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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
Note that any opinions expressed in legacy Jackson Free Press stories do not reflect a position of the Mississippi Free Press or necessarily of its staff and board members.

JFP co-founder, editor-in-chief and CEO Donna Ladd has rankled some who do not want women to be outspoken in Mississippi. That hasn't exactly stopped her, though. (Pictured at the 2003 "Night Circus" Best of Jackson party at Metrocenter Mall.) Trip Burns

Fun, creative ways critics went after us:

By posting insults of Donna’s (and the woman DA’s) butt size on online ballots.

Hitting “share” under articles and cussing out the attorney general and others pretending to be Donna.

Making up a long, detailed story about Donna the “c*nt” disrupting a domestic-abuse event.

Posting a drawing of Donna whipping Todd on a “parody” site.

Starting @notdonnaladd on Twitter and getting immediately suspended after chatter about Donna, Todd, Rachel Maddow and something about S&M that made us blush.

Spreading rumors that we are funded by (a) Castro, (b) Soros, (c) Rupert Murdoch, (d) vast left-wing conspirators.

Linking a friend’s little girl’s picture on our cover to a photo of genital warts.

Flipping us off in the Cups parking lot.

Yelling across Hal & Mal’s that he would run us “out of business in six months!” (Frank Melton in 2006)

Throwing a pen at staff members at a Best of Jackson party.

Texting a Clarion-Ledger reporter that “Donna Ladd is hatin.. She wish she could be as good as you. She has printed false, slanderous things about me and my family. If it weren’t for my family, her newspaper wouldn’t exist.” (Hinds DA in 2016 per trial transcript)

Names Critics Have Called Editor-in-chief Donna Ladd:

Scalawag

Fondrazon

Madame deLadd

Journalistic Sl*t

Attention Whore

Hippie Commie

Websites + social sites formed in response to JFP:

jacksonfreakpress.net

Jackson Jambalaya

Downtown Jackson Trash

@notdonnaladd on Twitter

Jackson False Press (Facebook)

And probably a couple of others, truth be told.

Mississippi native Donna Ladd and partner Todd Stauffer founded the Jackson Free Press in 2002 in the capital city. The heavily awarded local newspaper did many investigations heralded across the state and nation and served as a paper of record due to its diversity, inclusion, in-depth reporting and deep connection to readers and dedication to narrative change in and about Mississippi. In 2022, the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press, founded by Ladd and JFP Associate Publisher Kimberly Griffin in 2020, purchased the journalism assets and archives of the Jackson Free Press. A Google grant through AAN Publishers enabled Newspack's integration of the JFP archives into the Mississippi Free Press website to become part of a more searchable archive of recent Mississippi history and essential journalism.