By: Michael Roy Hollihan

The Commercial Appeal is on a quest. In the age of the Internet, news can be obtained from a dazzling array of places: 24 hour news, websites, streaming video, podcasts, digital radio, cell phones and much more. Every news channel, every local station has a website. How is the old warhorse of news, the daily newspaper, to contend? What is its place in the electronic age?

These are the question that Memphis’ daily newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, is grappling with. Editor Chris Peck and Publisher & President Joe Pepe are fighting to stay relevant, keeping the familiar newsprint format while searching for new ways to reaching the news consumer. On the one hand, Peck is firmly rooted in the world of traditional newspaper journalism. On the other, Pepe is continually exploring new venues and new approaches to news presentation. Between them, they are conducting a closely watched experiment for the Commercial Appeal’s parent company, Scripps. And a lot rides on them.

Newspapers across the country are facing steep declines in circulation as former readers turn to other, more convenient or sympathetic sources for their daily news. In 2000, daily circulation at the Commercial Appeal was 188,300. In 2002 it slipped to 181,200. Today, circulation is hovering right around 162,600. No business can survive such losses, especially when their market is still growing around them.

Although anchored in traditional journalism, Editor Chris Peck also has a willingness to experiment that borders on restlessness. Since coming to the paper in October of 2002 he has moved reporters and editors regularly; news focus has been adjusted many times. He’s dropped some features (remember the CA Eye?) and created new ones (like iDiva, an online forum for women). The physical arrangement and divisions of sections have been changed; ‘Neighbors’ became ‘Appeal’ and ‘Metro’ became ‘Greater Memphis’. It’s been an ongoing process of fundamental adjustments and changes, “aligning resources” as he puts it, meant to find the “piece we own of the continuum or spectrum of news.”

Peck’s appearance might be called business-rumpled. His grey-salted hair and bushy eyebrows are just slightly overgrown. He wears a business shirt, but no coat, and the tie is pulled down an inch from his unbuttoned collar. He’s relaxed and calm, with a slightly professorial air and maybe a touch of whimsy, talking about his paper with easy-spoken assurance. Sitting in a conversation chair, he occasionally dips into a bowl of jelly beans left out for visitors. On his cluttered desk, amid the piles of paper, are also a small Lego sculpture and a rubber-band airplane. Stuck under a window facing the treetops outside his office is a University of Memphis Tigers banner; on another wall is a painting of a jazz musician.

From his office deep in the warrens of the Commercial Appeal building on Union Avenue, Chris Peck is “trying to make sure the Commercial Appeal survives and prospers as a vigorous 21st century newspaper.” He brings a career of experience with newspapers in the Pacific Northwest, most recently the Spokane Spokesman-Review; he taught journalism at Southern Methodist University in Texas and is a past president of the Associated Press Managing Editors.

Warming to the conversation, Peck sees his three biggest challenges as: 1) rethinking content for 21st century readers; 2) rethinking the internal culture of the newsroom; and 3) strengthening reader - business connections.

For the first, he notes that most readers now consume news as “background noise,” that is, snatching it in spare moments throughout their busy days. They might read the paper in twenty minutes over breakfast or in the evening, or spend forty minutes with the larger Sunday edition. So he adheres to a view of “tiers” of news relevance. The most basic is the “hyper-local level,” with pictures of kids playing sports and winning awards; local news at its most personal, community level. Next is “beat reporting,” the classic hard news stuff of city hall, schools, cops, courts and politics. And then “enterprise” reporting, making sense of the complicated issues or events, using the highest-level journalism skills to assemble a picture of the great events and trends affecting Memphis and then explaining them to readers in a comprehensible way. Just as readers cycle through all three levels in their daily interest, so the paper must offer them content to match. And it must be grouped in intelligible, easy to navigate, ways.

While such constant change may put off some readers, the newspaper is trying to find content that the folks who don’t presently read the paper want to see, to capture their interest. And it has meant the loss of a great many former columnists, either to retirement, job change or re-assignment. While the Commercial Appeal has brought in very popular new voices, like Wendi C. Thomas, its critics point out that non-liberal voices are still not given anything like equal space.

