For me, it was about my mother. Yes, I’d just moved back to Mississippi after an 18-year expat life in Washington, D.C., Colorado Springs, New York City and a silly couple of years in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Oh, and after working as a club DJ on Nantucket and lots of other places for a decade as I trained myself to be a journalist, then writing for the Village Voice while I got my master’s at Columbia Journalism School when I was 40. From there, I finally came home to report in my spurned home state to do journalism here—three months before 9/11 rocked our world.
My life partner Todd Stauffer’s story is different: He was willing to move South “for six months” because the legal, rent-stabilized NYC sublet was running out and he didn’t want to try to find another one. Both things led us here.
So in 2001-2002—the year when none of us flew much and irony (and freelance work) had died—I needed something to do with my writing and editing skills. Not to mention to use my passion for social progress and truth-telling, especially about history hidden from us that explains so much today. But needing a new gig wasn’t really the reason I decided to try to change divisive, profit-chasing journalism in Mississippi. I did it because maybe, just maybe, I could figure out to finally love my state despite (waves hands) everything that drove me away.
It’s common knowledge here in the capital city and its suburbs that we, a ragtag group of native and transplant Mississippians, defiantly started the Jackson Free Press on September 22, 2002, on my mother’s birthday. I’ve written her story of being illiterate, but brilliant and willing to push me out into the world that hadn’t been kind to her. I quite literally write because she couldn’t.
So after a bunch of us started joking about, and then planning, a “newspaper that would cover all of Jackson”—which didn’t exist if you don’t count racist crime fixations—we raised our glasses at Hal & Mal’s and drank to actually starting a news outlet as an alternative to all the others. (Next time, you’re there, order the Free Press black-bean burger; Todd and I are vegetarians.)
We actually tried to get a wee bit of financial backing in advance—but the rich white man we were referred to told us, “You can’t get Black and white people in Mississippi to read the same newspaper.” We begged to differ—and then set out to walk the talk. I had one condition, I told Todd and Stephen: Our paper needed to launch on my mother’s birthday. In her own way, and despite her deep challenges—from abusive husbands to rolling up pennies to buy me Easter baskets, to her illiteracy shame—my mother urged me to go get what I wanted and to help people along the way.
By then, my way of doing that was through journalism that centered people across divides, interrogated systems, and told the damn truth about the present and the past. So even though she wasn’t here to make us all banana puddings and cheer us on, the Jackson Free Press rolled off the presses on her birthday to show Mississippians that a new kind of honest, inclusive journalism that believed in Mississippians as my mama believed in her girl was possible.
Even then, I wanted to launch a statewide outlet and, in 2020, the JFP team and our ethos rolled into the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press, 18 years after we’d reserved the URL in homage to the multiracial, civil-rights era paper of the same name that made good trouble here in the 1960s. They didn’t have much money then, and they had Klansmen trolling for them; surely, we could figure it out decades later. Today, JFP content since 2002 lives on the Mississippi Free Press website.
As we approach a quarter-century of the Free Press journey next year, I’ve affirmed many pre-2002 beliefs and learned many lessons, often the hard. Here’s a sampling in no particular order:
- Ventures that challenge the status quo—even the better parts of it—have a tough row to hoe. Be ready. Even folks who say they want change don’t always want what it takes to bring it. Roll up your sleeves and do it anyway.
- De-centering the powerful doesn’t often please the powerful, even your friends. Neither does being truly nonpartisan in your pursuit of the truth.
- “Do the right thing and wait.” Todd came up with that phrase for tough financial times and for when we rocked boats others wanted left alone. It’s still our core mantra.
- The people—especially those long ignored or stereotyped—really like you focusing your reporting on them and doing the kinds of stories that tap into their humanity.
- Don’t convene panel discussions. I used to, and it’s usually powerful people posturing for the same kind of audience. We launched the MFP in 2020 promising “no panels,” instead rolling out “Solutions Circles,” which center a mix of people. We journalists are there to listen deeply to them, not preen like peacocks. Oh, and use talking sticks so the same person doesn’t preen everyone to sleep.
- Real stories, even the grittiest ones, bring people together. Beautiful storytelling, called “narrative” in the journalism world, builds empathy if not sympathy.
- Don’t let great journalism disappear. We got a grant to bring the Jackson Free Press archives into the Mississippi Free Press website. Go search, for instance, for “Frank Melton.”
- There’s been a poison long at the center of journalism competition, all the way back to robber barons starting their own yellow-journalism newspapers to get their policies passed and feed their mega-egos. It’s time to let that go. You don’t have to compete or fixate on being the biggest or the richest journalism outlet. But always strive to do the highest-quality work on behalf of the people.
- Be better than unscrupulous newsrooms. If they don’t credit your enterprise journalism when they follow it up because they’re scared of your shadow, keep crediting theirs, link to it and name their reporters when you do. As my mama might say, “be the bigger person,” or in this case, newsroom. Oh, and your readers notice and tell you they’re proud of you. Win-win.
- “Say the right thing and wait.” Be brave about challenging your own industry, in my case journalism, and its mores. In the past (and too often still), that might be a lack of inclusion and outright racism or sexual predation. Today, that might mean not allowing dissent about AI practices and costs. The media is an extremely influential pillar of our society, and we must have tough skins and welcome challenges from within or outside. It’s the effects of AI on the people and their resources that matter; not making a grant app easier. Seriously, don’t frame me as a Luddite for raising concerns, including what AI can do to critical thinking and writing skills. And for God’s sake, don’t tell a real journalist not to talk about data centers.
