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Memphis Flyer Seeks News Reporter

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The Memphis Flyer is a locally owned and operated alternative newsweekly now in its fourth
decade of asking questions, sharing stories, and keeping our community informed.

The Flyer seeks a curious and focused journalist who aims to make Memphis a better place. The reporter will conduct research, interview sources, and write engaging stories to inform, captivate, and grow our audience in the Flyer’s weekly print publication and on its daily website. The
successful candidate is self-motivated, a clear communicator, and dedicated to producing high-quality, original, local journalism.

Skills:

• Staying up-to-date on current events in Memphis to predict and cover rising news stories
Collecting, verifying, and analyzing newsworthy information through strong digital searches and a basic understanding of public records

• Strong writing skills and the ability to convey clear, concise information to the Flyer
readership

• Keeping an open mind to tell stories you won’t find in other Memphis media

• Understanding of basic AP Style and the ability to adapt to the Memphis Flyer style guide

• Interacting professionally, building a network of sources within the community, and
conducting thoughtful, direct interviews

• Shooting digital photos and videos on a smartphone

Duties and Responsibilities:
• Meeting weekly and daily story deadlines

• Evaluating leads

• Pitching story ideas to editors

• Revising and editing work for editorial approval

• Collaborating with other reporters, editors, and production staff

• Taking photographs and recording video and audio

• Analyzing facts and information to determine the most effective way to tell a story

• Abiding by journalistic ethics

Requirements:
• A creative and inquiring mind

• The ability to gather, write, and edit news

• Knowledge of current affairs in Memphis and of the Memphis media landscape

• Computer proficiency (word processing, web search, database search, photo and file
management)

• Excellent communication and active listening skills

• Integrity, morality, and grit

• Bachelor’s degree or higher

• 1-2 years relevant experience

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

People of color, women, LGBTQ candidates, and others from groups underrepresented in the publishing community are strongly encouraged to apply.

To apply, please send a letter of introduction, resume, portfolio (links to digital stories are fine), and 2-3 references to hr@contemporary-media.com. No phone calls, please.

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News

E.W. Scripps to Split Company

The following is a press release from E.W. Scripps, the parent company of the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

The E. W. Scripps Company’s board of directors has unanimously authorized management to pursue a plan to separate Scripps into two publicly traded companies, one focused on creating national lifestyle media brands and the other on building market-leading local media franchises.

The two companies that would exist after the separation would be:

— Scripps Networks Interactive, which would consist of the national lifestyle media brands and associated enterprises that operate collectively as Scripps Networks, including television’s HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, the Fine Living Television Network and Great American Country and their category-leading Internet businesses. The new company also would include online comparison shopping services Shopzilla and uSwitch and their associated Web sites. These businesses have combined annual revenue of approximately $1.4 billion and 2,100 employees.

— The E. W. Scripps Company, which would include daily and community newspapers in 17 U.S. markets; 10 broadcast television stations clustered among the nation’s largest 50 markets, including six ABC affiliates, three NBC affiliates and one independent station; the character licensing and feature syndication businesses operated by United Media; and Scripps Media Center in Washington D.C, which includes the Scripps Howard News Service. These businesses have combined annual revenue of about $1.1 billion and employ about 7,100 people.

“This is an important and logical next step for our shareholders, employees and all other stakeholders who have a direct interest in the success of our media businesses,” said Kenneth W. Lowe, president and chief executive officer for Scripps. “It’s our intention to create two publicly traded companies, each with a sharpened strategic focus that would foster continued growth, solid operating performance and a clear vision on how best to build on the specific strengths of our national and local media franchises.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A: Karanja Ajanaku

The Memphis Tri-State Defender has gone through a lot of changes recently. In June, former Commercial Appeal reporter and editor Karanja Ajanaku assumed the executive editorship. Ajanaku avoids disparaging remarks about either his previous employer or Tri-State predecessors, though he acknowledges that he brings much-needed energy to his new job.

The Tri-State also recently moved into a new office overlooking W.C. Handy Park on Beale Street, where its first office opened in 1951. — Preston Lauterbach

Flyer: Tell us about your experience in local media.

Ajanaku: I spent 14 years as a reporter, starting out general assignment. I got to see the world and find out who I was. I covered City Hall in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

How did you view the Tri-State defender when you worked for The Commercial Appeal?

