Bonus — Mainstreet's origin, mission and podcast
Hello from Gainesville, Florida. You're listening to StreetSmart. Today is Thursday, February 5. I'm reporter Lillian Hamman.
Seth:And I'm associate editor Seth Johnson.
Lillian:We've got an exciting bonus episode today. We're bringing you a special interview with J.C. Derrick, the publisher of Mainstreet Daily News.
Seth:And this is our first bonus episode coming just a few days after our very first episode for the Street Smart Podcast. And another first, J.C., you are the first publisher of Mainstreet Daily News.
J.C.:Oh my goodness. So many firsts. So many firsts. But thank you.
J.C.:Yeah. It's good to be here. I'm excited about this new new podcast and the project. You guys have done amazing work already, and I think I think the community is really gonna like it.
Seth:And it's not your first time for a podcast. Right?
J.C.:That's right. Actually, I started my career back in, 2002 in local news. After about ten years, I went to do national news for about eight. And, one of the things I did during that time frame was was, yeah, a podcast and got to work on a a top 100 news podcast that really was kind of a lot of podcasts are are just very talky back and forth, people chatting, having conversations, and they go on for a very long time. Ours was pretty tight, and it was more kind of trying to do more along the lines of what NPR's Morning Edition does, where they're actually going into the field, then they're reporting news, you know. So it was an actual news podcast.
Seth:And then a lot of people on the ground, they read the newspaper, they understand a reporter reports, an editor edits the copy. Tell us, a publisher, what exactly do you do all day? Because we're not sure. We see you sitting in the office, but it seems like you're spinning around in that chair sometimes.
J.C.:Oh, my goodness. Yeah. It it is one of the things I like about the job is that it's never the same day twice. I am doing a lot of different things. So, you know, as part of overseeing the team, I'll you know, there's there's personnel things and, you know, hiring and things like that, but there's also, just building relationships in the community.
J.C.:I'm today going to lunch to talk about with someone about a new partnership that we're we're exploring. You know, there's new projects. Ultimately, it's it's my job to just help us be successful, to build a positive brand, to become the most trusted source of local news in North Central Florida. So, basically, a lot of different things fall under that at at any given point. But, I'm I'm, a lot of times, very project oriented, you know, working on different tasks and projects, just trying to move us forward in whatever way I can.
Lillian:JC, you're the publisher, but you're not just the publisher of any publication. You're the publisher of Mainstreet Daily News. Why Mainstreet? What is Mainstreet? Tell us about that.
J.C.:Yeah. Absolutely. One of the most common questions I get, when I'm out in the community and and if for people who may be listening to this podcast and maybe Mainstreet is new to them, you know, One one of the questions that I often get is where did Mainstreet come from? You know? Like, what are you trying to accomplish? You know?
Seth:Yeah. You started showing up on our doorstep, and we weren't aware of Mainstreet Daily News.
J.C.:Right? Exactly. Because I think everyone's aware it's a difficult business to be in. So, you know, everyone's sort of like, why why are you trying to climb this mountain? Because it's really difficult to climb right now.
J.C.:And I think I would really start the story back at about fifteen years ago with a local radio group, MARC Radio, that started here in Gainesville. There's a group of stations, Magic 101.3, I Am Country, you know, several stations. And they saw gaps in local news and wanted to start a local news outlet. And so that's really where it started. Mainstreet started in 2020 just trying to fill gaps in local news.
J.C.:Incidentally, Mainstreet published its first stories the week before the world shut down because of COVID. So, obviously, everything was not as, you know, you threw threw the the launch plan out the window. But in addition to that, we couldn't have predicted the number of, just the proliferation of those gaps in local news. We've seen, you know, a couple local outlets close in our area. We've seen rounds and rounds of cuts at at another local newspaper.
J.C.:We've seen many operations scale down, in other words, and even a local news station that is no longer doing local news. They only carry national news. So there's really a lot of factors that have led to our growth, but mostly it's been just a community really welcoming what we're doing. We're we're showing up at meetings. We're we're actually getting out in the community and covering what's going on.
J.C.:And that really has been, clearly was a need because there was a high demand for it.
Seth:And radio stations starting a news digital site isn't unusual around the nation. Right?
J.C.:No. Yeah. It's a really good point. It's it's pretty common. There are a lot of larger radio conglomerates and companies that that actually do launch local news sites.
J.C.:But what you generally find with them is that they are driven by radio personalities, and so it's more entertainment focused, light, you know, fun news, events, things like that. They're not they're not covering the the difficult news. They're not doing investigations. They're not showing up at your city council meetings, you know, or or city commission meetings. You know? So that really is, I think, what has set Mainstreet apart is that they brought in a team, that would really know how to do journalism, not radio necessarily, but do journalism across any platform.
Seth:And that ball got rolling with digital, and then we added print shortly thereafter. And we've added membership. We've added a lot of things now.
Lillian:And, Seth, you've been a veteran through a lot of that as the second most tenured Mainstreet employee behind J.C.
Seth:No. There's Mike Ridaught, sports director.
Lillian:That's right. Right.
Seth:Right. I'm number three on the totem pole.
J.C.:Mike is, yeah, employee number one right now. He's the longest tenured member of the Mainstreet staff, our sports director extraordinaire.
Seth:And I don't let our senior editor forget that I started at Mainstreet before him by one month, one week, and one day.
J.C.:That's great. Yes. C.J. Gish, our wonderful senior editor who does a lot of hard work. A lot of it is behind the scenes, just keeping the trains running on time. People don't often see just how much he does to keep our operation moving forward.
Seth:So we talked about that expansion, now here we are obviously on StreetSmart, a podcast. Why expand to a podcast now?
