Alabama newspaper group finds success with Facebook-fueled offshoot

“We wanted a series of brands that had a tighter voice, and started picking up on the fact that there was a real interest in light Southern humor,” said Tom Bates, president of Alabama Media Group.

Bates arrived at the company three years ago with the mandate to come up with new revenue beyond advertising and subscriptions as print advertising continues to decline. Three years before that, Alabama Media Group’s three Alabama papers had stopped publishing daily as part of drastic cutbacks by parent Advance Publications, which also owns Condé Nast. He saw an opportunity to use social media to build new brands on social media based off the newspapers. That led to social video-led SEC Shorts, a humorous take on college football; Reckon, an in-depth news brand; and lighthearted videos on Southern culture. They’re all housed under Red Clay Media, a year-old, 12-person startup division of Alabama Media Group.

“We don’t control the platforms today,” Bates said. “The flip side is the opportunity to reach more people than ever before.”

Bates said the division is profitable, largely driven by It’s a Southern Thing, with half the brand’s revenue coming from branded content and sponsorships (by companies like Wickles Pickles, Priester’s Pecans, Mosquito Joe), the other half from merchandise and licensing. It’s a bright spot in a challenged local media landscape.

Bates is pinning his hopes on It’s a Southern Thing because it’s resonated beyond the South; New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are among its top 10 markets. The videographers often get their material from the comments section, then give it a polished, “Saturday Night Live”-style approach, said Justin Yurkanin, director of video for Red Clay Media. The result is video series like sketch comedy “So True, Y’all” and “Backporch Bickering” where people debate the virtues of things like biscuits versus cornbread. The humor is light, self-deprecating and free of politics, which probably doesn’t hurt.

“It’s all about being incredibly relatable,” Yurkanin said. “We’re writing about things like college football and sweet tea and weddings in the South and writing the same way ‘SNL’ would about Donald Trump.”

Other social media brands that have been spawned by local media companies haven’t done as well. Rare, a Facebook-driven conservative news site started in 2013 by Cox Media, shut down earlier this year, a victim of the platform’s algorithm changes.

Bates and his staff at Red Clay Media hope to avoid a similar fate with It’s a Southern Thing. They’re working to drive Facebook visitors to a website and other platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Twitter and investigating longer series including documentaries. It’s a Southern Thing sells $20 T-shirts with sayings like “Fixin’ to” and “Bless your heart” and is also looking to grow its merchandising business by producing new items that are responsive to reader comments, similar to Barstool Sports’ model.

“This grew well beyond what we thought; we’ve got revenue trickling in from places we’ve never had with any of our other brands,” Bates said. “How big can this be? That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

Image: Robert S. Donovan