a whole. There are exceptions, like reporting about expensive calls from the jail. That story was out one week. The next week we weren’t going to make juveniles pay to call their parents anymore. Period, full stop. Public policy can be changed quickly in ways that affect vulnerable people. But somebody has to systematically examine industries, and government organizations, to find where those places are.

I don’t know anything about that quote’s provenance, but I’ve seen you share that and thought it was absolutely right.

WT: I was at a people-powered publishing conference where they were talking about, instead of trying to put our middle class selves in the shoes of a person in poverty, they should be involved in every step of the process. In my 25 years in journalism, this is something I’ve only done sporadically. We tend to think, you know, you report the story
– you go out and talk to the people, you write the story, you do the follow-up. But what if we completely dismantled that process? What if people are involved at every step, and you report on your reporting, in maybe less formal ways. Maybe it’s not 8 paragraphs or 400 words. Maybe it’s using Facebook Live or posting in a group. We talk about growing audience. Part of growing our audience is involving people in the process, and not always deciding what’s best.

You see that kind of transparency sometimes. I’m thinking of the Washington Post’s investigation of the Trump Foundation, which involved posting notebooks, and keeping the process front and center. That changed things a little. But the level of engagement you’re describing is still rare, I think.

WT: It’s not built into our process. Your editor’s going to ask you, “Do you have art?” “Do you have diverse sources?” They’re not going to ask you, “How many times you engaged the people most affected by this?”

Let’s talk for a minute about how people get information, which obviously isn’t always the same as “news.” People weren’t always coming to the newspaper bundle for news. There are entertainment listings, housing and help wanted ads. Now people with public service information partner to multiply resources. Like if you’re doing a voter registration drive, you might piggyback with a health services opportunity, and engage people in barber shops and other third spaces. Can newsrooms learn from that?

WT: The library may be a more economically diverse third space. If we’re rethinking how we distribute information, there’s this system where you can send direct mail. Political candidates do it all the time, but I’ve never seen a journalist use it. So, say you’re writing something about 38126, which I think is the poorest zip code. So what if you used direct mail to distribute stories or solicit information in 38126? Or, you know, use the inserts you get in your MLGW bill? What if there was something in that? Or billboards? I have seen the Commercial Appeal do a little bit of that. Smaller outlets probably think they can’t afford billboards. But what if a non-profit found a way to underwrite [it] and every week maybe they worked with a different [news] outlet?

For justice-forward reports you can follow MLK50 — now part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network here.
————————————————————————————————-

Mark Fleischer says he’s heartened by the changes he’s seen at The Commercial Appeal since they hired new staff. But when Fleischer’s monthly newspaper Storyboard Memphis was in the works, Memphis’ daily was, “getting worse by the day.”

Fleischer, a California transplant now living in Midtown, describes himself as an urban studies enthusiast and “news junkie.”

“I started talking to people and realizing how many other stories need to be told,” he says. “And people have no means to tell them.” That’s when Fleischer, who’d already been blogging about Memphis, got an idea to start a digital magazine. That idea evolved into Storyboard Memphis, a monthly  broadsheet-style newspaper with original historical and urban-themed reporting, supplemented with news articles from many of Memphis’s digital-only news organizations like Chalkbeat and High Ground News.

Memphis Flyer: An online magazine sounds great, but how does it work? It’s tough putting even quality content behind a paywall if it’s not unique or if similar content is available somewhere else free.

Mark Fleischer: I didn’t see a digital magazine taking off. A couple of guys we all know in publishing said, “You should think about print.”… It took a year for me to convince myself that was doable… For-profit seemed the most straightforward way to go. I don’t want to be chasing non-profit money all the time.

You’ve solved at least part of the newsroom riddle by aggregating content from several of Memphis’s digital-only content providers, which is great for a lot of reasons. You get content, they get a sampler platter where they’re included in one nicely curated space with all these other information providers you’d have to track down individually online. Also, the digital divide — there are a lot more people who aren’t online than most people think.

Mark Fleischer: I remember thinking, if I can just convince High Ground to partner with me, and I can be their print medium. Then I’ve really got something.

The kind of deep dives into neighborhoods High Ground does seems like it really lends itself to the urbanist-focused work you’re doing.

Mark Fleischer: Yes. And I talked to Tom Jones at Smart City — same thing.

Another good fit.

Mark Fleischer: I realized, the more I talked about this, the more I realized there was an appetite for print. Maybe more like a hunger.