- Try to learn from every attack, personal or professional (and they will come if you’re a real journalist or editor in a good newsroom). Even amid a flurry of lies to try to cancel you—whoa, buddy—there may be a glimmer of truth that can help you. If they’re jerks, no need to thank them, but learn the lesson anyway.
- Repeat after me: “journalism ecosystems.” Right now, some folks in the journalism world think we should return to dominant “winner” media companies. You know, like chain newspapers. Journalism history shows this is “stankin’ thankin’.” Newsrooms should all work together to build strong, ethical ecosystems; offer our strengths; collaborate where possible; and avoid old-school toxic competition. I love when another outlet has a reporting area covered well; I want to stand up reporters on the Coast and in the Delta rather than competing with other outlets over who gets a quote from the governor posted first. Media diversity serves our public, especially when we work to fill each other’s gaps.
- Systemic journalism, as I dubbed it, is sexy, too—and uncovers what many newsrooms ignore or miss. We interrogate systems like musical-chair voting precincts, which then creates knowledge and demand that supports a new state law; how 170 foster students almost lost their scholarships; or even the cover-up of one university scandal or another that ignored powerful elements.
- Show care both for the victims and survivors of horrific incidents, from violence to ICE arrests, but also for the truth, even if some would rather you not tell it. Again, center the people and not partisan frames—that will render more impact, even cross-partisan.
- Don’t just report on societal systems, but fix the systems in our own lives and newsrooms. Bad systems can ruin the best intentions and leave us exhausted.
- Don’t try to hold on to staff too tightly. Even if you have a history of low turnover, people will leave. Don’t bar the door. Wish them well. Never try to keep someone in “job jail,” as Todd calls it. No one ends up happy. I learned this the hard way.
- Related: Hire and retain the right people you can trust with absolute honesty. Help people sing from the same hymnal and care for it. This requires being mission-driven.
- Have the hard meetings. This really never gets easier.
- Teach your team: “Never characterize guilt. That’s not our job.” Do the careful work that can allow the authorities to do that when merited, but don’t do it yourself. And apply the same journalistic standards to social media and other materials. (OK, I knew this one already. Thank you, Columbia media-law profs.)
- Never ask yes-or-no questions. Every reporter needs to hear this. They’re about sound bites, usually useless.
- Write “shitty first drafts,” Anne Lamont called them. The first draft is not supposed to be good. It’s a lump of clay. Don’t turn it in. Shape it into a beautiful story.
- Focus on covering people not usually seen or heard and their roads less traveled. Mississippi is filled with growing news deserts, with so many stories left untold. This is what our bureau strategy is trying to solve.
- Don’t try to scale to other states. Focus everything we’ve got on Mississippians: our problems, solutions, challenges, brilliance.
- Push back on stereotypes about the South and southerners—by both modeling and going after them head-on as needed. If there is anything that brings Mississippians who disagree together, it’s banding together to wallop those who diss us as a group. Google “land mass” and “Mississippi.”
- Challenge non-Mississippians to interrogate their own hidden history while we’re interrogating the hell out of our own. Lead by example. It is one way to stuff a stereotype down someone’s throat and rather enjoyable, we admit.
- To build a strong journalism pipeline, teach Mississippi teenagers to do high-quality systemic journalism and to be edited and get out of their way. The Mississippi Youth Media Project I started just turned 10 years old, and none of our journalists make me prouder than those students. See their work at jxnpulse.com.
- If you want a fantastic, dedicated, inclusive, cohesive team in Mississippi or anywhere, be willing to train them. They know the place. And create a collective-mentoring environment, so you’re not the only teacher. They teach each other.
- Have fun staff meetups. Food, activities, brainstorms, singing, silly trophies.
- Don’t rely on national support. Actively build support from within the state. Share the mission, inspire people to see the possibilities. Innovate in and from Mississippi.
- We give our readers important national coverage they can’t get without a paywall. And never let a degrading order like “stay in your lane” or “stick to your knitting” go unanswered. Especially if you’re a woman.
- Take time (even when you have none) to build relationships. That’s the secret sauce.
- Create teams that enable you as the leader to be visionary and not have to hoe every row yourself. Hire people who want that because they have vision, too, and don’t do their work for them.
- Don’t expect immediate buy-in of what your journalism teaches (or refutes) or from those you’d like to support your newsroom financially. Walk the talk. Prove it. Prove it again.
- Fiercely love Mississippians, warts and all. Believe we all can change and evolve our state helped by honest journalism that reports beyond partisanship toward the truth. My home state is our postage stamp in a world of postage stamps needing impactful journalism.
- Grow a thick skin, cry when needed, have a tight support group, sit on the screen porch with the cats, brush yourself off, stay the course.
- You might as well laugh. Journalism is hard. It’s glorious. It’s powerful. And it’s a helluva way to help your home state.
Jackson Free Press co-founder Todd Stauffer is doubling your gifts in honor of the 24th anniversary of the Free Press in Mississippi. Donate here.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org . We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints
