20 People to Watch - Chuck Reece

As a journalistic endeavor, Atlanta-based the Bitter Southerner harnesses some of media’s most prevalent trends: the first person narrative; the big, pretty story; the focus on identity. As a cultural project, it upends some of media’s most prevalent trends. “What we’re doing is trying to broaden people’s understanding of the South beyond the stereotypes that they typically see in the national media,” founding editor Chuck Reece says.

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In the two and half years since the Bitter Southerner launched, it has become a darling of Southern media. The young digital publication quickly built a reputation on weekly longform stories that examine Southern identities and experiences. Numerous publications, including NPR, the Atlantic’s CityLab, Forbes, the AJC, and this one, jumped to feature the bright upstart, so different was its approach. In 2014, the Southern Foodways Alliance awarded Bitter Southerner the John Egerton Prize for its attention to the complexity of life in the South. A few months ago, the Atlanta Regional Commission asked Reece to speak at its annual leadership conference.

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Readers and writers, photographers and videographers have rallied around the publication’s mission. (The Bitter Southerner’s audience currently averages around 200,000 unique visitors a month — a 75 percent increase over last year.) The magazine’s four co-founders (Reece, Dave Whitling, Kyle Tibbs Jones, Butler Raines), in turn, are rallying like the rest of the media world to find a business model to support their journalism.

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“For the first 13 months we were a zero-revenue, zero-expenditure operation,” Reece says. “Every word we published, every photograph we published, we got for free.” Magazine contributors are now paid and in early 2015 Reece and Whitling, who serves as creative director, began taking small salaries. After its first year, Bitter Southerner successfully attempted an NPR-style drive and launched a book club. There is a retail business known as the General Store, where one can find Bitter Southerner branded tees and whiskey glasses, as well as products from other Southern makers. Bitter Southerner members receive discounts through the Family Establishments program, which features regional small businesses. This fall a part-time salesperson started.

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“We’re trying to figure it out,” Reece says. “It’s not like we’ve got a particular idea about a 2016 model media business plan that we’re trying to prove. We’ve got a brand that seems to matter to people and that a lot of people seem to count on.”

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In June, Bitter Southerner expanded on its longform approach to include the video section Moving Stories on Wednesdays, the reader-sourced Folklore Project on Thursdays, and Rise & Shine, a kind of lazy weekend social media chat, on Sundays. In the future you can expect ads on the site, podcasts, more brand partnerships and sponsorships, but no paywall, Reece says.

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Reece and company have found the business side of journalism slightly tricky to navigate in Atlanta, where investors tend to be fairly well educated about tech and health care but not necessarily media.

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But, Reece says, “I feel like the business community is beginning to realize that if we want to keep talented young people here we’ve reached a generational turning point where we have to address the stigmas that come with this place.”

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And that’s where Bitter Southerner comes in.

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“I feel confident that we’re gonna make it. One because we’re just damn determined,” he says. And two? “I want to be something that can help create opportunities for businesses in the South that look at the South in different ways. I think there are lots of those out there and that’s why I’m confident.”