And there’s already all this content out there…

Mark Fleischer: It’s out there. But it’s out there in digital format. When I came up with Storyboard, I originally thought about telling a stories through all media: audio, podcast, video, photography, art. All that. Well, there’s no reason I can’t do that in print. Not audio and video, obviously, but we can certainly use the medium and get as close to that as possible… High Ground isn’t going to print any time soon. It’s just not in their model. Tom Jones can’t go to print, he doesn’t have enough content. But together we do have enough content. It’s like showing all the work being done by High Ground and Smart City and all these other niche publications.

Storyboard also features original reporting by Fleischer, fiction, poetry, puzzles, and children’s pages. Distribution is free but not forced. It’s available in coffee shops and other public places around Memphis.

This is the last supplemental post to the Memphis

Eric Barnes

 Flyer cover story Going to Pieces. For readers interested in a more in depth conversation with Daily Memphian executive editor, Eric Barnes, he and I spoke at length shortly after the digital daily’s 2018 launch.  Our more recent conversation, was brief and to the point, so there wasn’t really enough leftover content to make a stand-alone post.

Categories
News News Feature

News News

The big media suspense story of 2018 came to an end Wednesday, August 8th when the board of Tribune Media voted to terminate a controversial and law-bending $3.9 billion merger with Sinclair TV. This deal would have made WREG Channel 3, Memphis’ top-rated TV news station, a Sinclair property, and Memphis a new market for a company with unprecedented national reach and defined by a history of delocalization and forced right wing content.

Now, with Sinclair solidly in the rearview mirror, Tribune has entered into a new agreement with another giant, Nexstar. This latest development could alter the Memphis media landscape considerably.

According to a Bloomberg report, Nexstar plans to stay just below the FCC ownership cap by divesting in 13 markets. One of these markets will almost certainly be Memphis, where the company already owns WATN-24 and WLMT-30, which function as a content/staff-sharing duopoly.

The Daily Memphian

In print — if that’s the right descriptor — the year’s biggest news was the birth of a new, ambitiously scaled digital-only news source. The Daily Memphian launched online in September. Executive editor Eric Barnes said the venture became necessary when Memphis’ traditional “newspaper of record,” the Gannett-owned Commercial Appeal, lost considerable editorial autonomy. Many of the new startup’s first hires were marquee reporters and columnists siphoned away from the CA — refugees from the increasingly non-local local newspaper. This harvesting of established talent allowed the new enterprise to generate considerable local interest, but it also resulted in an exciting new thing looking a lot like the declining newspaper that made The Daily Memphian a necessity.

The second biggest news in print is The Commercial Appeal‘s comeback after being displaced by a parent company eager to sell the real estate, and relieved of its institutional memory and talent by a new startup. Losing so much top-of-payscale reporters and columnists allowed the hobbled daily paper to staff up like it hasn’t been able to in years. And, while it’s still plagued by embarrassing mistakes, the result of a careless and clueless out-of-town editing process, the CA still managed to break the most relevant and change-making investigative report in recent memory.

“For the dozens of children currently separated from their families while awaiting trial inside the Shelby County Juvenile Court and Detention Center, the cost of calling home often presents a barrier to keeping in touch with their parents,” Sarah Macaraeg wrote in a detailed report showing how Shelby County’s contract with phone service provider GTL brought in a million dollars annually. Within a week, steps were taken by County Mayor Lee Harris and Commissioner Tami Sawyer to make phone calls from juveniles to their parents or guardians cost-free.

Gannett Co’s Q3 earnings contained some good news for The Commercial Appeal‘s parent company. Digital revenue is up by $3.3 million over last year. Unfortunately, digital gains couldn’t keep pace with the $5.5 million in revenue lost from declining circulation. Publishing revenue is down $43.9 million with advertising and marketing taking a $26.5 million hit.

The disappointing economic news arrived shortly after Gannett’s latest letdown to loyal print subscribers. Deadlines weren’t extended to allow for even rudimentary coverage of the midterm elections.

Following the Q3 report, Gannett sent out a company-wide memo offering early retirement to employees 55 or older who’ve been with the company for at least 15 years. Then, USA Today Network president Maribel Wadsworth, told Gannett employees it was time, “to think about our overall cost structure in alignment with profitability.

“We will be a smaller company,” she said, promising there would be no major layoffs before the holidays. What happens in January remains to be seen.

