Todd Stauffer is co-founder and publisher of the Jackson Free Press in Jackson, Mississippi, and author of 40 nonfiction books on a variety of computer-related topics. He lives with his partner, journalist and editor Donna Ladd.
The Jackson Free Press, referred to often as simply "JFP", is a for profit community magazine available free of charge at various retail establishments in Jackson, Mississippi founded in 2002 and owned by Mississippi native and Donna Ladd, author and technology expert Todd Stauffer. It is currently the only member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) in the state of Mississippi. JFP distributes approximately 15,000 free copies to 425+ locations throughout the Jackson metropolitan area twice monthly. It is known locally for its annual Best of Jackson awards as nominated by its readers and its online political blogs. It also has sponsored numerous local events such as the Fondren ArtMix, JubileeJam, the Chick Ball, the "Race, Religion & Society Series" and the Crossroads Film Festival.
Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County, along with Raymond, Mississippi. The city of Jackson also includes around 3,000 acres comprising Jackson-Medgar Evers International Airport in Rankin County and a small portion of Madison County. The city's population was estimated to be 165,072 in 2017, a decline from 173,514 in 2010. The city sits on the Pearl River and is located in the greater Jackson Prairie region of Mississippi.
Donna K. Ladd is an American investigative journalist who helped create The Jackson Free Press, an award-winning freely distributed community magazine. She has received international recognition for her racial reconciliation efforts in Mississippi and nationally, helping bring "cold" civil rights cases to justice and for her coverage of Frank Melton, the controversial mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.
Stauffer and Ladd started the Jackson Free Press in 2002. They took the name from The Mississippi Free Press, a now-defunct investigative civil rights newspaper from the 1960s. The Jackson Free Press, which is free of charge and is supported entirely by advertising revenue, has a weekly circulation of 17,000. The most recent Media Audit figures indicate an actual readership of approximately 50,000, and its active Web site, which launched on a blogging platform in 2002, receives more than 500,000 page views per month.
In 2006, Stauffer received national attention for leading an effort to fight the efforts of the Gannett Company to control the distribution of locally owned publications in Mississippi. [1] [2] [3] Stauffer became president of a new alliance to counter Gannett's efforts, called the Mississippi Independent Publisher's Association. Editor & Publisher magazine interviewed Stauffer about his efforts and wrote an editorial calling for Gannett to "halt" the TDN distribution scheme, which E&P called a violation of "the First Amendment right to distribute papers without unreasonable interference. [4]
Editor & Publisher (E&P) is a monthly magazine covering the North American newspaper industry. It is based in Irvine, California. It calls itself "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry" and lays claim to being "the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates." In recent years the magazine has won numerous national awards, including several for its stories on coverage of the Iraq war.
Stauffer, a critic of corporate media, received an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies award for his media criticism. [5]
Stauffer wrote one of the earliest books on blogging and is now a national consultant for publications seeking to transition to the Internet, speaking at national and state newspaper gatherings, from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies to the New York Press Association. [6]
The New York Press Association is a member organization with a mission of promoting the success of the New York state newspapers. It provides editorial assistance, advice and counsel to its 800 member newspapers, advocates for best journalism practices, provides a libel hotline for member papers, promotes journalism education and runs an annual journalism competition and provides training at an annual conference. It is headquartered in Cohoes, N.Y.
Stauffer is also a long-time media personality. He was co-host of the Emmy-winning "Disk Doctors" show on Knowledge TV in the 1990s. He was the host of Peak Computing Radio Hour in Denver, Colorado, and is currently the host of Radio JFP on WLEZ-FM in Jackson. [7]