J.C.:Yeah. So, I think I would answer that in in two ways. One is just to talk about you know, a lot of people ask, you know, how are how can you do what you do for free? And so I think I would just I would just point out, first of all, that, you know, I usually answer that question with a question, which is how have Facebook and Google managed to become these tech giants on the backs of basically free products? And I think the answer is they've learned how to monetize their audience.
J.C.:And I think that's what newspapers were always doing all through the years. They just didn't know it. They thought people were buying news, but they were actually buying the the center of the community. If you needed a job, a car, a piece of real estate, you know, all all of these things were in the local newspaper. And so as we have grown, our our mentality really is that build the audience, and there will be there will be ways to to monetize it.
J.C.:And so advertising, obviously, is the number one, way that we do that, but then we have we have other means as well. This podcast is just an extension of, you know, continuing to meet people where they are. You know, we started online, as you said, online only. We're still digital first, but just not digital only. Then we went into print.
J.C.:And then, you know, we have email newsletters. You know, people people wanna get their news in different ways. And so a podcast is just a natural next step. We know that many people get their news through podcasts, and we really saw an opportunity in terms of local news podcasts that are pretty uncommon. I mean, yes, there's tons of podcasts out there, but not ones like this.
Seth:Right. When we were doing research for StreetSmart, we kind of were looking around, are there any other local news podcasts? And we saw kind of a small little graveyard of them of some that maybe started and then they stopped for whatever reason at different outlets across North Central Florida. I think that's part of where being born out of a radio station helps is we have these radio station studios where we can record and have some of that technical expertise. We're really hoping to stick around for the long haul because we know podcasts are how people get news and that's probably not going to go away anytime soon.
J.C.:Absolutely. Yeah. We wanna meet people where they are. And, you know, we know, particularly with with the younger generation, you know, oftentimes print isn't their thing. Sometimes even reading online isn't their thing.
J.C.:You know, they just wanna get it in quick strokes. When you're out jogging, when you're at the gym, you know, it's just so easy. Listening is a passive activity. You can listen to a podcast while you're driving down the road. You could you cannot, or at least you should not read a Mainstreet story while you're driving down the road.
Lillian:J.C., going back to what you were talking about with just kind of what makes Mainstreet unique. You can go to our website, not a single story has a paywall. Our paper is free. You don't have to pay for it. Our podcast is free.
Lillian:Why does Mainstreet want to do that? And how do we do that? Is that sustainable? How can people be part of making the mission possible that everybody in the community has access to free local news?
J.C.:Absolutely. Yeah. I think I would start with membership. We do say we're member supported, not because members pay all the bills, but because members, people in the community who, support our work play a critical role in making it sustainable. We do have advertisers, and those you know, please visit our advertisers.
J.C.:Tell them you appreciate their support of Mainstreet. But, also, you know, they they they can't foot the the entire bill. Like, as I said earlier, you know, local news is expensive. And so membership is a way for people to get some perks as really a thank you for their partnership with us in the work. You can go online to our website and mainstreamdailynews.com, click on the become a member button in the corner and, you know, kind of read about what that includes.
J.C.:But there's there's other ways to get involved too. We have we're a partnership with the community foundation. So if we've had some folks folks who wanted to make a tax deductible gift to support the work, to underwrite certain reporting positions and things, so that's an option as well. But then also just on the very the lowest hanging fruit would be just tell tell a friend about Mainstreet. You know?
J.C.:Visit our website. Share our stories, share this podcast, subscribe to this podcast. You know, all of that helps. And the community has been just amazing at every time we've rolled something out, there it's just embraced. And so we, you know, we have no doubt that the community will will be embracing this as well.
Seth:It's really building that local ecosystem. Everything tends to have, you know, drifted to the national level over the last several years. But now we have local advertisers and local businesses putting their ads in a local paper, which is providing local community members, local news. And they are becoming local members here to help support it even more. So just taking that time to pause, recognize it, and wanting to contribute by sharing it so more people know about it so then our advertisers get benefits.
Seth:It's all starts to compound.
J.C.:Yeah. And and you talk about the ecosystem. I'm thinking of two other local ties with this podcast is, you know, our local music. You know?
Seth:Yeah. Theme music by Gainesville's Now Leaving Space.
J.C.:Absolutely. Shout out to them. And then also, our local sponsor, you know, Forest Meadows Funeral Home. So, you know, it really is, this is a local production. We're recording this in West Gainesville right now and in in the studios of MARC Radio.
Seth:And Yeah. Magic 101.3.
J.C.:That's right. That's right. Vinny Foo was kind enough to let's borrow his studio.
Seth:And J.C., I did write down another question here that wasn't on your script, but how will you know that StreetStreet has been successful?
J.C.:Oh, man. That is a good question. I mean, I think podcasting is tricky because there are so many different platforms that people listen on. It's not just super easy. You know, we print 20,000 newspapers every week, and we deliver them.
J.C.:It's that's pretty, you know, easy to figure them out. Even I can do that math. You know? With podcasting, it is a little bit more fragmented across the the the the space. So I think that's part of it.
J.C.:I think hearing feedback from people tell you know, send us an email, text us, comment on social media. Let us know what you think about the initial couple episodes here. Give us some feedback on it. And then, like I said, subscribe. You know?
J.C.:Like, we we can see subscription numbers, and so, that will be that will be good as well. But, really, we're just looking we we wanna hear from people in the community who who, you know, find this a helpful addition to our suite of products at Mainstreet Daily News.
Seth:A helpful addition, and hopefully, they're sharing it as well. It'll continue to roll.
Lillian:You've been listening to the first bonus episode of StreetSmart brought to you from Gainesville, Florida. We'll be back on Monday, February 9 with the next roundup of news, features, and events keeping you informed, engaged, and inspired about the streets around you.