The Daily Memphian isn’t the only ambitious launch of 2018. Storyboard Memphis is a new monthly printed paper featuring original urbanist-oriented reporting and a curated selection of news stories taken from Memphis area websites.

More good news: ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning digital newsroom, selected Wendi Thomas and her MLK50 Justice Through Journalism project to join its Local Reporting Network. Thomas described the announcement as a “vote of confidence in the importance of this work.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Marsha, Trader Joe’s, and Ruby’s Stool

The week that was …

“Hi, y’all! My name’s Marsha and I’m a big Tigers fan! Check out my blue dress! Anyhoo, I’m just wondering if y’all could do me a little ol’ favor. Could you just cheer, ‘Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!’ while my, um, brother films it for Facebook? It’ll be so fun and it won’t take but a few seconds. Y’all are soooo cute.”

University of Memphis Cheerleaders (in unison): “SURE, WHY NOT? SURE, WHY NOT? MARSHA, MARSHA, MARSHA!”

The above scenario is just my guess about what happened at the Liberty Bowl, Friday night, when senatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn showed up for the Memphis-Georgia State game and got the Memphis cheerleaders to “endorse” her. I could be wrong, of course.

State-connected schools are not allowed by law to endorse candidates. The cheerleaders obviously didn’t know the law, and apparently neither did Blackburn, unless she chose to ignore it. She then tweeted the video and posted it on her Facebook page, adding, “Marsha Loves Memphis!”

That tactic quickly garnered Blackburn the wrath (and snark) of many Memphians, who prefer Senate candidates who don’t dodge a Memphis debate, then show up for a football game and “borrow” our cheerleaders.

The university was not amused: “The Athletics Office was notified that pictures of the University of Memphis Spirit Squads were posted on political social media sites. U of M Spirit Squads do not endorse any candidate(s) for political office in accordance with U of M policies. Political organizers were contacted to remove any and all posts suggesting endorsement by the University of Memphis.”

Presumably, the candidate learned that Memphis is not fond of faux fans who appropriate local culture.

Speaking of local culture … Trader Joe’s, opened a store in Germantown last week. The crowds were huge, lining up outside to get a chance to buy the store’s signature line of groceries and beverages, including “Two Buck Chuck” wine, which now costs a little more than three bucks. Sadly, “Three Dollars and 47 Cents Chuck” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, but who’s counting?

The only real snafu was the fact that the store gave out souvenir cloth bags emblazoned with “Nashville! Music City.” Ouch. More like “Traitor Joe’s,” amirite?

In an attempt to quiet the miffed social media masses, a poster on the Trader Joe’s Germantown Facebook fan page offered this explanation: “Having a city bag is a legacy that TJ’s bestows upon existing stores after they have been around for awhile. New stores do not get their own bags — basically they have to ‘pay their dues’ before getting a bag (my words, not TJ’s). Nashville JUST got their custom bag after YEARS of having a TJ’s. Our time will come if we show the store good service and loyalty!”

Well, okay then. Here’s hoping Memphis pays its dues, behaves itself, and soon becomes bag-worthy.

What else? Oh, Nike announced increased sales and new highs for its stock prices. The “boycott” by angry septagenarian white men apparently fizzled, when many of them mistakenly threw out their New Balance mall-walking shoes, which have a big “N” on the side. It’s understandable. Initials can be confusing. For example, did you know that the “N” on the Nebraska football helmets stands for “Knowledge”? Didn’t think so.

And speaking of Music City … Rolling Stone reported that 85-year-year-old Loretta Lynn has released a new song called “Ruby’s Stool.” Which, it turns out, is about Ruby’s barstool and not the first image that came to my mind, considering Loretta’s age. Pro tip: Never use the word “stool” in a song title.

And finally, the digital Daily Memphian news-site launched on Monday with stories by, among others, former Commercial Appeal writers Marc Perrusquia, Geoff Calkins, Tom Bailey, and Jennifer Biggs. The site looked good, and I signed up for the $7-a-month subscription. The more reporting we get in Memphis, the better.

And I’m taking it as a good sign that someone almost immediately created a Daily Memphian parody account on Twitter.

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Q&A with Eric Barnes, President and Executive Editor of The Daily Memphian

CREDIT: Chris Davis

Chris Davis

Eric Barnes

The Daily Memphian, a new, ambitiously scaled and digital-only print news source, launched online this week. When the venture was announced earlier this year, the company’s president and executive editor Eric Barnes said such a venture became necessary when Memphis’ traditional “newspaper of record,” the Gannett-owned Commercial Appeal, lost considerable editorial autonomy. Many of the new startup’s first hires were marquee reporters and columnists siphoned away from the CA — refugees from the increasingly non-local local newspaper.

