Hello. Maybe you’re here because you’ve followed my work over the years, or maybe you’re hungry for new ideas for local media, or maybe you arrived by mistake and you’re already trying to close the window.
In any case, I’m grateful.
Welcome to The Charlotte Optimist.
More on what it is below. But first, a quick story:
I was having lunch last month with Ric Elias, a longtime friend and trusted weathervane, when he mentioned that one of his dear friends died that morning.
Marshall Rauch was 102 years old. He was a Jewish man who became the world’s largest Christmas ornament maker. People called him the “Jewish Santa Claus.” Rauch was a former Duke basketball player, a North Carolina state senator, a devoted husband of 64 years, and a model of longevity.
“I loved him,” Ric told me. “I mean, I loved the guy.”
Then Ric looked through me, as he’s done numerous times during our conversations about my idea for this new media project. I put my fork down in my Greek salad to listen.
He said he’d realized the most elementary but elaborate truth that morning: With every meaningful relationship we have, in the end either the other person leaves us first, or we leave them first. “And those are the only possible outcomes,” he said.
I left lunch and listened to two podcast episodes Ric recorded with Rauch. They’re poignant time capsules for anyone seeking guidance on being a good community member, businessperson, spouse, or friend.
The answers are simple: Lead with love and gratitude, listen, and give what you can give. Practicing those things is more difficult, of course, in a world of obligations and competing motivations.
That leads me to the news about what this is.
The Charlotte Optimist is a new nonprofit publication for our city. It aims to lead with love and gratitude and a willingness to listen and give. It’ll strive, if sometimes imperfectly, to put those things into practice in the form of journalism and stories.
The Charlotte Optimist exists to serve people who care most about this complex, consequential Southern city. Our audience, I believe, will come here to make sense of the place they call home. How it works. Who makes it work. Who’s bringing big ideas. Who’s carrying the leadership torch now, who carried it yesterday, and who’ll carry it tomorrow.
The mission is to be a nonpartisan, fact-based publication that helps create more thoughtful dialogue. But that’s basic stuff. The bigger belief is that a great city needs great narrators and voices, that truth and all its offspring are essential for productive conversations, and that local journalism is a vital antibody for our growing community.
What that actually means for you: We’ll start with one story a week, delivered on Sunday nights. The stories will come from real conversations with real people — no shade to our robot friends.
We’ll provide exclusive insight into Charlotte’s leaders and how they make decisions. We’ll also dig for the stories hidden in Charlotte’s couch cushions. Some weeks we’ll have signature longform features. Others might bring significant exclusives or scoops. Others, a quick perspective on major news events. And others might be heart-on-the-page essays or profiles.
Success, to me, looks like you telling your friends that it’s the best local reported column in the country, that it helps you connect with your community on a deeper level, and that you’re proud to have it here.
It’s about two years in the making.
In 2023 I was riding in a black SUV with Hugh McColl, the former CEO of Bank of America and a father of modern Charlotte. At the time I was the Southern bureau chief for Axios, managing teams from Raleigh to New Orleans.
“Michael,” Hugh said, “have we lost you? Or are you still writing about Charlotte?”
The question bird-dogged me, barking while I ate Cheerios or sat in Zoom meetings or went on jogs through NoDa: Should I keep climbing at a flourishing nationwide media company that I loved (and one that, I have to say, loved me back), or listen to Hugh and put my quarter-century of journalism experience to work in service of my city?
Peel the ego off that question, and it becomes a more significant life exam, one many Charlotte residents face at some point: Am I just passing through here, or is it home? And if it’s the second, how the hell did that happen?
I looked at my two boys, now 5 and 2, and thought about what we’re trying to teach in our home: truth, love, fairness, excellence. Things like that. And I put them up against what I saw reflecting back from the media landscape: rage, conflict, grifts, and consumerism.
I figured I’d try to build a clearer mirror for them.
Nothing good gets built solo, though. So I called Ric. We talked a dozen or so times — about life, about the state of media and the world, and about how to turn an idea into a movement, as he did with Red Ventures. Then I talked to Hugh, who did the same with the bank and our city. Then I had lunch with Michael Marsicano, who fashioned the Foundation for the Carolinas into the philanthropic juggernaut of the South. Then Ric introduced me to several other people who care about this city — Mike Lamach, Casey Crawford, and Gene Woods. They were all enthusiastic. More important than their generous donations, they all understand the value of high-quality journalism and storytelling to a community.
They also understand why the editorial content must remain independent.
The Charlotte Optimist is launching, in other words, from a place of deep gratitude. We’ll work to build it into a business that’s sustained by the community, for the community, for years to come.
The goal at the outset is to simply set the tone, tell compelling stories, and listen to you — the readers, our most important people — as you tell us what you want The Charlotte Optimist to be.
I think of it like this: If Axios Charlotte and its 130,000 or so daily subscribers are a stadium concert, The Charlotte Optimist begins as an intimate acoustic set. Just us here, trying to make Charlotte a more informed, connected, and thoughtful city for the ones we’ll one day leave behind.
And maybe laugh at ourselves along the way. Because that’s part of being a Charlottean, too.
The first story will hit subscribers’ inboxes on May 4. Don’t miss it.
Thank you,
Michael