LPH Media LLC, which owns and operates The Rant and The Rant Monthly out of Sanford, North Carolina, has joined the North Carolina Press Association as an associate member.
“I think we enjoyed being a part of the North Carolina Press Association during our newspaper days at The Herald, and it’s exciting that we get to return with The Rant,” said Rant co-founder Billy Liggett. “Whether we got in by our merit or through a Byzantine clerical error, we’ll never know. But we’re happy just the same.”
Liggett and Gordon Anderson founded The Rant as a radio show at WDCC on the Sanford campus of Central Carolina Community College in 2008, when they both worked together at The Sanford Herald. The Rant became a news blog operated essentially as a hobby after the show experienced an inauspicious ending in 2013. By 2017, Liggett and Anderson formed LPH Media to operate The Rant on a for-profit basis, and the company launched a monthly printed edition in April 2019 that has been published continuously since.
“This feels like a logical next step for our company, and we’re excited to join the NCPA’s ranks and not only have access to their tools and resources, but also to share what’s worked for us and learn about the journalism the the other members are doing every day across North Carolina,” said Anderson.
In addition to the website and monthly printed edition, the Friends of The Rant podcast appears on an (attempted) weekly basis.