This marks the countdown to my leaving the best media team in the nation—I’ll fight you on that. This publisher’s note is not goodbye, but I’ll catch you later, dear friends and supporters.
In October 2007, Todd Stauffer, my former boss and the founding (and only) publisher of the Jackson Free Press, sent me an offer letter to join as a part-time sales coordinator. I was coming off a long illness and was thrilled to be working again. Part-time quickly became full-time, and eventually I was the associate publisher when we stopped publishing in 2022.
Todd and I were quite a pair—born around two months apart, both funny (though he can sing and do impressions) and, truly, you couldn’t find a better man or boss.
That letter was the beginning of my 18 years in combined Free Press journalism in my home state. Then, in 2019, at one of our favorite lunch spots in downtown Jackson, Donna Ladd, MFP’s CEO and my co-founder and Todd’s life partner, pitched the idea of starting a statewide nonprofit newsroom for Mississippi. Y’all, I thought she’d gone around the bend. Who launches a nonprofit when for-profit media is collapsing? I wanted to say, “Girl, are you OK?”
But Donna explained how nonprofit journalism could help us continue and grow the Free Press across the state, thrive, pay our team better, and cover ignored communities with reporting that rejects the “if it bleeds, it leads” model. Over lunch, she convinced me. We launched the Mississippi Free Press in March 2020 with one major donor and quickly gained more as our COVID coverage, especially about inequities that made it worse for Black women and their families, drew national attention.
As the young people say, “We did that.”
Raising Money for This Beloved Team
It’s been a wild ride. We’ve been threatened and have had hit pieces mailed out as direct mail to my fellow Jackson residents and readers. When the most recent direct mail piece came out, I had an interesting call from my brother. Let’s just say he’s overprotective.
For a time, our dedicated team—we’ve worked together for a combined 111 years now—split their days between the JFP and MFP until the JFP stopped publishing. They were two separate organizations, so longtime team members were signing in to work half a day at the JFP, then signing in to work at the MFP after lunch—two part-time jobs.. They didn’t have to. They could’ve left for other jobs, but this shows their dedication to the way we do journalism and why.
The last five years taught me a lesson and demonstrated what Donna said to me in 2019. Fundraising, unlike selling ads or sponsorships, lets everyone come to the table. You don’t have to own a business or be of tremendous wealth to contribute; whether you can give 50 cents or $50,000 or $500,000, you can support news that will never be behind a paywall.
By the way, if you have $50,000 or more that you’d like to give us, please email me at kimberly@mississippifreepress.org, and we can get you all set up before December 31. I am who I am after all—raising money for this beloved team until the bitter end.
I’ve loved talking with Mississippians and Americans about what matters to them, crying at notes from readers who wished they could give more, and watching Donna’s vision for “mapping” Mississippi county-by-county, bureau-by-bureau unfold before our eyes. This approach tells the stories of people in all 82 counties whom other media ignore.
People are smart, and Mississippians are the smartest people around. People want fair, factual journalism that doesn’t center the powerful or dwell only on violence. They want solutions, context and hope. That’s what we’ve built together, and it’s been the honor of my life.
Founders Should Not Stay Forever
Nonprofit journalism has shown Donna and me that founders should not stay forever. We’ve learned from friends like Candice Fortman at Outlier in Detroit and Wendi Thomas at MLK50 in Memphis how to exit top roles well. I began talking with Donna about this transition in late summer. A dear friend, who is a journalism consultant and fixer, once told me that founders are meant to do just that—start the thing—but they are not meant to finish it.
In fact, we founded the Mississippi Free Press to eventually hand it off to the next generations to continue its legacy, growth and impact in our state.
For 18 years, I’ve pounded the pavement, so to speak, to bring money through the door to grow our nonprofit newsroom and our outstanding team. We’ve done a good job. In less than six years, we’ve grown our revenue from one major donor and some smaller donors to more than 3,700 donors in Mississippi and across 50 states who have built Mississippi’s most inclusive newsroom.
Fundraising and revenue are high-burnout occupations, and I’m trying to avoid that. They say I’m middle-aged, but I think we just like saying that because it makes us feel good. I was probably in the middle of my life cycle around 15 years ago, but it is what it is.
‘I Leave the MFP in Good Hands’
I know you’ll ask where I’m going next. The truth is, I don’t know—I’ve trusted God with that. What I do know is that careful planning, like Donna and I have done, and more recently with Director of Revenue Operations Tami Jones, gives me the freedom to chart my next step carefully.
By the way, Tami is a total badass who joined us just a year ago after being publisher of the Mississippi Business Journal, but it feels like she’s been with us forever. When she gets tired of me asking her questions, I bribe her with gummy candy. Soon, she will take over my reins as the new publisher of the Mississippi Free Press—the best possible choice. I leave the MFP in good hands.
Thank you for supporting this incredible work focused on people, not power and solutions and not sensations.
I’ll leave you where I started. It is not goodbye or even farewell, but I’ll see you around.
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.