From banished podcast to award-winning news source, the story of the little paper that wouldn’t die
If The Rant Monthly were a person, it’d be starting kindergarten this year. That fact alone might cause a wave of mass resignation from local educators, but we can assure you we aren’t planning on enrolling anytime soon.
Instead, and in keeping with our yearlong theme celebrating Sanford’s 150 years of history (#Sasquatchcentennial) we’re taking this opportunity to talk about our own history, which actually stretches back far longer than the half decade we’ve been in print.
Yes, we’re patting ourselves on the back. Blowing our own horn. Sometimes if you don’t do for yourself, no one else will.
So here’s an oral history of The Rant, compiled from interviews with ourselves, friends and other collaborators.
MID 2000s
SEEDS IN THE GROUND
* Gordon Anderson, co founder: I started my career in journalism with The Sanford Herald in the summer of 2001 as an intern, and landed with the paper full time upon college graduation a year later. I never dreamed of being a writer of any kind or having a career in journalism as a kid, but it definitely stuck. I spent a few years learning the ropes and figuring out that not only could I do this, but I also sort of liked it. I liked being plugged into whatever it was that was going on, meeting people from all the different institutions and places that make Sanford “go,” and writing stuff that people read. I was on the crime beat to begin with, and later got to do government coverage, so there was always an audience.
* Jon Owens, co-founder: I came to The Sanford Herald in 2004 as a lowly sports reporter fresh out of college. Two weeks after I started, the editor who hired me was fired. Then, there was another guy for a while. Then Billy took over.
Gordon and I had already bonded over various things like nights at Local Joe’s and the occasional concert or house party. We lived together with another Herald reporter in a house on Vance Street we called “The Center for Indecent Living.” We even had a sign out front. We were near the poverty level and didn’t have heat the first winter. But we had fun.
* Billy Liggett, co-founder: I arrived in Sanford a month before my wife did (and two weeks before our furniture). I slept in our two-bedroom apartment at The Oaks on an air mattress that wouldn’t stay inflated for long — I often woke up at floor level. A plastic lawn chair was my living room furniture. At least I had a TV.
I moved to North Carolina from Louisiana, where I was a newspaper editor in a city roughly the same size. I worked there through Hurricane Katrina and a few other memorable events, but working for the Gannett corporation — owners of USA Today and more than 100 other papers — burned me out. I was ready for a change, and when The Sanford Herald called me out of the blue (actually, a hired headhunter) and asked me if I was interested, the answer was “yes” before I knew anything about the city.
This was 2007, and there wasn’t a ton online about Sanford (other than negative news and a few photos of the downtown area). My wife and I visited for my interview a few months earlier, and we liked the location. More than anything, we just liked that it wasn’t Louisiana (no offense, Louisiana).
I met Gordon Anderson and Jonathan Owens — in addition to a newsroom of about 10-12 people at the time — on Day 1. I was 31, but I still looked 18. They were skeptical. They all were.
I recall asking that first day what was going on locally that would pass for “news.” Somebody mentioned that the Dairy Bar had just banned smoking in the restaurant — people were still smoking in restaurants when I came to Sanford. I had no idea what a “Dairy Bar” was, but I was assured it was a Sanford institution. Not everyone in the room considered it “front page news,” but my training told me that if the story gets people talking, it’s news. We made it a front page centerpiece story, photo and everything.
This was hardly an earth-shaking, life-changing piece. But it did get people talking. And it was a big deal to me at the time. I had to convince a room of strangers that I wouldn’t be a total failure. It felt like this was a decent start.
JULY 2008
THE RANT IS BORN
* Billy Liggett: Sports radio came to Dallas in 1994 in the form of a little station called The Ticket. I was a senior that year, and the idea that I could turn on my truck radio and listen to people talk about the Cowboys or the Rangers 24/7 was exciting. One of the early shows in The Ticket’s formative years was a weekend show called “The Rant.” That Rant discussed very little sports, instead focusing on pop culture, odd news and strange hypotheticals like “Would you rather live with a lobster claw or a baby arm?”
It wasn’t high-brow radio, but it was right up my alley.
I was a year and a few months into my four-year stint at The Herald, and one thing I discovered in that time was I worked in a newsroom full of people with odd, dark senses of humor. That humor came across in our planning meetings, though rarely in the actual stories (newspapers are meant to be serious, right?).
I pitched the idea to Gordon and Jonathan about approaching a local radio station about giving us an hour or two each week to talk the news. The show would be an extension of the paper — talk radio, but with a lighter approach. Bill Freeman and WDCC 90.5 FM on the campus of Central Carolina Community College were game, much to my surprise.
