Steve Cavendish

00:00Hey guys, we are supported by Sharpies Bakery and we've been supported by Sharpies Bakery for the last year. And I tell ya, I couldn't be more proud of this partnership. Guys, they're a locally owned and operated bakery right here in Nashville for the last 36 years. Yes, they deliver fresh baked bread daily to your restaurant's back door and man, is it good. You wanna know what kind of bread they make? Go check them out at sharpiesbakery.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S, bakery.com. So they have over 200 types of bread. And if you're wondering, well hey look, it's a special recipe that I like to use, that we bake it in our house and it's kind of a pain but we like to do it. They can take your recipe and make that bread for you without any of the hassle, the mess, the labor. They'll just deliver it right to your door every single day. It is freshly baked. They love to give you a tour of their facility. Give Erin Mosso a call. Her number is 615-319-6453.

01:03You should do it now. We are supported by Robins Insurance, a local insurance agency providing customized insurance policies, sound guidance and attentive service. Robins Insurance is the go-to agency for hospitality professionals in Nashville. Listen, Robins knows how hard industry professionals work every single day. They also know how devastating accidents can be. Be it a grease fire that damages the kitchen, a severe storm that cuts off power or a customer slip and fall incident. Both the extensive experience and the savvy to create a policy that protects your business from accidents like those, you can rest easy knowing that the work you've put in will not be for nothing. Visit Robins website at RobinsINS.com to request a consultation or call Matthew Clements directly. His number is 863-409-9372. Protection you can trust. That's Robins. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City.

02:12Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We are powered by Gordon Food Service and man oh man, I am excited for two things today. Number one, Caroline is back. Caroline's feeling better, she's back and telling you it's just, this is a damn good interview. We are talking to Steve Cavendish today. Steve is the CEO, president, editor, all of those things for the new Nashville banner. He used to be the former editor over at the Nashville Scene. He worked for the Chicago Tribune. He's kind of been all over the place and he has lots of opinions and today we get into those opinions. Lots of fun in this conversation.

03:12I've had so many people say, have you had Steve Cavendish on the show yet? And I've said, no, but I would love to and today's the day. I mean, it's a Monday. It's gonna be, I was looking at the weather, it's gonna rain for like the next six weeks and I think we need something to brighten our day and I think this episode's gonna be the one. This, we finished the episode, it's so funny. We finished the episode, Steve left, took pictures, all that stuff and Caroline looked at me and she goes, that was an awesome interview and I said, yeah, I had a lot of fun there. That was crazy. We feel like we could do interviews with Steve Cavendish all the time and you know what, I feel like that with a lot of guests but today is a special one. I'm excited that you're here for it. It's an hour and 10 minutes or so, so we're gonna jump right in. Let's go. Hey everybody out there. So we are super excited today to welcome in Steve Cavendish. He is the editor, president of the Nashville Banner, former editor of the Nashville Scene.

04:17You've been a food writer for years. You're all over Nashville. Thanks for joining us today. Good to be here. This is exciting. So you're one of those names that people have brought up to me at least nine times. I'm actually quite surprised that this is your first time on the show. Yeah, yeah, no, this is definitely a fun moment for us. I hope it was brought up in a nice way and not like that asshole Steve Cavendish. You know what, no, most of the time it's, have you had Steve Cavendish on the show? You gotta have Steve Cavendish. He would be a great guest for you to have on the show. You should have Steve Cavendish on the show. Steve will say anything. Well, I think anybody who's opinionated and has been around in the scene for a long time, who understands the dynamic of everything that's happening is a good interview. And those are the people who you wanna hear their opinions. Let's go. Let's go. Tell me about the Nashville Banner. Let's start there. The Nashville Banner is a non-profit, non-partisan news organization that we, that Demetria Caladimos and I have been working to launch here now for a couple of years.

05:19We started trying to raise money in 2020. Small bit of advice to anyone who's interested, don't try to raise money in the middle of a pandemic. We started getting funding in earnest in 2021 and we hope to be finished and launched here soon in 2023. So mainly so we can be up before the mayor and council races. We're a news only organization. We're only gonna do what you, what people would call kind of straight news. We're gonna cover politics and the courts and the state house and things like that. We're not gonna cover food. So. I think it's fair to say that those types of political issues are things that affect restaurants and the food culture in Nashville. Breanna and I were actually just chatting before you arrived about the recent anti-drag legislation and that majorly affects food establishments.

06:22Well, I think, and I think particularly when you get into talking, I mean, what most people don't understand about the restaurant business and you guys know all too well is that, I mean, most restaurants that are independents are small businesses, they're entrepreneurs, that they have deep ties into the community. They have, they're about a lot more than just food and you know, those, you're exactly right. Those issues definitely affect them. Steve, what do you think is the state of reporting in general in Nashville and why did you feel like it was important to launch the banner when you did? Or relaunch, I guess. So there has been, and I'll try not to flood you guys out with statistics here, I can send you a pitch deck if you want to. It's okay, flood, flood. The, in the United States, the number of people, the Pew Foundation report, there's a pretty big report from the Pew Foundation a few years ago which says more than 60% of all newsroom jobs and since I think 2010 have been cut.

07:27You know, this mirrors sort of a decline over the years that goes along with the decline of print journalism. The problem is that print jobs and print newsrooms have often been the catalyst for news in many areas. So there's a downstream effect from news and when you have a big print newsroom, the broadcast outlets tend to follow kind of what they do. They tend to put more, the print newsrooms tend to put more resources into kind of bigger, deeper, more investigative, more, and kind of broader coverage. They tend to be the biggest newsrooms in town. Matter of fact, there was a really good report on public radio here a couple weeks ago that said that one of the big problems that public radio stations around the country have in terms of their news reports because a lot of these small NPR affiliates that don't have their own newsrooms were essentially ripping and reading from local news coverage and as that local news coverage has been hollowed out, their coverage has been hollowed out and so these places are becoming more and more news deserts.

08:49You know, that's true throughout Tennessee, that's true here in Nashville. I worked at the original Nashville banner. The banner, when it was bought by Gannett and closed in 1998, they took about a third of that newsroom into the Tennessean's newsroom and so you had, sorry, you had about 180 people in that newsroom. That number is now around 60. That's a two-thirds decline in a little over 20 years and the effects of it are massive. You know, I wrote for the banner, I wrote a piece about an exoneration that was of, that was, and the impetus for it was this judge's order. George Mark Fishman had written this order kind of excoriating Torrey Johnson's DA's office. He was the DA up until 2014. This guy, he said basically, they let this guy sit in jail for 10 years, they knew about it, they could have let him out.

