I’ve been starting and leading local journalism outlets for a long time—and for the last 23 years back here in my home state of Mississippi. My return-home-whether-or-I-wanted-to-or-not homing device had started buzzing when I was finishing up my mid-career master’s degree in journalism at Columbia in early 2001. I had actually come back to my hometown over spring break to work on a project about historic racism here, and it made me want to do more journalism in the place I’d fled the day after I graduated from Mississippi State in 1979. I had never reported in Mississippi until then.
For his part, my non-Mississippian life partner Todd Stauffer agreed to come here “for six months” because our legal Manhattan sublet was running out. Some of you will understand his pain on that front. So we moved into a fun duplex in Belhaven and then rented a second apartment on Fortification as my office—we were used to New York prices, and damn, Jackson seemed cheap—so I could write a book. Except September 11 soon happened, and my agent said the country wasn’t in the mood for my kind of questioning and context. So we started a newspaper instead in that apartment to cover the capital city region in a way that had, frankly, never been done, at least for long, despite valiant attempts by the 1960s Mississippi Free Press, the Kudzu and Bill Minor’s Capital Reporter.
For one, we actually believed (correctly) that we could build a truly diverse local reader base, and tell the truth about Mississippi’s history—and not just about 80-year-old retired Kluckers, but about systems and racism-created inequity of today—and actually succeed in local media. And we did, even if Todd (the publisher) and I skipped some paychecks here and there to pay our people. Still, we’re proud that we never laid anyone off.
Jackson Free Press and life partners Todd Stauffer and Donna Ladd hosted the “Night Circus” Best of Jackson party at the Metrocenter Mall’s center court in January 2013. The themed annual BOJ
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