Jack Pirtle’s – Memphis Flyer

A few weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the likelihood that our readers would soon be unable to find the Flyer at local Kroger stores. It was the result of a decision made at Kroger’s corporate headquarters in Cincinnati that no free publications would be allowed in any of its stores after October 15th.

The Kroger company claimed that the decision was made because “more publications continue to shift to digital formats, resulting in less customers using the products.” (Let’s forgive them their use of “less” when they meant “fewer”; there probably aren’t many English majors in the Kroger corporate food chain.) But the fact is that while it’s true that paid print circulation is declining at many daily newspapers, it’s actually increasing at free publications.

The Flyer is a member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN), a national organization of around 100 alternative newsweeklies, many of which are in cities where Kroger is the dominant grocery retailer. AAN has started a nationwide campaign called “Don’t Lose Local News,” but frankly, it doesn’t appear to be having much effect.

Colorado Springs Independent founder John Weiss said last week that the pickup number for his publication in that city’s Krogers had grown to 17,000 in recent years. Berl Schwartz, publisher of the Lansing City Pulse, said his paper’s pickup rate in Kroger had almost tripled since 2012.

“The price of daily papers has increased steeply while content has declined just as sharply,” said Schwartz. “As a result, many readers have stopped buying print dailies. In market after market, free alternative weeklies have filled a big hole in local news.”

Weiss has launched an “un-boycott” in Colorado Springs. “Keep shopping at the stores,” he says, “but while there, ask to speak to the manager on duty to request that they keep our paper available.” In Lansing last week, the city council passed a resolution asking Kroger corporate leaders to reconsider their decision.

Similar actions are happening in other alt-weekly cities, including Cincinnati, Omaha, Salt Lake City, Oakland, and elsewhere. But barring an unlikely last-minute corporate change of mind, readers in those cities — and in Memphis — will have to start picking up their local alt-weekly at other locations.

In Memphis, 9,000 copies of the Flyer are (or were) picked up in Kroger stores each week, nearly a quarter of our circulation. The Kroger pickup rate was around 95 percent, meaning there weren’t many papers left at the end of the week — and that lots of Memphians relied on Kroger for access to the paper.

I was manning a Flyer booth at an event a couple weeks back, one of those deals where companies set up informational tables and hand out keychains and pens and other tchotchkes. We had a stack of Flyers on the table, and they went like hotcakes. I was surprised and gratified at how many folks, many of them older African Americans, told me how much they appreciated the Flyer. And many of them added, “I pick it up at Kroger every week.”

So, what are we going to do with those 9,000 papers? We’re working on it. We’re increasing the draw at many of our other locations, especially those in Midtown and Downtown. We’re currently at all locations of Cash Saver, Superlo, Huey’s, Jack Pirtle’s, Central BBQ, and any public library. We’re also adding new locations, including (as of October 15th) all CVS pharmacies and Exxon stations — with more to come.

We’ll keep you apprised as other distribution agreements are made. (Walgreens, are you listening?) If you have a suggestion or a question about locations, email our distribution manager Carrie O’Guin (oguin@memphisflyer.com).

We are also in the process of creating a pickup location guide/map that will be printed in the paper on occasion and put online permanently. In a city like Memphis, a free publication like the Flyer is a valuable source of news and information, and we intend to keep getting it into the hands of those who want to read it — Kroger or no Kroger.

If you’ve ever picked up fried chicken at Jack Pirtle’s, requested a maze or crossword puzzle for your kid at Shoney’s, or seen the balloons depicting a top hat with shoes in front of a Jim Keras car dealership on Covington Pike, you’re familiar with the work of cartoonist Greg Cravens.

In fact, you probably see Cravens’ work every week in this very paper. Cravens illustrates the Flyer‘s “What They Said” column, and he occasionally creates graphics for the cover. He’s been working with the Flyer on a freelance basis since the paper was founded in 1989. But Cravens’ work extends across the city (and even the globe).

Greg Cravens

Cravens illustrates and authors the syndicated comic strip The Buckets, which runs in about 40 papers across the globe, including papers in Australia and Thailand. He’s the guy who designed the Jack Pirtle’s logo, boxes, and cups, and years ago, he created the iconic top-hat-with-eyes “Mayor of Covington Pike” logo.

For years, he drew the Shoney Bear in that restaurant chain’s children’s activity books. He used to draw the Piggly Wiggly pig in the former Memphis-based grocery chain’s line of children’s books. He illustrates Homewood Suites’ line of children’s books that are sold in their hotel gift shops. He’s designed comic books for Backyard Burgers. He’s created artwork for the Peabody. His work is everywhere.

In the past couple of weeks, he wrapped up work on two murals. One depicts a wine cellar inside the new Pinot’s Palette location in Cordova. And the other mural is for the birds — literally. Cravens painted the Memphis skyline and the marshy Mississippi River inside The Peabody’s duck enclosure on the hotel rooftop.

But Cravens would rather be illustrating comic strips or newspaper articles.

“Murals are not my thing,” Cravens says.

His primary thing is The Buckets, a comic strip about a family with “two boys, a dog, and a mortgage.” It ran in The Commercial Appeal for months until it was suddenly dropped without explanation a few years back.

“They ran it until they dropped six cartoons from the paper, and mine was one of those,” Cravens said.

The Buckets was created by cartoonist Scott Stantis in the early 1990s, but Stantis handed the baton to Cravens in 2000, when Stantis’ kids — the inspiration for the comic — grew up. Cravens had two young kids at the time, and thanks to a background in advertising illustration, he was skilled in mimicking the styles of other artists. He was able to draw The Buckets characters in Stantis’ style for several years before adding a few tweaks in his own style.

He also authors and illustrates his own webcomic called Hubris (http://hubriscomics.com), which highlights all the outdoorsy things Cravens wishes he was doing — bike riding, skateboarding, rock climbing, kayaking.

“I started Hubris so I could own something when I sell books at [cartoonist] conventions or sell sketches or doodles. When I started doing The Buckets, syndicates still owned all the work. Later, creator rights kicked in, and you can now copyright it with your name. So The Buckets is mine now too,” Cravens said.

Cravens began his work as a cartoonist when he was just 14 years old. And, as he tells it, he’s been leaving a trail of destruction ever since.

“When I was 14, I got my first comic strip in the newspaper. It was a little weekly newspaper in Jackson, Tennessee,” Cravens says. “Three weeks later, the newspaper folded. I went off to Opryland and did caricatures when I was 16 or 17. When I left, they shut it down and turned it into a shopping mall.

“Then I went off to Memphis State and got a graphic design degree. I left there, and they changed the name of the university on me. Having left that trail of destruction, I went into advertising, thinking there’s an industry that needs a good kneecapping. You can’t kill advertising, so I went back into comic strips, and you see where newspapers are now.”

In the next few months, Cravens will be turning his attention to the 70th Annual National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards — “like our Oscars,” he says — which will be held in Memphis on Memorial Day weekend. Hundreds of cartoonists will be flying into the city to attend the show, and Cravens has entered some work to be considered for a nomination.