09:52All of this stuff was sitting on a public docket someplace but because we don't have court reporters who that are reading dockets, this thing sat there for weeks and weeks and weeks until I found it. But this thing in another era would have been a three or four day news story about kind of the problems in the DA's office and where they systemic and whatever else. So that's a long way of saying we've lost local news reporting resources. And so what Demetri and I put our heads together, I used to be the editor of the scene, I left the scene when, as that company was kind of exploding before it was sold to Bill Freeman in 2018. That's another story for another day. But the, I'm not Bill Freeman but like the old. Bill Freeman owns the scene? Bill Freeman owns the scene. And Bill Freeman has actually been, has been a very good steward to the scene. They didn't have any layoffs during the pandemic. He has done a very good job kind of maintaining that place and kudos to him.

11:00The previous owners were bastards but. Don't hold back. But that's another matter. But so when I left the scene and Demetri Caladimos had left Channel 4 and we've been friends for years, we were kind of looking at how, what is something that puts more local resources back into Nashville? And this nonprofit news model has been the dominant new model in markets across the country. And you see outlets like the Texas Tribune, you see like the, like, in Chicago Block. The reader? No. Block Club. Block Club. Or the city in New York City. But there's these outlets kind of all over the country that are springing up that are nonprofit that are built around membership or subscriptions instead of advertising. You know, they do some advertising.

12:02They'll have some sponsorship. But the digital ad model sucks. The reason why places like the Tennessean that have lost print subscription can't replace it. They're replacing print dollars that they're losing with digital dimes and pennies and it's not replacement revenue. And so they're gonna continue to cut. So we were looking at this as a problem that needed to be solved. And so that's why we've been raising money. And so we're most of the way towards a $2 million goal. When we hit that $2 million, we'll flip the switch, turn on a newsroom of 10 people and start going. Congratulations. Well, we're not there yet. We're getting close. How would I donate? If I'm listening to this and I wanna donate out there, how would I do it? Go to NashvilleBanner.com. You'll see a link at the top that says support. There's a little digital signup page. On the first page, there is a signup that gives your email to us. That will sign you up for every story that Demetri and I produce right now in this kind of pre-launch period. We're producing stuff on an irregular basis.

13:04We were saying kind of twice monthly, but particularly since the mayoral stuff has picked up, we've been doing long-form interviews with the different mayoral candidates when they come in. I've got an interview, I've got an interview with Fran Bush that I did yesterday that'll go up here pretty soon. And then I'm talking to Jeffy Arboro here and we'll sit down and kind of hash out some of the issues as he jumped into the mayoral race last week. We are actually interviewing- Sharon Hurt. In a couple weeks. Yeah, Congresswoman Hurt. I'm very excited. This is like our first official politician we're gonna have in the studio. So speaking of the upcoming mayor's race, what do you think that us in the food and restaurant industry both on the worker side and ownership side should be looking at when it comes to our mayoral candidates? I mean, I think that there are questions of affordability that everybody has right now, whether you're just living here, whether you're running a business, whether you're kind of a worker in this economy.

14:17You know, the Nashville, the Nashville that you guys came to- 10 years. 10 years, 11 years ago. Actually, yeah, almost 11 now. 11 years ago is dramatically different in a number of different ways. It's the Nashville that I came home to in 2011. I'd been in Chicago at the Tribune, we came home. I came home to run the city paper in 2011. And that Nashville was, you know, significantly cheaper. That Nashville was not as explosive downtown. That Nashville did not have the, you know, the tourism numbers were always there, but they weren't in the kind of aggressive, aggressive numbers that they are right now. I mean, you know, the tourism numbers went from, you know, nine, 10 million a year to like 15, 16 million. Wild. And kind of, kind of within that decade, I'd have to go back and, you know, don't hold me to what those numbers are.

15:18I'm sure the CVC has the most up-to-date version of it, but, you know, it's a 50% growth in- It's been insane. Yeah, and so, you know, the downstream effects of that have all sort of, that's like the second or third time I've used that metaphor, I gotta stop doing that. The effects of that are serious, and, you know, they affect housing, they affect prices, they affect wages, they affect all these sorts of things. Every mayoral candidate is gonna say something about affordability, because they've all done the polling and they all know exactly what kind of issues are on people's mind. I don't know that, it'll be interesting to ask them, to press them for answers about exactly what they can do, so. Do you see, in terms of affordability and wages, do you see Nashville ever being a city that increases a mandatory minimum wage as some others, Chicago, San Francisco, places like this have done?

16:25No, because the state legislature will not let them. You know, the other set of, the other biggest set of issues is kind of state preemption and sort of the relationship between the state and Nashville. They're gonna cut the size of the council from 40 to 20-ish, I mean, they're haggling over kind of the details right now. You know, there's- But they are gonna do that? That's almost a guarantee. Now, there's also a bill that would eliminate runoffs in local elections, which I don't know is gonna pass, but it's certainly gonna, you know, it's certainly gonna be there. There are a couple, there's a bill that would eliminate the dedicated tax streams, which funds the bonds for the Music City Center. And, you know, a lot of this is simply because the metro council said, you know, we don't wanna have the RNC in Nashville in either 2024 or, so the mayor has kind of kicked this down.

17:30The mayor and the people negotiating this have kind of kicked this down the road to, there's a proposal for Nashville to try to host the DNC and the RNC in 2028. Interesting. Do you think it was a mistake for us to back out of that? I understand the criticism that people have about not wanting the RNC here. The flip side of that is, is we had the NRA convention here. I mean, NRA convention, which was, by the way, was much bigger. I mean, NRA convention was like 45,000 people. You had people staying in Kentucky, you know, to come into the convention. Now, do you want the NRA convention here? I don't think that, I don't think that once we built a 690 million dollar convention center and hung a shingle out, that we're necessarily in the business, we should be in the business of, you know, saying, no, we don't like you. So don't come. I get the politics of it.

18:33I get the, you know, from a restaurant point of view, to kind of bring it back here, I have talked to people in other convention cities and they have said the same thing, which is that it's a shitty week for restaurants. It actually is, and it's funny that you, I like to hear you say that because I think that for people who don't work in the restaurant industry, who are looking at something like, you know, the RNC or when we had the NFL draft or when we have, you know, CMA Fest, these kinds of big events. I even have talked to some friends of mine that are chefs and restaurant owners downtown, within walking distance of where these events are taking place, and they've said, it is horrible for business. Ask the people that were inside the zone for the NFL draft if they would do it again. Oh, don't, the reason we don't have Music City Food and Wine anymore is because of the bungled NFL draft. Yeah, yeah.

19:33That's, maybe that's for a different story for a different time, but in a nutshell, the company that produced the NFL draft, the events company that produced the draft, recruited a bunch of local chefs and restaurateurs to work the draft, over-promised, way under-delivered, did some things that just made people really unhappy, and then two months later, we're saying, hey, everybody sign up for Music City Food and Wine with us now, and everybody's like, absolutely not, and they never did it again. Yeah, it killed it. Wow, I didn't know that. Yes. I mean, and you had- Maybe there was some other factors, but in my estimation, that was the main one. I actually had a phone call with that company, and they said, hey, you as a business owner, can you just explain to us a little more why you won't participate in Food and Wine? And I gladly told them. I mean, I had conversations. I wrote some stories for the scene around that time about the post-draft thing and why Food and Wine died, and Pat Martin used to set up one end of Music City Food and Wine, and it was, I think it was called it- Pat Martin and Friends.