The second challenge involves what Peck calls a “cultural shift” in the newsroom. With 165 journalists, reporters, columnists and editors, it is “less about being the chosen ones with all the answers” and opening “a conversation with readers and businesses.” To that end, the Commercial Appeal is using more reader-driven content than ever before. On the Editorial page, guest columns are most often by local authorities or interested, informed parties. The Letters to the Editor section prints more than half of the letters and emails received at the Commercial Appeal, and no longer edits letters “for style,” letting them retain the voice of the writer. The ‘My Life’ page uses reader stories, photos and other items almost exclusively. Peck believes that more of these “Hey, that’s me!” moments will hook reader attention.

The most dramatic implementation of this shift is in the hyper-local Appeal sections. Readers and citizens are actively encouraged to contribute. Stories and photos come straight to the page. Businesses, neighborhood meetings, local activities are all covered by the participants themselves, with a light assist from the Appeal editors. Peck wants the Commercial Appeal to be “open to and seek out people” and to be “constantly open to interactions with people who read our newspaper and use our website.” It gets back to his idea of the basic tier of news, the “hyper-local” stories, which can be best presented by the readers themselves.

He wants the paper to “reflect larger interests” and “not be a mouthpiece for particular points of view.” On the other hand, his journalistic instincts are to keep the Commercial Appeal “credible and fair.” He kept coming back the word “credible” and stressed the “need to still be a gatekeeper” since the Commercial Appeal’s name and reputation are at stake. It’s why the web side of the Commercial Appeal is still in flux. It’s “not wholly resolved” and they are still sorting out the credibility of online sources and contributions. Peck almost seems to want to have it both ways: letting in more and more voices while still making sure the dominant and controlling voice is still that of the newspaper’s editors.

The last challenge, strengthening reader and business connections, has spawned the biggest cultural and physical change for the newspaper - the local Appeals. There are five: Midtown/Downtown, Germantown/Collierville, Bartlett/Cordova, Millington/Tipton, and DeSoto. Instead of being preprinted insert sections cobbled together from various sources, the new ‘zone’ editions are incorporated directly into the B section of the ‘main’ paper and four of the five have dedicated offices across the city and county to find, create and assemble the stories inside (Midtown/Downtown operates out of the Union office).

The new Appeals operate autonomously, with their own staffs of reporters, editors and sales people. Readers can go to these offices to conduct Commercial Appeal business like taking out subscriptions or ads, and submitting items. They fill their own pages with community-specific stories and advertising. If the editors downtown feel that an Appeal-generated story might be of wider interest to Memphis and Shelby County, then a story might be pulled out and move to another part of the B section, or included in all the Appeal editions.

By “decentralizing,” as Peck describes it, the paper grows even closer to readers. It also creates new opportunities for advertising by smaller businesses who found themselves priced out of the main edition. By targeting smaller communities, business ads target those same people more tightly and economically. Instead of a Millington business advertising to West Memphis, Westwood, Wolfchase and Winchester, they now reach just their own neighborhood. If you’re a video store, dry cleaner or a nail salon, it makes sense.

Everything still passes through the editorial filter of the editors and writers themselves. While a lot of the new reader content passes through with little or no change, it is still passed under scrutiny.. Some items will be passed to writers to be researched or rewritten so that the ‘gatekeeper’ function is still providing necessary assurances of credibility and fairness, although Peck did not elaborate on any political or social philosophies underlying the points of view that determine them.