My interest in the Tri-State is longstanding. I came down here to volunteer. I wanted to help. That editor, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to have that conversation with me but later claimed that the African-American reporters in town didn’t find any way to contribute to the Tri-State. I thought, These two points aren’t hooking up.

What do you see as the role of black media in Memphis?

I see myself as an agent of change. Part of the job of being an executive editor of this paper is to effect change in the community. I intend to do that. We have to eliminate ethnic hatred. That’s the number-one thing that we have to do in this town.

How does the tri-state deal with the issues facing print media with declining circulations?

It’s no secret that the Tri-State has to increase its circulation. But if you’re delivering a relevant product — as it was in the past — you will serve the community and be profitable, and that’s what I intend to do.

We have to be able to communicate, to advertisers first of all, that we can penetrate the African-American community deeper and on a broader level than [other media] in this town. Real Times Media is interested in doing what it can for us to be relevant today — to pick up from the glory days of the African-American newspaper.

Categories
News

Scripps Buys Knoxville Alt-Weekly Metro Pulse

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.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Paper Cuts

On Wednesday, March 21st, Joseph Pepe, president and publisher of The Commercial Appeal, issued a memo filled with good news and bad. He acknowledged the paper’s implementation of “many cost-saving measures” and noted the creation of nine new advertising zones. Then he dropped the bomb. “These steps have not been enough to stabilize our profitability,” Pepe wrote, announcing yet another round of employee buy-outs to reduce the Memphis Publishing Company’s payroll costs.

By week’s end, employees of three more Scripps newspapers received similar notes from their publishers. In each case, management cited declining ad revenues and stressed that “attractive” buy-out packages, with severance pay and short-term insurance plans, are a realistic, humane alternative to layoffs.

At a glance, this looks like an evenhanded act of corporate benevolence in the face of irreversibly dire circumstances. But that’s not exactly the case.

If daily newspapers are dying, it isn’t because they’re not profitable. It’s because the 15 to 20 percent profit margins that would make most CEOs giddy just aren’t enough for modern media conglomerates. And instead of making a full-frontal assault on the real problem — dwindling circulation — newspapers across the country continue to reduce the size of their products, cut staff, and lean more heavily on wire copy and reader-supplied content. Scripps has followed in the footsteps of newspaper giant Gannett, which, as newspaper scholar Aurora Wallace aptly cited, “champions the local in the abstract as it commits fewer and fewer resources to its service.”

Scripps execs pulled a head-fake in January by suggesting that the company might sell or otherwise separate itself from the “sagging” newspaper division. Then, almost immediately, they said they wouldn’t. The reversal was duly noted by Ad Age magazine in a January 22nd column explaining how Scripps — “a mid-tier media company from Cincinnati” — became a Wall Street favorite with stock prices at a 52-week high and poised to climb. Scripps has the 16th-largest online audience in the country. It’s bigger than Comcast, Viacom, G.E., and CBS. Scripps also made an expensive but wise decision to own all content created for the company’s ever-more-profitable cable holdings.

Buy-outs at the CA and other Scripps papers come on the heels of news that the projected decline in first-quarter revenue, a figure originally pegged at 5 to 7 percent, might be closer to 6 to 8 percent. The numbers don’t inspire confidence, but previous efforts to staunch the bleeding by cutting staff and gutting their newspapers have done little to attract more readers and more revenue. Does anybody really think that this time things will be different?

Newspapers across the country are struggling to maintain their big bottom lines, but Scripps is in a unique position to reinvest and rebuild its print division. Its diverse holdings and healthy outlook should create an environment conducive to enlarging newsrooms, stepping up local coverage, and broadening product visibility. But instead of reinvesting in the communities it hopes to profit from, Scripps is once again applying leeches. Consider this: The CA has reduced staff in six of the past seven years. If you think that doesn’t affect the quality of local news coverage, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

In 2006, advertisers spent $46.6 billion on daily-newspaper advertising nationwide, down 1.6 percent from 2005. Circulation took its largest plunge in 15 years. Nevertheless, newspapers remain profitable, and since they often set the editorial agenda for local radio, television, and Internet news sites, they are arguably more important and influential than ever. Scripps has taken risks in the development of its cable and Internet properties. The company has the resources to be similarly courageous with its newspapers, but instead they are in death mode.

“You’re either dying or growing,” Pepe told the Flyer in 2006. “You’ve got to pick one.” Based on the uncannily similar language in the memos distributed to Scripps employees last week, it would appear that the CA‘s parent company has made its decision.

Chris Davis is a Flyer staff writer.