20:40That's it, and it was just nothing but giant fire pits and big smoking apparatuses, and it was awesome. I mean, it was one of the coolest things to just go stand out there and watch, and you didn't even mind that it was like 1,000 degrees, and you're baking and you're standing in the middle of fire and smoke. It was really cool, and Pat was livid, because Pat used to put a lot of his own money into that, recruiting people specifically for it because he thought it would be cool and would be a draw for the event, and he put up people in hotels on his dime because in the middle of all that, and got, you know, I think a fair way to say it is he did not feel that that sort of level of commitment was reciprocated by the people running the event. Basically, the people running the event made a shitload of money for their company off of the draft, and all of the independent restaurants who participated, to my knowledge, either broke even or lost a significant amount of money.

21:46We fall in the lost a significant amount of money category as a result of our participation in the draft being a vendor. How many, how long were you guys selling Italian beef after that? Oh, I can't even tell you. Basically, they had a mandatory amount that we were required to prepare for each day. We had to sign a contract that said we would have X number of portions for each day. Once we got there, we were literally on-site, day of, informed that we would have to purchase sodas from the events company, and then whatever sodas we didn't sell, they would not buy back from us. Yeah, it was a cluster. It was, it was, it was bad. There was, off the URL, there was a long email thread that got spicy at the time. But yeah, basically, they made a ton of money for their company off the draft. Most of us all lost money, and then they said, hey, why don't you pay us $600 to participate in Food and Wine, and we'll give you like $100 Cisco credit or whatever bullshit they give you to participate in it.

22:54And so they could, again, make, you know, $100,000. I mean, absolutely not. The simmering resentment among Nashville chefs over Food and Wine and kind of like the costs that they would put in, and they would kill themselves in order to do stuff. I remember one year, Josh Habiger, and like right around the time Bastion launched, they had, they were, they did some dish that had, it wasn't, it didn't have ice cream in it, but it had something like super cold. And you know, of course, you know, this thing was, this thing was in- It was in July, I think. It was, I think it was like August. Oh, was it? It was like August, but I mean, hell, it doesn't matter. I mean, same difference. Yeah, it was hot. And they were having people like run back and forth from like these cool environments to kind of bring in, to have it there. Kerry Bringle got, I don't know if he, I can't remember if he told this story when he was here. Kerry was so sort of put out over the lack of money that they got to prepare stuff.

24:00I mean, it was, you got like- I actually, I misspoke before. I believe you got a $500 credit from Cisco, but like a restaurant like mine, I don't even work with Cisco, so. And so- What do you do? And you get like- I'm not gonna serve Cisco pork, you know? That's not representative of what my business does. And by the way, you feed people for two days on that. Right. That are just like kind of constantly coming in. Yeah, you have to make like 1200 portions a day. And so Kerry went to, went back to, he has a relationship with Springer Mountain because I think they do all of his chicken or we're doing all of his chicken for a long time. And he asked them for all of the wingtips that they don't use. And he just barbecued the wingtips and he served them as just the tips. Oh my God. Which I thought was just genius. That's amazing. And he was like, he was like, hey, you know, go against Kerry would be, hey, I got them for free. And it was great.

25:02We're gonna take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors. Do you provide your team with health insurance? If you work for a restaurant right now that doesn't offer health insurance, do you need health insurance? Because Dan Maher over at Southern Health Insurance wants to change that. If you're a local restaurant and you just, you really want to offer health insurance, there are so many benefits. Improved employee retention, you have happier team members, which means longer tenures and less training time. Smoother shifts make everyone's lives easier, meaning happier employees are more likely to stick around. When employees take care of their health, they're less likely to take sick days. This means reduction in loss productivity and revenue for your business. If you were sick days, wouldn't that be great? You have improved morale, a healthy workplace with opportunities for growth is a happy workplace. Encouraging your team's wellbeing will result in higher morale and better work performance. Guys, all of these things, Dan offers health insurance. He offers visual insurance and dental, as well as life insurance.

26:04And guys, if you're out there and the marketplace is just too tough to navigate, Dan can answer any question that you may have. Any business, if you're a small business, it doesn't have to be a restaurant, you need to call Southern Health Insurance, 832-816-8602. If you prefer to email, you can email dan at southernhealthins.com. What chefs want story is incredibly unique. The owner, Ron Trenier, met with a bunch of chefs in Louisville back in the early 2000s and asked them one simple question. What do you want? And the chefs, they responded emphatically. We want deliveries on Sunday. We wanna be able to split any item that you sell. We want a frictionless experience where we feel like we're being served. And so you know what he did? Something crazy. He did just that. So what chefs want is not only a company that's delivering fresh produce, fresh seafood, fresh custom cut meats, specialty items, dairy, gourmet, all of that seven days a week.

27:09They also offer 24-7 customer support. You wanna call, you wanna text, you wanna email, you can talk to somebody 24-7. Get your delivery seven days a week in an amazing selection of products. That is what chefs want. So if you ever wonder why do they call it that? That's your reason. Check em out at whatchefswant.com. He's a brilliant guy. Yeah. He's a resourceful dude. I love Kerry. I really do. That's funny. It's a fun interview that we just, did you listen to that interview? I've listened to the first half of it. I've gotta finish it up. Well, I wanna go back just a little bit to the Nashville banner. Sure. I think it's super cool. I didn't know. I didn't know a lot that the Tennessean went from 160 to, or 180, whatever the number was, to 60 people. And you think there's a lot of stories that get missed. Yeah. I mean, so, and I always tell it in like, in terms of terms of people. But let me put it to you this way. What would happen if you had 50 more stories about Nashville every single day, but done by a high quality newsroom?

28:18What would that mean? I think that we'd have a lot more information, a lot more accountability. Yeah. I mean, think about what you could do with that bandwidth. I mean, that's what we've lost. And I'm hyper concerned about the stuff on the news side because, like for instance, it means that races don't get covered. It means that you don't do deep vetting of candidates. So Phil Williams just had a series on channel five about Andy Ogles with some sort of, I mean, it's not quite George Santos, but you can see George Santos from where those stories are. You know, just kind of the embellishment of the. Was it Dartmouth? Yeah, so Dartmouth and Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt he had on his resume, but he had taken executive courses there, not grad courses. Those are, executive courses tend to be kind of for profit for the universities and often not taught by, it depends on the program.

29:25I don't know what the case was here, but tend to not be taught necessarily by a faculty there. And so, yeah, I mean, between that and like he said, you know, I'm an economist. That's not what his degree is in. Or he said, you know, I'm in law enforcement. I was, you know, you know. I mean. Like a deputy. Yeah. Volunteer deputy off duty kind of a. My favorite was, you know, I've been involved in like international law enforcement around sex crimes. And yeah, and it's just, it's the lack. I mean, the hollowing out of the media has meant that, you know, stuff like that. I think the most common response that Phil's gotten here over the last few weeks is since those stories ran, which was, that's great. You know, why couldn't you have done this before November? Because all of this was known sort of internally by the campaigns that were running against Ogles. Why they didn't make a case of it, I don't know.

