The Flyer — Memphis’ top alternative newspaper — turns 20 this week. Editor Tim Sampson looks back at a lost age of journalism:
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the freakin’ weirdest of times. They were fun times and they were stressful times. It was two decades ago, and we were starting this strange little newspaper called the Memphis Flyer. I was the first editor and in my 20s (for a very short time) and weighed about 50 pounds less than I do now. We didn’t have e-mail, the World Wide Web, spell-check, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or even cell phones, but, by damn, we could — and did — smoke at our desks, and sometimes it was more than mere tobacco. We were out to change the world or, at least, Memphis. All two-and-a-half of us on the editorial staff who were putting the paper out each week. And we were nuts. Not as nuts, though, as many of the people who took to our little paper and thought that they had finally found the Holy Grail of alternative news reporting and opinion. But more about that later.