Barnes recently spoke with The Flyer in a brief but far-ranging conversation about sustainability, availability, representative news rooms, and the potential risks and rewards of going big and all digital.

Memphis Flyer: Obviously, you’re not starting from nothing. You’re building off The Daily News‘ legacy with so much banner talent direct from The Commercial Appeal. But with this launch, The Daily Memphian goes from zero to light speed in some ways. There’s lots of digital news out there, but a startup daily of this scale is barely charted territory. Do you feel the eyes of the industry on you or are you too busy to worry about all that?

Eric Barnes: I’m not worried about industry pressure, and there are people watching us. It’s been interesting. When we started talking to people nationally about other startup digital dailies, we talked to everybody from this really cool little website in Philadelphia to the Graham family that used to own The Washington Post and still owns a bunch of TV stations. It became clear that what we were after was quite a bit bigger and more ambitious than what other people were doing — and they were still incredibly encouraging about doing it.

Most people that have started something like this — for profit or nonprofit — have started very small and grown. We made the calculated decision that we would go big and launch with a really big staff, making a lot of noise by hiring talented, popular writers. And we would come out with a big editorial mission rather than a small mission we’d then expand upon. I think by and large nobody’s done that. At least none I’ve found. Though I’m sure someone from Des Moines or somewhere will call me tomorrow and I don’t mean any disrespect.

Subscription is hard. The tech is hard. The customer service is crazy hard. And on top of the mechanics, you also need unique content people are willing to pay for in addition to what they already pay just for digital access. And all of that’s in the context of a redundant media environment where the same information may be available in other spaces, often for free. How are you navigating all of this?

A few things. We wanted to come out with a good subscription signup process. So we went with a company called Piano. They handle everybody from Condé Nast’s online magazines on down. We wanted it to be simple, so there’s only one offer. We’ll have other offers down the road. But we wanted to be $7 a month, first month free. Don’t have to think about it or choose. I think a lot of online publications fail because they make it so hard to sign up. There are lots of options. You’ve got to tie it to your print subscription. You’ve got to enter a special code. It’s all intentional and understandable, but we wanted to keep it simple.

I’m probably going to overuse the word sustainability, so I’ll apologize for that in advance. You guys had, I think, $7 million at startup, which is pretty great. But this is a business where community-spirited billionaires with nothing but the best of intentions have struggled with the cost of building and keeping modern newsrooms. Is there enough revenue and readership in Memphis to support two full capacity dailies?

Obviously, we think so, but it’s not proven yet. We think our projections are modest and doable. We’re talking about, by year 5, having over 20,000 paid subscribers at a relatively low price point. We may go up from $7, but we’re not going to go up dramatically.
I’m not going to give you the paid subscription numbers that we have now, but I will say we’ve exceeded our expectations at launch quite dramatically. So, early signs are good but there’s no doubt it’s unproven. This is uncharted territory. I think we do know, to be a daily news source of high quality, and have the number of journalists you need to do that, I don’t think it can be free. There’s a place for free papers, I’m not saying it’s an impossible model. But to have a newsroom of over 20-people, covering the city on a daily basis, there’s not enough ad dollars out there. So many advertising dollars go to Google and Facebook, and there’s not enough left for the rest of us. We are going to have advertising, and we do have advertising. And we’ve exceeded our numbers on that too. But there’s definitely risk involved.

Do you hope to eventually be fully reader supported? You throw out the number 20,000 paid subscribers in 5 years. With $7 a month subscriptions, is that the number or is there a target number of subscribers for reader-supported sustainability?

Our goal is definitely to be sustainable so we don’t have to live grant to grant and constantly be raising money. For us to fulfill a mission of high quality journalism, people are going to have to participate in that. You see it at the national level. At the big metro papers like Boston.com, Philly.com, Seattle — papers that are below the New York Times but bigger than Memphis. They’re all going harder and harder on their pay wall. And they’re seeing success. It all comes back to, whether you’re for profit or not, you want to run your publication like a business. You want to pay your own way and don’t want to be forever dependent on fundraising.

Non-profit has been a big buzz in media for a while and I get a lot of it. But what I often find myself telling people is it’s not some kind of magic status that makes all the sustainability problems go away. All the same essential challenges exist. You’ve got to attract and retain an audience while also covering payroll. And you’ve got to provide content people want badly enough to pay for it. So maybe we can address myths and realities of non-profit, and how maybe it changes what you do as a publisher.