30:28But certainly the Campbell campaign knew about this stuff in the fall. And, but before, but pre-primary, you know, I think the Harwell and a couple of the other campaigns knew about it. So your goal is to take this mayoral race and cover all aspects. And really, I think it's so important. We talked about it with Kerry that A, that you go vote. And B, that you actually study the candidates and know what you believe and identify with each candidate for who believes the most like you and then vote for that person. And you're looking to bring that information to everybody out there. Yeah, and you know, we care, like I said, we're gonna care about news and we're gonna care about digging in on issues around the race. You know, what we don't wanna do is kind of cover this as kind of, one of the critiques of the, one of the critiques of news coverage over the last 25, 30 years has been kind of this emphasis, particularly in campaign seasons on horse race coverage.

31:33And the, you know, who's winning, who's ahead, who's, you know, this perception of winning as opposed to what are the issues, you know, where do people care, what issues do people care about? How do candidates, what do they plan to do about those issues? And I think kind of it gives us, you know, launching a new organization gives us a chance to re-center around issue coverage as opposed to horse race coverage and these sorts of things. And I hope what it, you know, what we say to people is, there's a little D Democrat problem in Nashville in terms of like the news that it takes to make a democracy functional and because we don't have enough of it. And, you know, that's not necessarily a criticism of the people that are covering the news right now. It's just that we don't have enough bandwidth. We don't have enough people covering what is an explosively growing city.

32:38You know, the city that I grew up in here in the 80s and 90s is massively bigger. I was telling this to somebody the other day, you know, I have the native problem that a lot of people do, which is that I still think Nashville's a 15 minute city that I can get across town in 15 minutes. And I was, you know, five minutes late getting here because I didn't count for like the sheer volume of traffic on 21st this morning because that never. That never used to happen. Never used to happen. And I used to, you know, I used to live in this area after college and went to Belmont. I lived in a house that maybe we could throw a softball and hit it. We'd have to throw it across 21st. So you guys have to have a pretty good arm. It'd be a baseball. Yeah, maybe a baseball. Yeah, now maybe not a softball. But certainly you could throw it from Browns and hit the house we lived in. And that traffic didn't exist. And those, you know, a lot of these issues kind of didn't exist.

33:39I drive through Hillsborough Village is probably the place that makes me saddest in Nashville, in all honesty, because I used to live in a condo behind Sam's. Like my windows looked at like the back parking lot of like Zumi sushi back in the day. But Sam's and Bosco's and Sunset Grill and Jackson's, sit on the patio at Jackson's was like just, it was just a great thing. It was just right there in Fido. And then the villager is still there, which is amazing, but it's just a completely different landscape now. And there's just people everywhere. Wait till the next round of leases is up and see how that place changes. Oh, I'm scared. Every little neighborhood in Nashville is doing that. I mean, second to leases. We talk about, we talk about the kind of like the loss of independent music venues, but the loss of independent restaurants in some of these areas is gonna be, it's just horrifying. And Hillsborough Village is kind of, it's kind of, you know, case study A and all that. Yeah, I believe so too.

34:42It's just sad. Demetria Caledimos. The best. Beloved. She's the best. And I was watching a promo for the Nashville Banner and you guys are partnering with Channel 5. Yep. And at the end of it, she says, and if you look in her eyes, there's almost smirk, she says, News Channel 5, where local coverage lives. And she almost has like a smile on her face when she says it, which I thought was kind of funny. Well, and she says it, and she always says it in partnership with the new Nashville Banner, which is part of the, which is part of the, which is one of the great things about those promos. They've given us a lot of visibility. Yeah, they certainly have. What was your, how did this come about? How did you get Demetria on board with you? How did you meet her? What is your, kind of your history with Demetria? When I came back to town, she and Jim Ridley were really good friends. Jim, who was my predecessor as the editor of the scene. And I, you know, I grew up here. And like most boys of a certain age, I had a crush on Demetria at some point.

35:46Demetria, what, Demetria sat behind an anchor desk at Channel 4 for over 30 years. And what most people don't realize about Demetria is she is one of the best reporters in town. She's not just a news reader. And she, there's a group called investigative reporters and editors, and there's a bunch of different awards for different things kind of within the journalism community. Pulitzer's everybody knows about. You may have heard of some other ones. But among like investigative reporters, the IRE awards are a big damn deal. It's a great set of judges that evaluate these entries every year. And it just means a lot to among journalists to win an IRE medal. You know, several people around town have an IRE medal. Demetria has three. Wow. Wow. And that to me says exactly what kind of reporter she is.

36:52I mean, you know, she's broken stuff for us here at the Banner that nobody else would have gotten. She did a report on, and you can find all of this. If you go to newsletter archive on nationalbanner.com, you can find kind of all the stories that we've published, including links to videos that she's done. She did a story a couple of weeks ago for us about this little girl who died down in Lawrence County. And it's been two years since the two-year-old's death, and there have been no charges. And Demetria has an interview with the grandmother kind of about this. And then the grandmother had made this two-hour recording with an investigator in I believe it's the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office. That in which he detailed all the ways that that case was fucked up.

37:56And all of the ways that they got it wrong. Excuse me, sorry. Sit here and burp on your ear. It's all right. All the ways that he had gotten, that they had messed up the case in a way that probably prevents this from ever being charged. And so a two-year-old's death will kind of, you know, there will never be kind of be justice for this kid. And, you know, she had heard about the story and developed this relationship with this grandmother. And the grandmother comes in and gives her the statements and I made this recording. And so we built this story around the interview and kind of explaining all this. And, you know, hopefully to kind of spur the, you know, spur something on to happen. But, you know, also to kind of show what happens, what kind of what happens in these situations when you don't get it right.

38:59And she has a commitment to doing kind of really, you know, really important stories and doing them really well. She's just the best. How do you find, how does, how do you, I'm not an investigative reporter by any means. I'm a restaurant guy. I like sharing stories of other restaurant people. So I'm, Caroline has a drive for a lot. I think Caroline could be a reporter. She has so many ideas. She could be a reporter. I'm nosy. I love, is that it? Do you have to be nosy? I have a curious mind. I want to know everything about everything all the time. I am nosy. How do you find these stories? Like, how do you, how do you, do you see it somewhere else? Do you get tips? Do people call you and say, hey, this happened in, you know, this county and there's a two-year-old that died and you need to do some research. It's a combination of all those things. And, you know, in Demetrius' case, she has, so it's really funny. Like, if I put something on Facebook, and I'm not encouraging anyone to spend any amount of time on Facebook, if I put something on Facebook, you know, there's like, I mean, I've got however many friends, but you really, I mean, there's just like, there's like 25 people, including, you know, like some members of my family that are going to see this thing.