Our first show was aired on June 18, 2008. R.V. Hight, a Sanford institution and the city editor at the time, was our first guest. I recall he talked about chickens.
* Bill Freeman, CCCC Director of Broadcasting and Production Technologies: Billy just called and said he had an idea. And it was like “yeah, sure.” Well, let me rephrase that. It was “let me check.” I’ve learned in life to always say “let me check and get back with you.”
And it got approval through the administration. For us as a radio station, it was going to be positive because of part of your license renewal is outreach to the public and information to the public.
And this was associated with real reporters, which I am not and never have had a desire to be. It wasn’t something we were doing on the station. It was just a great way to include those local issues, especially when it came time to write those reports for the station to file with the FCC and all that good stuff.
I actually thought it went pretty well, other than the technical side of things, which always takes a little while to learn for somebody totally inexperienced. To go into an audio control room for a radio station and learn how to push the buttons and turn the knobs.
* Jon Owens: When Billy arrived, I think he was able to channel our creative early-20s energy into something productive somehow. The first iteration of The Rant came in the form of a radio show. When Billy first pitched us the idea of a weekly show on CCCC’s radio station, 90.5 FM, I was kind of terrified. I talk like I am from Robbins, North Carolina.
I am an introvert at times, though I hide it well.
I was wrong. The radio show was so much fun. I looked forward to it every week. Billy took the lead as host, and I found a niche playing off him and Gordon. I think we could’ve been the next John Boy and Billy. And Gordon.
* Billy Liggett: Over the next few years, our show developed a small following. We would mix news talk with discussions about our lives (I became a dad in Year 2, and got a call from her boyfriend in the future in one show) and observations on things going on in the world around us.
We performed sketches involving fake versions of local elected officials and even conjured the spirit of a long-dead Civil War veteran in one show. Every time the Lee County sheriff came on, we played him in with “Panama” by Van Halen. We had U.S. Representative Bob Etheridge on. We had the fine folks from Carolina Animal Rescue and Adoption come in the studio with their dogs. Mayors. School board members. People up for election. Reality TV stars. Coaches. Friends.
And we never really knew how many people were listening, but we found out one morning that it was a lot after we were allowed to give away Coldplay tickets and our phones were lighting up.
It was fun. We didn’t get paid for it. It wasn’t award-winning radio. But it was fun. And that’s all I ever thought it was going to be.
* Gordon Anderson: I honestly don’t remember much about the actual genesis of The Rant in radio form. I only know I wasn’t on the first episode. Maybe I was busy that morning, or maybe I wasn’t interested yet. I can only say with full clarity that I came on board for the second episode and didn’t look back.
Like with newspapers, I’d never harbored any ambitions to host a radio show (I guess I never harbored ambitions to do much of anything other than rock, looking back on it), but it must have sounded fun because within a week I was getting out of bed way earlier than I needed to to go be on the radio.
I can’t say I was any good, but I did have some familiarity with talking into a microphone. The Rant was not to be taken TOO seriously. I can’t believe some of the stuff we got away with — it was never mean spirited or offensive or controversial or anything like that, but it WAS kind of ridiculous. I was in a booth separate from the other hosts, so I could turn my mic down and use my cell phone to call the station, and when Billy answered I would put on a fake voice — might have been of country music legend Vince Gill, or some local elected official, or some made up character — and we’d have a hilarious (at least to us) four or five minute interview.
I mean, we definitely also talked about the news of the week, but it didn’t feel a whole lot like work. It felt very separate from work, even though I was talking about what I’d done at work the week prior and then almost immediately going to work again right after.
* Mary (Mason) Stokes, early radio contributor: My time at The Rant was brief, but unforgettable. I had worked at the small campus radio station in college, and when I moved back to Sanford during a transitional time in my life, I was itching to get back behind the mic. When I discovered a local news radio show, I immediately emailed them and pitched my (admittedly limited) skills (editor’s note: any experience Mary had dwarfed the rest of ours’ combined).
Somehow, I convinced the guys at The Rant to give me a spot on their roster. I was unpolished, but enthusiastic, and I had one hell of a time on those radio broadcasts. I have been thrilled to watch the transformation of The Rant from morning news on the radio to award-winning print journalism.
FEBRUARY 2010
GORDON IS FIRED
* Billy Liggett: I threw up the day before I fired Gordon from The Sanford Herald. I was supposed to do it on Friday — I won’t get into the reasons and all that led up to it, but will say I wasn’t fully on board with the decision. I asked to put it off until Monday, and I was sick about it the two days leading up to it.
