Last month, the transcendent digital publication “The Bitter Southerner” celebrated its first birthday. Co-founder Chuck Reece proudly states its mission as: “For the sake of the story and the love of the South.” Offering one big, original story a week, laden with gorgeous video and still photography,the Atlanta-based “Bitter Southerner” is already making money. The burgeoning down-home media platform is finding a formula where superb word and image can thrive in these challenging times for quality content. Using a model borrowed from public radio, “Bitter Southerner” is generating revenue through membership, a book club and selling limited edition items in its virtual “General Store.”
"Bitter Southerner" family {clockwise}: Chuck Reece, , Butler Raines, Dave Whitling, Kyle... [+]
“We decided early on to just say 'no' to advertising,” says Reece. “We knew if we tapped into a Southern sensibility that is way richer than 'Honey Boo Boo' and 'Duck Dynasty' that our community would support us.”
Reece, the voluble editor-in-chief, is mum about just how much money has made it into “Bitter Southerner” coffers. But he says it's enough to start paying contributors and there's enough cash in the kitty for part-time salaries for his partners and himself.
Regional artisans producing everything from clothing to music to food and drink have approached “Bitter Southerner” to feature their wares. These tinkers, tailors and barkeeps want to tap into the twang-laced indie sensibility of its community. “Our readers, members and subscribers not only live in the South, but come from every continent save Antarctica,” says Reece. “There's a big Southern diaspora. We've connected to an authentic Southern state of mind.”
“Bitter Southerner” has published great writing from Drive-By Truckers leader Patterson Hood, “The New Mind of the South,” author Tracy Thompson and such well-known novelists as Thomas Mullen and Charles McNair. Membership in the monthly "Bitter Southerner Book Club" sold out its first edition biography “Jerry Lee Lewis His Own Story," signed by author Rick Bragg and Lewis himself.
When a police officer killed a young man in Ferguson moving race to the top of the national conversation "Bitter Southerner" posted the documentary “As I Am,” which garnered more than 105,000 views. While the documentary is set in Memphis and never mentions Ferguson, telling the first-person story of Chris Dean overcoming crime and poverty to make his way to college, "As I Am" said more about why Fergusons happen in its 16-minute running time than the hours of airtime filled by gaseous punditry .
I met Reece years ago when we both toiled for legendary magazine maven Clay Felker at “Adweek.” After a stint in its Atlanta bureau, Reece moved to "Adweek's" headquarters in New York. Quickly, the Southern transplant got used to people assuming his rich twang meant he was some hayseed new to indoor plumbing.
“Of course, when people discovered that I was relatively literate and could speak in complete sentences, their assumptions melted away.” That repeated experience led Reece to embrace “the strange grace of being Southern.”
"Bitter Southerner" co-founder and creative director Dave Whitling believes he and his partners are creating something “much more than a literary website.” Advertising agencies and national brands have begun to look to "The Bitter Southerner" team for counsel, suggesting that what they are creating is the "'Vice' of the South." Whitling along with Reece, co-founders Kyle Tibbs-Jones {Social Media Guru} and Butler Raines {Insights & Analytics} all grew up in small southern hamlets. All have toiled in major media markets from New York to Los Angeles. "The Bitter Southerner" team is its audience. They are consciously creating a foundation for a media company centered on a certain progressive Southern ethos that has roots from Austin to Memphis, from Baton Rouge to Muscle Shoals, and everywhere in-between.
Says Whitling: “We're a media company that has an engaged, growing community with a shared sensibility that has traditionally been misrepresented and under served.”
A host of prominent folks in media, entertainment and political circles are fans, including alt-country legend Lucinda Williams, Food Network superstar Alton Brown and "Design Sponge" founder Grace Bonney.
NPR's Peabody Award-winning reporter Michele Norris praised "The Bitter Southerner" on
An average of 50,000 unique visitors come to "The Bitter Southerner" each week for a taste of that "strange grace of being Southern." Its newsletter has 12,000 subscribers, its Twitter feed has 8,000 followers and its Facebook page has almost 30,000 “Likes.” "Tibbs-Jones notes the seamlessness between the “Bitter Southerner” mothership and its sensibility across social media. She says "It's all about hitting the sweet spot. It's where music, food, cocktails, nostalgia, storytelling and -- most importantly moving the South forward -- come together.”
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