40:13Because I just don't, I don't do much on Facebook. The algorithm doesn't pick me up and put me in people's feeds. Demetrius put something on Facebook and it'll just go, you could just sort of like watch it explode. Because she's had, you know, she has all these people that have followed her over the years and she has such a, she has such a kind of a huge sort of presence even still within the public. One of the best things in the world to do is to go to lunch with Demetrius and sit outside. I just want you to wait for like the inevitable, somebody to come by and be like, oh my God, are you Demetrius Kaladimos? I love you. That happened to me a couple weeks ago. Somebody came by and said they loved you? No, Demetrius was eating in my restaurant. And I walked by and I was like, holy shit, that's Demetrius Kaladimos. Wait, wait, were you the person? That's what I'm saying, I was the person. I didn't actually go to the table because it was my restaurant and I didn't want to be that guy. I've only done that like twice.

41:15And one was, you know, Riva I go talk to, but then Billy Corgan from Sashmash and Pumpkins, I was like, I gotta meet you, man. Like you're my- Was he friendly? Oh, he was incredibly friendly. He was incredibly friendly. Yeah, he was having lunch. But like, I saw Demetrius Kaladimos. I was like, holy shit, like that's Demetrius Kaladimos. And I walked back in the kitchen and I was like, Demetrius Kaladimos. And the guy at Expo was like, who? I was like, nevermind. We'll go to the next. He just moved here. I'm like, you don't know who she is. But- One of the, we were talking about kind of a series of questions to ask the mayoral candidates and somebody said the litmus test that, the litmus test we ought to use is we should ask all the candidates if they know who did Demetrius close when she was on, when she was on Channel 4. Castor Naught. No, no, no, it was the French shop. Oh, it was the French shop. Oh, I was thinking, because I thought it was, it was Castor Naught for a long time, I believe. So it was Castor Naught and then it was the French shop for like, forever. For the French shop, yeah, yeah.

42:15And then what most, and most people still associate it with her, but the last few years, I think it was Dillard's that did it because, and she told me this one time. She said, it's one of the questions that I had always asked, wanted to know. And so I asked, I just asked her, I said, all right, all right, how long did the French shop do your clothes? And she said, not as long as you would think, because they had this kind of change in style of all the clothes in the store. And she said, she said it was like, they had this whole tropical thing at one point. And she's like, I can't wear that on air. And so they switched the sponsorship to Dillard's, so. Wow. The OG influencer over here. It wasn't like her showing a thing on Instagram, like, no, no, read the credits, you'll see what I got. But she still gets French shop questions to this day.

43:15I mean, that was like the greatest marketing money that anybody ever spent was the French shop on. Where is the, is the French shop still a thing? It still exists, yeah, I think. I've never been there, have you been there? I'm not familiar with that, sorry to say. Well, we're gonna blow them up now, the nine people listening to this, it's gonna be amazing. So, Steve, I wanna take it back for a second, back to kind of earlier in your career. I know you spent some time doing some food writing and sports reporting as well, is that correct? I've done a little bit of everything. When I got started, so when you worked at the banner, and I worked at the banner like straight out of school in the 90s, I graduated on a Saturday, started on a Monday. And I was on, you know, I was a designer slash art director by trade, we would put together, the paper together every morning, but like my typical day at the banner was like, go put in, we were an afternoon paper, so my shift, like if I was putting together sports, my shift started at like 3.30 or 4 a.m.

44:19Or if you're doing the front page, it would start at like 5 a.m. First edition closes at like eight something, and then the second edition closes like around noon. And so, you know, at noon, you're done for the day. And so typically, like I'd go home, take a nap, and then get up and like go cover something. And so, you know, sometimes it meant you wouldn't cover like a planning commission meeting, or you know, sometimes it meant that, you know, I wrote a lot of sports. And so I would go cover games, and you know, it was great. It was the best experience in the world. It was the kind of thing that you can do when you're 23 years old, that now I could never do. Like if you put me through that schedule, I would last maybe a week, and then I would be dead today. But I did a lot of that, but I worked all over the country as a designer and kind of page editor. And then when I was at the Tribune, I'd always wanted to write more.

45:24There was a bunch of stuff happening at the Tribune and Tribune papers at the time. They were doing all this consolidation work. They had asked me to help consolidate some Tribune papers. Like they would go in and like wipe out their copy desks and all their designers and pull all that production back to Chicago. Oh, and like the Daily Herald, or like? No, like the Newport News Daily Press, or the Hartford Courant, or stuff like that. And so I was the guy that they would send in, because I was a manager there, and I was the guy they would send in and be like, I'm from Chicago and I'm here to help you. People love that. And I was the guy that people were saying, that fucker is here because they fired all our people last week. And after once or twice of doing that, as soul crushing as that was to do, I said, I would like to go back to writing.

46:27And so I cut a deal with them where I took like, I took basically like every terrible shift that I could take in exchange for letting me go to features and just picking up whatever I could. And so, and so that's how I started doing, going back to writing and doing food stuff. And then when I came here in 2011 to edit the, my wife and I are both from Nashville, both grew up here. And when we came back, I did a lot of that full time at the city paper and I would write a lot because we were owned by the same company. I would write a lot for the scene. And I was doing basically like kind of a bunch of food criticism work for the scene while the city paper was still alive. And then after they closed that and kind of moved in, I did a little bit of all of it. Can we talk about food criticism for a minute?

47:29Sure. This is a hot topic. Sure. I just this morning on Facebook, I never ever reply to anybody's stupid post. Somebody posted a review of a restaurant right down the street from me and it was. Like some, like somebody's personal opinion. On Hit Bellevue. Yeah, it was a, this restaurant is terrible and you shouldn't go there. And it's a great restaurant. It's a great restaurant that's ran by locally owned and operated people that are friends of mine. But like also I've eaten there several times and it was really good. And I replied, I'm like, what's your end game, man? Like you've also complained that there's no restaurants close by. Somebody takes a chance on your neighborhood and opens a really nice restaurant. And the first thing you do is go on Hit Bellevue and just completely tell people to stop going there. Like I don't understand. And the review was our appetizers came after our entrees. And then they said, we'll take it away, but we'll comp it. And we're just, we're done with this place. And I'm like, hey man, it's Valentine's. Like shit happens. Like this is a newer restaurant, but they took care of it.

48:30A manager came to the table, took care of one of their entrees, like did the whole thing. And I'm like. Wait, wait, this was Valentine's? It was a couple of days after Valentine's. It was like Thursday, the guy went. And this is like going out on New Year's Eve and demanding. Yeah, I mean, it's essentially, but it's like, dude, what's your game? And I think that everybody in the world is now a critic because everybody has Yelp and everybody has Facebook. And anybody who has a bad experience can now just go, oh, I had a bad experience and I'm the most important person in the world and you should listen to me. But you did it professionally. So I think it's a good opportunity while we have you here. Sure. So let's go over some groundwork on this. Like how do people, if you're out there and everybody who's listening is a critic. Sure. What are some, tell me about your days doing it. What was your process? How did you go about it? Because I think it's important for people to know these things. So I think a couple of things. One is you should have a level of empathy for the people that are serving your food.