On the other side of the Commercial Appeal building, Joseph Pepe’s office has a glass wall looking over the broad green front lawn out to busy Union Avenue. The clutter is more tightly controlled — neatly stacked papers organized in ranks and files. Pepe calls the clutter his “ideas.” Along the credenza behind his desk is a shelf of books nearly four feet long, filled with business, strategic and motivational tomes. In contrast to Peck, Pepe himself is more jovial and dress-casual, wearing a golf shirt. His hair is short and trimmed, his glasses thin and firmly placed, his manner energetic but controlled. On the wall behind him is a wooden plaque with Teddy Roosevelt’s famous saying, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Pepe’s career has been on the publishing side of the newspaper business. He’s worked for many of the big-name chains: Pulitzer, Gannett, Howard, and now Scripps, across the Midwest, the South and the Mississippi River valley. His stint with Gannett included time at Nashville’s Tennessean. When asked to compare the two rival Tennessee cities, he refers to Memphis as “much friendlier … hard-working … a more happening place.”

He ended up in Memphis when one of his peers at Pulitzer in St. Louis went to Scripps after the sale of the company. Pepe was Publisher of the Suburban Journals, a consortium of 38 free-distribution newspapers covering a multi-county area, also owned by Pulitzer. He heard nothing but good things about Scripps and was invited to follow. Saying he would “rather be an operator than a corporate person” he went. Pepe “likes hands on” and being “in the mix.”

When he first arrived in Memphis in the fall of last year, his immediate background as the publisher of a network of free newspapers immediately brought up speculation that he might try to move the Commercial Appeal to a similar business model. But he was quick to squash that idea, noting his other experience in Munster, Indiana, as publisher of a newspaper with a similar arrangement to the Commercial Appeal - a main edition served by smaller bureaus. He indicated no desire or thought of moving the Commercial Appeal to free distribution.

Pepe shares Peck’s view of news as a three tier spectrum. They explain the tiers in nearly identical ways. But Pepe also bluntly states, “I think news is information.” In other words, it is just one part of a broad range of a kind of product. He is directed at the nuts and bolts of disseminating the content that Peck creates. He speaks of the Appeals in terms of “efficiency,” “cost-effectiveness” and “zones,” and advertising revenues. He says “one of our jobs is to help businesses grow. Watchdog is just one of our roles. Not our only role.”

He and Peck are also alike in sharing the view that the paper should “provoke thought” to “always get you thinking about something. We should be creating conversations. I like a newspaper that creates a dialog.” And he, too, is a “very big advocate of names and faces.”

For Pepe, his “vision is to be the news and information source for anyone” by “repositioning as a media company” to “create new channels of distribution.” He noted that when he arrived, the Commercial Appeal was availing itself of only 15% of potential advertising revenues in the area; he sees that other 85% as pure opportunity. The Commercial Appeal exists to help businesses make the best use of advertising. He is very clear on using the information streams generated by the paper to capture readers who, in turn, become the commodity he sells to advertisers. In turn, the revenue is to be used to expand outlets, hire more reporters and salesmen, increase pages and publications, and reach yet more readers.

Pepe is looking beyond the existing confines of the newsprint and digital versions of the daily paper. He notes the incredible volume of news and information that the Commercial Appeal either creates or has access to. He envisions more niche publications, expanding on local interest in health, biotechnology, sports, music, and local business. He also noted the growing middle to upper-middle class African-American community and felt they had specific issues they would like to read about. He foresaw an explosion of international business coming from Airbus and FedEx.

Longtime readers still complain of the standard ‘liberal bias’ of the daily. With so many other news options that cater to conservatives, and Peck’s stated desire to find and attract new readers, it is surprising that the Commercial Appeal hasn’t adjusted to address that need. The Commercial Appeal still does not feature a single columnist who might reasonably be seen as politically conservative.

The continuing declines in circulation offer some evidence that the current content of the Commercial Appeal isn’t reaching new readers, especially given the newspaper’s ‘market area’ was expanded from five to eight counties not long ago. However, the almost 31,000 readers who access the paper’s websites, which weren’t as extensive or important until just as recently, substantively reduce those losses. It’s only been recently that the daily has been actively working to find ways to blend the two into separate but complementary products.

Joe Pepe and Chris Peck seem unafraid of creating opportunities. Between them, the ideas are on a constant bubble. Together, they are surging into a new information future. The print edition will evolve, while the Commercial Appeal explores and exploits alternative print and digital information channels.

Safe to say, it’s not your parents’ Commercial Appeal any more.