It doesn’t change a lot. There aren’t a lot of limitations that come with that status. We can’t do endorsements, but I don’t know that we would have done endorsements anyway. More and more local papers are moving away from endorsements. There are at least 200 non-profit news sources online around the country. Some have chosen a niche or advocacy, but there’s a full range of stuff. I tell people all the time, one of the most successful businesses in Memphis has to be Methodist hospitals, and they’re a non-profit. But a very sustainable non-profit. Revenue producing. High-quality employer and a big contributor to the community. I’m with you 100%, non-profit doesn’t solve the problem. And non-profit doesn’t make it easier.

You say you can’t endorse. But does this change in any way how you cover government or politics otherwise? Also, you’re a non-profit, but you sell ads? How does that work?

It does not affect the way we’re covering government or politics. There is a difference between advertising and sponsorship and if we bring stuff in that’s deemed to be advertising in the eyes of the IRS, it probably means we end up paying taxes on it. And that’s fine.

Watching our non-profit cultural institutions grow over the years I’ve noted how they are shaped by and service their audience and donor community — which they should, and even have to to survive. But it’s not the same as reflecting and serving the community at large. That’s a tough line to walk and I wonder how will TDM be publicly and proactively transparent?

One thing is, we’re trying to be as accessible as possible to civic groups, clubs, churches, or anybody who wants to get one of us to come speak. And I don’t mean that in a token way. It’s very interesting to meet people and hear what they like and what they are interested in and want. The board is transparent. All the board members are listed on the website. Beyond that, there are some things we won’t be transparent about. Somebody said everything we do editorially should be transparent and public. But I’m not going to do that. There are a lot of stories we’re working on and we want to be first to publish. So there’s a certain amount of privacy. In the end, what matters is what we do on the site and that we’re judged by the work we do on the site.

Can the public view your financials? See big donors. Is any of that required on your 990 tax form?

Everything required to be on 990s will be on 990s. The money’s been donated anonymously and that’s kosher. The money went through the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis and so that’s not required to be disclosed.

A lot of pre-launch criticism has focused on representation in the newsroom. I don’t want to be too redundant, but I tend to agree that when you take a birds eye view — or almost any view — there does appear to be a crisis of representation in Memphis print media. Do you think it’s a crisis? And, given an opportunity to build a newsroom from the ground up in a majority African-American city did you have any kind of strategy for building a more representative newsroom?

We were very intentional in trying to build as diverse a newsroom as we could. Both male and female and with people of color. We got close with female participation. We’re somewhere in the 45-percent range. We fell short on what we would have liked for people of color. We’re going to be 20-25-percent African American. That’s pretty standard. I’m not making excuses, but that’s just kind of the world we live in. The number of people of color in journalism is very, very small. The CA was in that range. Otis Sanford has talked at length about it. This has been a problem as long as he’s been in journalism. Even when newspapers were making huge profits, they were not able or did not find ways to crack that code and find ways to make newsroom more representative.

When we were hiring we had criteria. We wanted people with a print journalism background. We wanted people who had daily or near daily experience because the grind of that is not to be taken lightly. And we wanted people who are in Memphis and had covered Memphis for a long time. That meant we weren’t going to go out of market. And we weren’t going to hire kids out of college. So our pool of people was very small. That also meant, when a handful of African Americans turned us down for various reasons, our pool got really, really small. I’m proud of the people we’ve hired.

I get it. We see the world through our own eyes. I try see the world as broadly as I can but I’m still a 50-year-old white guy from Tacoma, Washington. That’s why it’s important for all companies, maybe newsrooms in particular, to be diverse. Because we see things through our own lens. The other part of this, I’ve said, and will keep saying, is that we should be judged by the work we do. If day after day after day the front page is a bunch of 60-year-old white guys who work and live on the Poplar corridor, then I’ve failed miserably. If the stories we write about don’t look like Memphis in all its complexity and diversity then we’ve failed.

We’ll come back to this more in depth later. I also want to talk about the digital divide a little. And also briefly, because I want to revisit this in depth at a later date in regard to another project I’m working on. But the post-pulp environment creates information monopolies. There’s this idea that “everybody has a phone,” but in reality there are so many obstacles to digital access. Is there a strategy for serving the whole community or are we approaching a kind of trickle-down theory of information?