49:32And if they do something that is so bad that it outstrips that empathy, great. But you should have a level of empathy for the people that make your food because it's hard. I mean, what most people don't know about restaurants is that these people are not getting rich. These people are operating on shitty margins. That they, that every single day, if it's a quality restaurant, they are starting from scratch, basically. And that they are, the process of making your meal happen is an all day affair that requires multiple people and it requires sticking the landing there at the end. And it's really fucking hard. It is. And so start with that level of empathy. And then evaluate them kind of based on that.

50:39I only wrote a couple of really negative reviews in my time at the scene. Do you, can you name names? Well, I mean, there's a Saint Inejo review out there that I wrote that was like, it was pretty, I basically said, this is a beautiful place. It is not a good restaurant. And it was something, and this is something else that people have to kind of take into consideration. As working for a publication that receives a fair amount of its, a fair amount of money from restaurants that advertise with the scene, every time I wrote something that was really negative, it could have consequences. M Street pulled their advertising from the scene. It cost us thousands of dollars. And to Mike Smith, who's now the president of FW Publishing, which is over at the scene and a bunch of other stuff, was my publisher at the time.

51:41Mike Smith came by and put that review on my desk and told me the amount that it had cost and said, if you want to write that review again, write it. And I think that that's important because, A, it shows kind of the level of integrity that Mike has, but B, there is a certain amount of credibility that comes with writing a tough review, that if you can, there's a school of thought that says you only write good reviews and that you should only kind of, lift up, because there's so many, people have so many options, you should only sort of lift up the best options. I have a lot of sympathy for that position, but I think that for the credibility of a publication, you need to write critical reviews when they are warranted.

52:44You just don't, just make sure you're not punching down when you do it. I think too, it's important that, you know, that reviewers also come at it from a really fair place. I do think, I agree with you, I think that critical food writing is very important. I think that there tends to be some critical food writing that maybe, in my opinion, doesn't come from the right place. I read a review recently of a newer restaurant, I have no stake in this review, I've never been there, I don't know the people that own it, you know, it's a place that maybe I wouldn't go for, just because I don't know, I don't get out much, but as far, it wasn't a great review, but as far as I could tell, the reviewers only ate there one time, and it had only been open for two weeks, and it's just like, that's not, in my opinion, that's not the way to do it. Yeah, so you have to have a set of standards, and the first of which is multiple visits. You need to make sure that what you see is indicative of, what you see is indicative of the restaurant as a whole, and so, if it has systemic problems, then you can write about it, because you've seen it for more than, you understand that it's not an isolated occurrence.

54:01You also wanna know if it's great, you know, that you didn't catch like the one great night, and you wanna try to, you wanna try to go when they're at their best, but you also wanna try to, you wanna try to stick your head in when maybe, you know, they don't have the A team working. You know, it's one thing to have your best crew, you know, on a Friday night, when you know you're gonna be packed and whatever else, but how are they doing on a Tuesday night? How are they, because, I mean, people are gonna eat there on a Tuesday night, so, you know, these are things that you need to do. I think you need to evaluate the food based on what they're trying to do, and not necessarily on some sort of, some sort of kind of impossible scale. I've seen some reviewers do this where, you know, I think you have to meet, you have to meet restaurants at who they're trying to serve. You can't walk into, you can't walk into a, you know, super casual place and evaluate it like you would Noma.

55:08They're completely different things, and completely different experiences, different price points, different whatever else. And that, you know, all of those are important. And then I think you have to, you have to give people a real sense, you try to eat enough of the menu that you have a broad understanding of kind of how, how they do things technique-wise, how they, you know, what is the style of, what is the style of service, what is the style, all the factors that make a great restaurant experience. And if you can do that, then I think you can give people a really fair assessment of a restaurant. If you go in and eat one dish, you know, and they serve 25 different things, can you say that you have really given, you've given this place the, that you have put it through its paces?

56:11And so we were, we were, when Henrietta Redd opened, we reviewed it one night, and it was, it was, it was a great experience. But one of the most fun things was, we walked in there with like, there were like six people, you typically go in there with kind of a big group, so you can have a lot of food, and you can get, you can hear people's opinions, and kind of like what they think about it, you know. And I said, the server came over and said, so what do you want? And I said, we'll have the right side of the menu. And we just ordered like everything, you know, everything off basically all of their kind of bigger entrees and kind of like bigger small plates. And it was fun because you could see like this breadth of things that Joya Sullivan and her crew were doing. And it was, it gave you a real sense of what she was as a chef and kind of building that menu, but also sort of kind of, you know, all the different stations that are operating to kind of produce that food.

57:19It was, you know, that gave us a great sort of sense. But also let you know, technical preparation and execution of service, not based on what you like. Right. And I'll paraphrase a retweet or a tweet that you did recently that I read, that if you don't like oysters, don't go review the oyster bar, right? Like, cause I mean, that's not an accurate review. Like you're looking at technically, are the oysters fresh? How are they served? Was it timely? All of the things that you'd want, not, oh, I don't like oysters, so that place wasn't for me. Like, why would you review that place? Also, it's 2023, eat a fucking oyster, so. Be a grownup. Well, I eat an oyster every time that I go somewhere that has oysters just to see if I like them. I don't like them. But I've had like a thousand oysters in my life and every time I'm like, yep. It slid right down, I still don't like it. Now, I did have dinner, that Gracie Nguyen dinner the other night at Star Rover. She made an oyster that I actually liked.

58:21I was like, ooh, I like this oyster. And they went to Optimist a couple nights later and I was like, yep. The oyster was beautiful. I mean, that was, the presentation was amazing. The server explained where they're from. Like there was a hierarchy of east coast to west coast to Nova Scotia. Ellen, it was amazing. The presentation, the knowledge that our server had was great. I'm not gonna knock them because I personally don't like the texture and taste of oysters. That's not me. I feel like I have read some stuff where somebody is just like, I don't like sweetbreads, the end. And it's just like. Why did you order the sweetbreads? That's not an indication of the restaurant. I personally, I'm extremely picky about shrimp. But I could still eat a shrimp dish and tell you if it was seasoned correctly, cooked properly, plated nicely, if the shrimp was fresh. I could tell you all of these things. I am very picky. I think because I grew up on the Gulf Coast. I was gonna say, you grew up on the Gulf. I only like shrimp from where I grew up. I have to be on the coast, getting fresh off the boat. I am too. And it's from selling food to restaurants and having the chef go, what's the cheapest shrimp you got?

