Photograph by Cameron Fogle.
Fall has come early to the fig tree in the backyard, in the sense that its leaves are yellowing, skating to the ground. But not any kind of real fall; the days continue to broil and scorch. It’s been one month and five days since rain last fell. The poor fig doesn’t know what to do: it’s hustling through the motions it remembers, too soon. Ready to rest a while.
We’re all feeling a little scorched, these days. I sense it in the warm weariness of people’s faces on the street — bustling and hustling, doing what we’ve trained ourselves to do. Ready for a change. And one will come, soon enough, I tell myself.
I discovered a city full to overflow with creativity, with possibility, with an openness to build something magnificent together out of our shared troubles. As I write, it’s been three months and three days since I took on the role of CEO of Contemporary Media, Inc., the parent company of this magazine. We’d been preparing for a leadership transition for a while, since at least the beginning of the year, but seeing those three fraught letters behind my name still takes me by surprise every so often. My path to this role has been circuitous; I’m not even sure you’d call it a path, except that it led me to exactly here, exactly now. I was raised in Memphis with the expectation that I’d leave, and so I did, first to our kindred-spirit city Baltimore, and then to Cambridge, Mass., where I studied English Renaissance poetry and also, a decade ago, grew very ill.
My deep and abiding love of this place guided my decision to say yes to doing one of the crazier things a person can do in 2019: captaining a ship in the roiled waters of print media.
Illness brought me back to Memphis, but Memphis kept me here. I found the city somehow more home than I’d known it to be before I left. I discovered a city full to overflow with creativity, with possibility, with an openness to build something magnificent together out of our shared troubles. I’m planted here firmly these days, in a house not too far from the one where I grew up. My partner — soon to be my husband — has moved to town, along with his sweet and creaky pointy-eared yellow dog, who submits patiently to being herded around by my sweet and bossy pointy-eared black dog.
My deep and abiding love of this place, not in spite of but in full sight of its troubles, guided my decision to say yes to doing one of the crazier things a person can do in 2019: captaining a ship in the roiled waters of print media. This isn’t a course to riches, fame, or much sleep. But local media outlets around the country are falling away, and fast. Without them, we lose access and accountability, inspiration and connection.
If we are determined to continue this enterprise, and we are, we must do it as well and as thoroughly as we can. That means telling stories that better reflect the whole of Memphis, so that anyone who picks up this magazine will get some whiff of the city’s dirty-divine perfume. And it means publishing stories by and about a broader swath of Memphians, of all backgrounds, races, and ages. Walking into the future, we’ll be intentional about welcoming more of our neighbors into these pages and into the newsroom that produces them. We’ll welcome new voices, new faces, new ideas. (Email me — anna@contemporary-media.com — to propose any of the above.)
Fall always, always returns a deeper kind of breathing to the lungs and soul.
If nothing else, people are still paying attention: A couple of unfortunate chapters during these past three months have confirmed it. First, we learned, along with media companies around the country, that Kroger will stop distribution in their vestibules of free publications — like the Memphis Flyer and Memphis Parent, both published by Contemporary Media. By mid-October, we must find new homes for many thousands of papers. In a city like Memphis, we know that access to free, print media remains vital.
And you’ve no doubt heard some things about our September cover, featuring an ugly caricature of three Memphis mayoral candidates. Many of you found that illustration distressing, calling to mind vicious, racist cartoons of an era that only sometimes feels past. And others saw it differently. For myself, I stand by the public apology I posted on our website and by the decisions that followed. We pulled the issue before it went to newsstands — a financial hit we could ill afford, but a choice I made unwaveringly. Growth is rarely painless.
The next three months, I have to hope, won’t be so tumultuous. We’ve got plans, good ones, and good people to keep us on track. Fall always, always returns a deeper kind of breathing to the lungs and soul. In my small world, there will be a small wedding for a big love. And maybe, just maybe, the fig tree won’t be too scorched to bear fruit once more.