We are going to be as aggressive and smart and creative as we can be in getting access to The Daily Memphian regardless of whether or not they can afford it. We don’t want to leave people out. Simple things. I believe we’re already free in the Shelby Co. libraries. We’ll get to the suburban libraries soon. We’re free to all teachers. We’ll possibly be free in schools and other public spaces where we can take down the paywall and make access available. Then we’re going to talk to more and more people. And I’m open to ideas about how we balance financial sustainability with access.

And can I say one more thing on the diversity front?

Sure.

We will be starting an internship program that’s for everybody — black, white, male, female. But we will have a particular emphasis for people of color getting into journalism. That’s another small but important way we can start getting more African-Americans, and more people of color into journalism.

The Daily Memphian is available now at  dailymemphian.com

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‘Daily Memphian’ to Launch in Fall

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Toby Sells

Eric Barnes, president/executive editor of The Daily Memphian, unveils details of the new online newspaper on Monday.

Official details emerged Monday about the city’s newest media outlet, an online-only newspaper called The Daily Memphian, including the facts that the paper will have a paywall, will cost $7 per month, will be funded initially by a nonprofit, and will launch in the fall.

Rumblings, rumors, and speculation about the new publication began in May, with a post on the Smart City Memphis Blog. After that post came the departures of some of The Commercial Appeal’s most-known names — sports columnist Geoff Calkins, food and dining writer Jennifer Biggs, and editor and columnist Chris Herrington.

Similar departures of other key CA newsroom staff have followed, including reporters Clay Bailey, Tom Bailey, Marc Perrusquia, Wayne Risher, and photographer Jim Weber. Reporters have departed other newspapers, too, including Elle Perry and Michelle Corbet from the Memphis Business Journal. The current editorial staff from The Daily News will join The Daily Memphian as well.

Organizers of the new paper called themselves “a concerned group of Memphians, including key journalists and media professionals, recognizing the need for a strong, locally produced media sources.”

Eric Barnes, president and executive editor of The Daily Memphian, said the need for a new local publication came as The Commercial Appeal has been reduced in size and staffing and has lost local control. Gannett Co., the newspaper’s corporate owner, is based in Virginia. Much of the copy-editing, design, and other functions of The Commercial Appeal are out-sourced elsewhere.

“This effort will be of Memphis, not only in Memphis,” said Barnes. “The team will cover a wide range of Memphis-focused news, including politics and government, community and neighborhood issues, education, business and economic development, sports, arts and culture, and much more.”

James Overstreet, current editor of The Memphis Daily News, will be editor in chief. Terry Hollahan, also of The Daily News, will be managing editor.

The Memphian will also enter a joint venture with The University of Memphis Institute for Public Service Reporting. That unit will be led by Perrusquia and advised by former CA editor, Louis Graham. Investigative news stories created in the Institute will be published in The Memphian.

Here’s a full list of The Daily Memphian’s staff, as announced Monday:
Eric Barnes, president/executive editor
James Overstreet, editor-in-chief
Terry Hollahan, managing editor
Kate Simone, associate editor
Jim Weber, photo editor
Jennifer Biggs, food and dining editor
Geoff Calkins, columnist
Chris Herrington, columnist
Michael Nelson, columnist
Otis Sanford, columnist/editor at large
Clay Bailey, reporter
Tom Bailey, reporter
Michelle Corbet, reporter
Bill Dries, reporter
Yolanda Jones, reporter
Jonah Jordan, reporter
Elle Perry, reporter
Wayne Risher, reporter
John Varlas, reporter
Don Wade, reporter
Omer Yusuf, reporter
Kyra Cross, designer/copy editor
Yvette Touchet, designer/copy editor
Holly Weber, designer/copy editor
Houston Cofield, photographer
Patrick Lantrip, photographer/videographer
Natalie Chandler, video/podcast production
Madeline Faber, editor, High Ground News, in partnership
Jacinthia Jones, Chalkbeat TN, in partnership

Barnes said the staff will likely grow as the paper gets closer to its fall debut.

Toby Sells

Andy Cates, general partner and CEO of RVC Outdoor Destinations, serves as the chairman of Memphis Fourth Estate Inc., the nonprofit organization responsible for raising capital for The Daily Memphian.

The nonprofit behind The Daily Memphian is called Memphis Fourth Estate Inc. That organization is led by Andy Cates, general partner and CEO of RVC Outdoor Destinations.

Look for an updated story in this week’s print edition of the Memphis Flyer.