59:23You're like, why do you want the cheapest shrimp that I have? I'm trying to, I'm like, that's not a good, don't do that. I've seen so many people cut corners with shrimp and I'm like, eh, I'm gonna eat shrimp when I'm close to where it's caught. But anyway, back to the same topic. Do you think that we need, like I said, I believe that we need to bring that back. I think we need a really good, somebody we can trust who's doing food reviews of places, they're going multiple times and grading a star system almost that's a local for Nashville. Do you really want a star system? I don't know. It's up for debate. Here's the thing is, star systems work really well when you have an institution that cares for it over a number of years and that the stars are meaningful and correlate. And maintained. Yeah, and that a three star or four star review from 10 years ago is a three star or four star review now in terms of kind of like the standards and what you're trying to, what you're saying is quality.

01:00:34I don't, we don't have that. And most places that are not the New York Times don't have that. I mean, in Chicago, we had Phil Vitale, who was, I mean, a god of reviewing and Phil could, Phil had that sort of, Phil was that institutional knowledge. But, and it was a big deal when he- It was a huge deal when he would come to a restaurant and he also, he was critical, but he would never just like drag somebody through the mud. It was very smart and fair criticism. And he always had a kind word for everyone. Even if you could tell he fucking hated somewhere, he had something nice to say. But- But that's what I'm talking about. I think that there's, I think we're at a city now where we could actually utilize that there was something here that wasn't Yelp, I think it would be helpful. So the next question is, is kind of like, how are you gonna pay for it? Because it's incredibly expensive to do that level of, that level of criticism.

01:01:37Phil's expense account was, I don't know if it was six figures, but it was, it might've been. It wouldn't surprise me if it was, because he ate out so much and he had, he was constantly dropping in on places that he wasn't reviewing. And I think that's what people don't understand about journalism and just sort of in general is that when you hire a journalist, and I tell people this, you're not hiring necessarily a person, you're hiring time. And you're hiring time spent on the things that you are unwilling to publish. Because there are stories that you will leg out and get to the end of and be like, that's not a story. And unless you're willing to invest that amount of time in not publishing stories that don't meet your standards, otherwise what happens is that you end up like only going after low-hanging fruit.

01:02:45And so only stories that aren't as deeply reported aren't, because it's very expensive to kind of get in whether it's news or criticism or even sports reporting, kind of do all of that work and then get to the end and be like, that's not really a story. The best places do that. In terms of food criticism, there was a place that I went back to five times one time. It wasn't super expensive, so I could do it and I knew I could do it, but I kept feeling like, I got like three mediocre meals and like one really great meal and I kept looking for, all right, what am I missing here before I wrote about it? And it was on that fifth time, it kind of crystallized sort of kind of how they were doing things and kind of why I was getting the results I was getting. I think that it's important to invest that amount of time and money in things, but that's expensive.

01:03:47And today, I mean, most outlets are unwilling to kind of put that sort of money into it because what is the return on it? I mean, the reason why the Tennessean is doing shitty lists all the time is because they are, because it's easy to do and because- It's almost click bait. I mean, it's sort of click bait, although they're putting some of the stuff behind subscriber walls and I can't imagine that they're like generating subscribers in order to see like, what are our top 20 chain restaurants? Well, who the fuck cares? What are the, wow. Top 20. I don't know, but I will echo that sentiment. I mean, that's not today. That's not today and- Why? Why? I don't know why. I don't know why they do. I mean, I think because it amuses the people that are doing it and that's great, but I mean, go spend your time on something more worthwhile than that. I mean, there are lots of things in Nashville that deserve time and attention before what, you know- Top 20 chain restaurants.

01:04:52Before the meal that you spent at Red Lobster and that time and money at First Watch. I mean, who cares? Who cares? I'm sorry. And it's not like they need it. It's not like they need the press, you know? No, I mean, but to kind of get back to the criticism piece of it, should, you know, I wish we had a place that could do that critically. The scene is the only place that comes close to it. They have, I mean, I'm very biased. I came from there. I hired some of those people. I love all of those people. You know, Patrick Rogers is a very good editor. They have a set of writers who do a very good job. On the criticism side, you know, they have some people like Ashley Brantley who does pieces occasionally. Ashley does a great job and she actually does the work. She'll visit multiple times. She'll, you know, have intelligent criticism, good feedback.

01:05:55She's a really good writer. They've got, you know, they brought Kay West back because Kay's kind of splitting time between Nashville and Asheville for various reasons. And so she had said, hey, do you want me to do some restaurant criticism? Kay's OG. She's OG scene. And I mean, if you want to, it's not online, but goddamn. They should go back and they should pull there's a legendary Mario's review that Kay wrote where it was about, and they ended up having to, Mario's was, for those of you who don't know, Mario's was a legendary sort of like high-end Italian place. It's where the Ertson is now. Yeah, and before Nashville had any sort of like legitimate fine dining scene, Mario's was kind of the place where people went. And Mario's in the wild boar across the street with another very. Exactly. And so Kay went in there and she got, she ordered the veal and it was pork.

01:06:59And she bagged it up and sent it off to a lab and then wrote about it. What? Oh wow. That's hard. That's what it's about though. I should ask the scene people if they could put that online because it's such a, it predated the internet. Oh my God, that's amazing. But it's a legendary kind of review. The, I don't, you know, we always said that, we went back and looked it up and this wasn't the headline, but we'd always refer to it as, there's a squeal in the veal as that review. But Kay's doing some reviews. Kay's the best. She's great. I mean, and super focused and fair. And she's really, really good. I used to work at the Boundary a long time ago, 1998. I was at the Boundary and I think there was a piece of paper in the service station, a picture of Kay West. If you see this woman get a manager and it was like her headshot, cause she was very much like her, it would say Kay by Kay West.

01:08:06And then like the photo was just a silhouette. Like her photo wasn't published. Like you had to know her to even know what she looked like, but somebody got a headshot of her and it was in the site. If you see this woman, let a manager know. Kay West, Kay West, she wasn't the original, but Kay West was the last Betty Banner, which was Betty Banner was the nom de plume of the society column that ran in the banner. And Kay's picture, the picture of Kay's face didn't appear, but a picture of Kay's hands covered in white gloves, like wearing white gloves was like the silhouette, was like the photo that ran with her column. It was fantastic. As a matter of fact, like some people around town, if they see her, will still call her Betty Banner. Oh, that's great. It's fantastic. Yeah. Again, to kind of bring it back here, you have to put resources into this. The Tennessean walked away from that a long time ago after, you know, after Jim Myers left and after Jennifer Justice left, you know, they had people covering the restaurant scene, but they haven't really kind of devoted any amount of criticism to it.

01:09:18And that's, you know, they have done that across the board. You know, the reason why Brad Schmidt has a columnist position right now is because when Gail Kerr, when Gail Kerr died, they split that Metro columnist into a couple of different positions. And so Brad had part of it, and I think Jessica Bliss had part of it. And the result of it was you didn't really have a Metro columnist anymore. And so, you know, like all the things that Gail wrote about and, you know, going back into like the income tax fight and kind of like her deeply reported stuff on the Metro Council and whatever else, you lost sort of all of that at some level. But because I think institutionally, they have decided that they want to get away from having columnists and having criticism. It's the reason why their op-ed page doesn't endorse anybody anymore, because they're scared to death of losing subscribers because of having a strong opinion from the paper.

