Civitan program chairman Neal Thompson, speaker John Wilson and club guest Garnet Chapin
Chattanoogan.com editor, owner, publisher and reporter John Wilson told the Chattanooga Civitan Club at their luncheon meeting Friday of his long newspaper experience.
He said the online newspaper, that was a long time in development, now receives at a minimum 400,000 users per month.
He described his humble beginnings of being born in North Carolina, where his father was the shoe manager in a local department store. The family moved to the small town of Laurens, S.C., when his dad was transferred by Belks. After he graduated from Laurens High School in 1967, his mother heard from a radio sermon about Covenant College located on Lookout Mountain.
He took a bus trip to Chattanooga and decided to enroll after he spent several days on campus at the "college in an old castle." There he obtained a liberal arts degree.
After graduating from Covenant, he met and later married in 1974 the love of his life, Pat Harris, from Farmington, New Mexico. The couple had three children and five grandchildren. One of his daughters wound up helping out at the online newspaper, handling the advertising and being one of several editors.
Mr. Wilson described that a college advisor, Joel Belz, knew Lee Anderson, the editor of the family owned Chattanooga News Free Press. He gave him a letter of introduction and he was then hired as a reporter in September of 1971. He said being a newspaper reporter was all he had wanted to do since he was a child and hand wrote the Maplebrook Gazette for his neighbors.
When he arrived the reporters were still using manual typewriters and the "composing room" upstairs was still on linotype similar to Gutenberg's invention in the mid-1400s. But he said there were many changes during his 28 years with the afternoon paper. The staff got heavy blue Selectric typewriters soon after he arrived. Later came the early form of the computer, but it was still linotype during a good portion of his News-Free Press career.
At the afternoon newspaper, Mr. Wilson covered Hamilton County, while his fellow reporter J.B. Collins was on the city beat. Mr. Wilson said he enjoyed his comraderie with his fellow news personnel such as City Editor Julius Parker, Assistant City Editor and cutup Buddy Houts, his mentor, Mr. Anderson, and his fellow reporters.
He said he has enjoyed his career as a newsman, including covering many exciting trials. Those included the murder trial of the slayer of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., the Bobby Hoppe trial and the Signal Mountain murders trial here, and the Sam Parker and Noble crematory cases at LaFayette, Ga.
He ended his relationship with the newspaper in 1999 after a new owner bought both local newspapers and merged them into one due to the economic decline all over the country of the profitability of the printed press.
Mr. Wilson said he looked for a new challenge in the newspaper business, saying with a single Chattanooga paper "there was no one left to scoop." He had always relished the competition with the reporters at the Chattanooga Times.
Though he didn't know how to do email at the time, Mr. Wilson decided to start his web online newspaper Chattanoogan.com that began appearing on Sept. 1, 1999. He said, "I could immediately see the sizable advantages. You could put out a story for all with a computer to see instantly without having to wait for the press to roll and the carriers to deliver it. There was no need for a big office building."
Mr. Wilson informed the club members that for five years he lived off his wife’s teaching salary at Chattanooga Christian School as he grew his online news outlet by obtaining more advertisers. He said his formula was to have as many interesting news and features as possible to draw readers, then he believed that advertisers would follow.
Today it has about 32 people engaged with the online company in some capacity. One of those longtime employees is Jenny Gienapp Belz, daughter of Joel Belz, who went on to found the God's World Christian news publication at Asheville, N.C. There is no office for Chattanoogan.com - only the homes of the individual employees.
Mr. Wilson said he has no plans of retiring and has turned down all offers to buy his company. Various members thanked the speaker for his contributions at the conclusion of his presentation. One member noted that "when John Wilson speaks with his soft gentle voice all types of people stop what they are doing to listen.”