MBQ – Memphis Flyer

Contemporary Media Inc., publisher of Memphis, The Memphis Flyer, and Memphis Parent, has announced that, beginning with the February/March 2015 issue, MBQ: Inside Memphis Business will carry a new, streamlined name — Inside Memphis Business.

The regional business-to-business publication, originally launched in 2006, has gone through an evolution over the past decade, beginning life as Memphis Business Quarterly before going to its current publication schedule of six times a year in 2012. “The new name evokes a new outlook,” says Richard Alley, editor of Inside Memphis Business. “We’re looking to be more engaged with the business community of Memphis and to bring its leaders and experts in on the discussion. Conversely, we’ll be taking a closer look at those industries and their leaders, getting inside to tell their stories, spotlight best practices, and learn what it is that makes them tick.”

The magazine will also work more closely with area nonprofits and the world of philanthropy. Along with the name change and redesign of the layout in the February/March issue, the magazine has unveiled its “Dig Deep for Memphis” campaign, working with local nonprofits and the companies that support them to raise awareness for both.

The newest issue of Inside Memphis Business features its annual CEO of the Year Awards, highlighting leadership in four categories based on employee numbers, as well as an in-depth story on the current state of Memphis International Airport and the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority. New departments include snapshot views of various industries including sports, law, tourism, dining, and higher education. Columnists featured are David S. Waddell of Waddell & Associates, John Malmo of archer>malmo, and Douglas Scarboro with the Office of Talent and Human Capital for the city of Memphis.

Best line of the week: “Burger King,” by developer Henry Turley to the ambulance crew member who asked which hospital he wanted to be taken to after he passed out while chairing a board meeting for Sun Trust Bank this week. He blamed his fall on cold medications and a lack of breakfast and declined an overnight stay in the hospital. He is doing fine.

The CEOs of two of our biggest companies were in the news Thursday. On CNBC, FedEx CEO Fred Smith said the U.S. economy is growing but not at a rate high enough to absorb the increase in population. He recommended that the government enhance capital investment, keep exploring fuel sources not dependent on Middle Eastern nations, and change the tax code provisions that penalize profits made abroad. Smith said 43 percent of FedEx world management team is minorities and women. And he said the Post Office “is run by a very competent man who was in Memphis last week to talk to our managers.” That would be Patrick Donahoe.

An hour later, International Paper CEO John Faraci was on a web conference for IP’s fourth-quarter and annual financial report. He said IP had its “best financial results in almost two decades.” The company, which has some 2,400 employees in the Memphis area, transformed itself in 2010, selling its land portfolio, cutting costs, and preparing the way for $1.5 billion in capital investments in 2012. I interviewed Faraci later that day for an upcoming story in our MBQ magazine. Things I didn’t know until this week: IP’s North American mills get 73 percent of their energy from renewable sources and IP is the recycler of 12 percent of all paper that is recycled.

Egypt has raised the standard for violence at sporting events with a riot that killed 74 people. My friend Mohamad Elmeliegy, who came to Memphis from Cairo, told me he was saddened but not surprised by the bad news. In a column in September he said Egypt is new to democracy and “has been governed by the military since the pharaohs.”

Don’t put your sponsors in the position of having to talk about abortion. That’s the lesson of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure turnabout this week, according to a colleague in our marketing department who is familiar with the Memphis Race for the Cure in Germantown every year. Komen had said earlier this week it would cease to fund grants for breast cancer screening to Planned Parenthood under new rules to tighten eligibility. “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” Komen said in a statement on Friday signed by its board of directors and its founder Nancy Brinker.