01:10:26Well, and that's when you lose legitimate journalism is when nobody can have an opinion about anything anymore. Yeah, and that is an institutional from-ganet thing. I mean, that's not something that they woke up one day and said, you know, oh, we're not gonna endorse for president. No, I mean, the company is scared shitless of losing subscribers of any sort of stripe. And so they've kind of walked away from this, which is why you get like, you know, David Plaz is like flogging civility all day on the op-ed pages as opposed to kind of digging in and taking stands on issues or candidates. Man, I'm fascinated right now. I want you to stay here for two more hours and I wanna just keep going, because I wanna talk to you about the Nashville Stars potential baseball team. I wanna talk about the Nashville Soccer Club. I wanna talk about so many other things that are happening in Nashville, but we have another interview coming in in like five minutes. That's fine. And I'm like, damn, I know why so many people have said, you gotta have Steve Cavendish on the show.

01:11:30I've learned- He'll say anything. Well, no, I just think it's really fascinating because I'm not in, I guess, in the technical realm of doing a podcast. Talking about this stuff, I'm in the media world, but I'm not, but like just the whole media world is kind of like the restaurant community. Oh yeah. Like I know, I can tell you all the chefs and people- No, we're as fucked up as anybody. You know everybody and who's writing about what and the history behind it. Like it's really fascinating to me as a consumer for so many years, but I've realized like I'm not really, like I don't have the time, I don't spend as much time reading the things I need to read. And I'm really excited about what you're bringing for the Nashville Banner because I went back and read a few of the articles and they've been really insightful and it's not leaning one way or the, it's just a, this is what it is, that we're presenting to you the facts. And I love that. I think it's, I'm excited to see what you guys come up with. Well, thanks. We're excited. Like I said, we're trying to finish this raise and people have asked us, you know, why is this taking so long for you to do?

01:12:31Well, I mean, you have to have the amount of money to build a sustainable organization. And if you don't have it, don't launch. And so that's why it's taken us kind of so long to get here and hopefully we'll. In the middle of that. Hopefully we're gonna be there very soon and out in time to provide really solid coverage of the mayor's race and council and all those other stuff that's coming up this year. I really look forward to following that. Caroline, you got any final thoughts? I was gonna say, you guys, like you were saying earlier, I just wanted to jump back and say you guys are already reporting stories and you can go on your website and subscribe to get those stories sent to your inbox. Straight to your inbox. Yeah, so you don't. And it's really interesting. It's not a paywall, right? No, and. Everything's free. Everything's free and that's important. Everything will always be free. We will never have a paywall for the banner. And the reason why is we think that we're gonna find people who support us and the model will be a membership model similar to how NPR affiliates like WPLN have done it.

01:13:43We'll find supporters who will help support us and pay for this for everyone. But it is, we've lost so much and then I find it kind of horrifying that we've taught people to expect things to be free on the internet for years and now I don't blame companies like Gannett who now have to shift to this hard paywall subscriber model in order to sustain their journalism. I 100% understand that and don't begrudge them that. But we've lost too much and to now put your, to now put your most important news behind a paywall does not serve the community that you're in. So we're not gonna see the top 20 fast food restaurants behind a paywall in the Nashville banner? You're not gonna see the top 20 fast food restaurants ever in the Nashville banner, so. Steve Cavendish, you can follow him on Twitter.

01:14:47His handle is at S Cavendish, that's C-A-V-E-N-D-I-S-H. He tweets a lot. That's not, that's a. You're an interesting tweeter, Steve. That's not a. Good tweets. That does not speak well of me. I was just. You don't hold back on Twitter. Like 65,000 tweets you have. Look, I'm not as bad as somebody, as some other people. Go look at J.R. Lin's account and tell me, and then tell me who has a problem. I don't think I've ever sent one tweet in my life. Really? You know what, I'm on Twitter and I follow like four people. You're one of them, of course, but the main reason I'm on Twitter, honestly, is to follow the Severe Weather Twitter account. Oh my God. The Severe Weather WX guys are the best. They are the absolute best. That's my main use of Twitter, is am I about to die in a tornado? And they will tell you. I loved the one last week that was like, okay, here's the deal. There's a 5% chance there's a tornado. There's a 5% chance of heavy hail. But what that also means is there's a 95% chance it's not gonna happen.

01:15:51So stop worrying, but be ready. Be ready, but stop freaking out. There's no need to ruin your day because there's a 5% chance. Those guys are the best. Oh my gosh, that's just so good. Steve, if you could come back next week, we'd like to do this at the end of the week after. We have a monthly, a standing monthly Steve Cavendish episode. I'd be really excited about that. But I'm dead serious. I do want to have you back sooner than later. Maybe in the middle of the mayoral race. I'd love to hear your take. Since you're not giving opinion on the Nashville banner, I'd love to hear your opinion once you interview all the people. And maybe we can ask you some questions about individual candidates and what they stand for and kind of just pick your brain on that because I think you'd be a wealth of information. Let's have that conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. Good to be here. Big thank you to Steve Cavendish for joining the show. And as you can see, I'm really excited. Caroline is back. She had so much this episode.

01:16:52And this episode was interesting because I learned so much. And I also realized how much I don't know. I kind of get in my own head. I'm like, man, I need to know more about all of these things. And I just, there's only so many hours in a day to work and read books and all this stuff. And it's okay. It's all right. It's inspired me to read more local news and to understand a lot more and what's going on in our community and our neighbors. It's just a thing. So thank you all for listening. I hope that this was a fun episode for you. Next week, we are talking with Claire Crowell. She is the president of La Dom Descafier Nashville. She is also the owner of Hattie Jane's Creamery. And we're excited. It's a fun conversation about everything that's happening going on this week. I do wanna say there is a symposium that they're doing, La Dom Descafier. And on March the 6th, it is a desegregating the Nashville food scene at Yaya's.

01:17:54And that is Charlotte Miller's restaurant. And I'm excited. Caroline and I will be there. We'd love for you to join us. It is gonna be, go to the La Dom Descafier Nashville website and you can buy your tickets now. It's $50 a person. It does include food and drink. So that's a good deal. Thank you again for listening. If you wanna watch this interview, it is available on our YouTube channel right now. And you can watch the full interview in its entirety with no commercials, unedited, just straight through. I didn't take anything out of this episode. You can probably tell. It's just straight us talking for a little over an hour. And again, we'd love to have Steve back on the show. A lot more episodes like this coming up. We're gonna have Charlotte Miller on the podcast in a couple of weeks. We're gonna have a mayoral candidate, Sharon Hurt on the show also. Just lots of fun people coming on. And we're gonna continue doing what we do here. Thank you again for listening. Hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys, bye.