When the time came to pull the trigger, so to speak, it was noon-ish. I wasn’t in any mood to eat, as my stomach was still in knots, but I didn’t take into account that Gordon was hungry. When I approached him to have a quick meeting with me and our HR rep, he was halfway through a Subway sandwich at his desk.
He was unaware of what was about to happen. Like an innocent pup going on that last ride before getting dropped off on a country road. And when it did happen, it was quick. I wasn’t able to go into the details. It happened, and he left with his sandwich still on the desk.
I’d love to say the rest of the newsroom popped champagne and finished off the sandwich when he walked out the door, but that wouldn’t be true. Everybody was pretty sad and upset. Everybody hated me for a while. I understood.
A few weeks later, Gordon rejoined us on the radio show. It was pretty big of him to do that. Looking back, had he not, I suppose we wouldn’t be where we are today.
I guess I still owe him a half a sandwich. Or he can fire me someday. It’s only fair.
* Gordon Anderson: It was actually the second time I’d been fired. The first time was from a job I had in college that depended on having good grades. Since my grades had been in the toilet for about a semester, I was pretty sure that one was coming.
The Herald firing was more of a surprise. But it didn’t take long to realize I was probably in need of a fresh start anyway. My first impulse was that fresh start probably involved anything other than journalism, and it was that way for a lot of years. I wrote on a freelance basis, spent a little bit of time as the grant writer for a local nonprofit, and continued appearing on The Rant for almost two years. I don’t remember holding any grudge against Billy (beyond the unfinished sandwich) because before he shuffled me out the door he gave me the names and numbers of people I could call for immediate freelance work. He asked me if I wanted to keep doing the show. It didn’t seem like your average firing.
I left The Rant in November of 2011 after finding myself hired as the campaign communications director for a member of Congress from the Triangle. Pretty wild, huh? I don’t remember whether Billy and Jon kept it going after that, but if they did, it wasn’t for much longer. At that point I guess I remember feeling like it had run its course.
In 2013, I was able to use my experience from the year prior to start consulting with candidates for local office. I was entirely out of journalism, but Billy called and asked if I’d be interested in doing the show again. Apparently the door at CCCC was still open, even though none of us worked at The Herald (or even in journalism) anymore. Again, it must have sounded fun, because it still didn’t pay.
APRIL 2013
THE RANT IS DEAD
* Gordon Anderson: Billy started a website to accompany our radio show and kind of encouraged me to use it as an outlet for further expanding on whatever it was we’d talked about the week before. Because we’d recently discussed then Rep. Mike Stone’s bill to make school board and city council elections partisan, and because we were could now express our opinions more freely, I decided to write a little essay about the topic.
It wasn’t mean spirited or nasty, but I said it didn’t seem like a good idea (it wasn’t, and still isn’t), posted it and forgot about it. The next morning Billy called and said the show had been suspended because Mike’s legislative aide emailed the college with some pointed questions about the show’s funding. It was made clear in so many words that this question arose from my blog post. Whoops (editor’s note: Stone “respectfully declined” a request to be interviewed for this story).
* Billy Liggett: What’s funny (to me, anyway) about us getting kicked off the air is that I had very little to do with it. When Mike Stone got angry with us for expressing our views on his introducing a bill to the General Assembly to make some local elections partisan, it was based on a blog post that Gordon wrote, and when we discussed it on the air, Gordon did most of the talking, because I knew very little about the subject.
So, basically, it’s all Gordon’s fault.
* Bill Freeman: I thought it kind of took things from the sublime to the ridiculous, in terms of the reasoning behind the complaint that was levied. Because everything was also in writing that you used on the air, and was also factually based. So I didn’t have problem with it, obviously. But due to the fact that the Board of Trustees is a mixed group of individuals that are beholden to the college and the community I understood why the decision was made. I didn’t agree with it.
* Billy Liggett: Part of me wanted to make this a big First Amendment fight — and based on the semi-national exposure the whole ordeal got, it could have been a fun fight. But I also didn’t want to put all of that stress on Bill Freeman and CCCC.
We launched the news site because of all of this. We joke today that The Rant is a product of pure revenge. That’s partly true. But we also launched the news site because — at the time — we were all out of the newspaper industry, and we didn’t fully feel like letting go of the thing we loved to do.
DECEMBER 2015
THE RANT GOES … VIRAL?
* Billy Liggett: The first story that appeared on our website happened in January 2014. We we wrote about a murder suspect appearing in a WRAL video as a friend of the victim a few months earlier when the news station reported on the murder.
But The Rant was by no means “killing it” (sorry for the pun) as a website in 2014 and 2015. We had barely over 100,000 views both years (we’re well over a million a year now). But in December of 2015, our site became the center of attention nationally for a day.
OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But when I decided to write about my experience in a Cary movie theater for opening night of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I didn’t think it would get the attention it did. Long story short, my evening was ruined by a nearby church group that put two people at the front of the line to get in and once the doors opened, they ran in the theater and taped off about five or six rows of premium seats for the rest of their 60- to 70-person group.
I wasn’t the only person upset by this. And when I approached the group about their seedy tactics, I was strong-armed by a couple of douchebags who told me it would be best if I returned to the back of the theater.
My anger hit a new level when the center seat was filled in the last-minute by a camera-carrying Penn Holderness of “The Holderness Family” fame. Penn was there with the group and filming his experience for his YouTube channel.
I decided to “pen” my frustration the following day, and the story was picked up by some anti-Holderness writers at Deadspin, back when that site was big and relevant.
The story drew tens of thousands of views to the little Rant, and even spawned an olive branch by the family when they invited my family to watch the movie with them again. I declined, politely, because it wasn’t necessary.
Since then, The Rant or our reporting has appeared on MTV’s “Catfish” (neat story), on Sports Illustrated’s website, in the Charlotte Observer, on WRAL’s Tarheel Traveler and in several other places. The Deadspin experience showed us that “clicks” were possible.
We just needed to have our night ruined by a YouTuber looking for clicks.
APRIL 2017
THE RANT GOES CORPORATE
* Gordon Anderson: Getting attention outside of Lee County hasn’t really been a big goal for me, but when it happened it did prove to me that we were maybe onto something. We were regularly getting stories ahead of anyone else locally, we were realizing we had an audience beyond our friends and families, and we found ourselves spending more and more time on the website. I thought if we formed an LLC, we could sell a few digital ads ($50/month back then) and at least make a little bit of money instead of doing it purely as a hobby. But it still seemed like less of a career move than it did going with the flow.
* Billy Liggett: This was the precursor to our printed edition, which would happen two years later. I just like the fact that Gordon and I never take our own quotes seriously in these kind of stories. When we reported on our LLC, these were our quotes:
“Forming an LLC, obviously, allows us a paradigm shift, if you will, that we otherwise weren’t able to formulate under our former modus operandi,” said Liggett. “This isn’t rightshoring, per se, but rather leveraging a best practice, at the end of the day. It’s all about core competency. Moving the needle. Opening the kimono, in layman’s terms. It’s not about making hay … it makes us scalable in the long term. Synergy.”
“Readers should not worry, though,” added Anderson. “We will stay focused on deliverables.”
APRIL 2019
THE RANT MONTHLY LAUNCHES, SUCCEEDS?
* Billy Liggett: Gordon insists that it was my idea to launch a monthly newspaper. Maybe it was. All I remember about our initial discussions on the idea was that I didn’t think it would work. The reason I got out of the newspaper industry in 2011 was because I saw a sinking ship. My passion for journalism and newspapers was born in college, yet none of those professors had the foresight to warn us about all the layoffs and downsizing and salary freezes that lie ahead.
* Gordon Anderson: Going to print was definitely Billy’s idea, and it also felt like the most substantial step we had taken so far. Beyond the obvious reasons was that we’d have to really start thinking of ourselves as journalists again. That’s not to say we ever published anything but what we understood to be the truth at the time (other than on April Fool’s Day), but we’d built an audience by reporting that truth with a whole lot of ourselves in the mix. My goal at least was to keep doing so in a way that ensured our product would continue to be taken seriously.
* Billy Liggett: The more we all talked about the idea, the more I saw that it could work. Unlike daily newspapers — which require multiple reporters and editors, a publisher, a circulation staff and an advertising staff — we knew we could start this thing with minimal overhead. In other words, we could put it together, get someone to sell ads for us, pay a few bucks to have it printed and bada-bing, we’re not spending a ton of money.
More than that, though, we had spent the previous 10 years very slowly building a brand with The Rant. From a radio show to a revenge news site that was suddenly getting a lot of hits, the community knew us. It’s different to launch a paper or a news site as a bunch of strangers unfamiliar with the community (which we’ve seen a few try to do over the years).
And we were no slouches, too. The Sanford Herald was the Newspaper of the Year and General Excellence winner in its small daily division for three consecutive years before we left.
* Jon Owens: When Billy and Gordon first pitched me the idea of a printed product, I was skeptical. Newspapers are dying every day. I didn’t have much money to invest in something I thought may not make it. I couldn’t take the risk, but they let me remain a minority partner.
I was wrong again. The Rant has been an enormous hit, and I am so happy for them. As a minority partner, I am proud of what Gordon and Billy have built The Rant into over the last five years. They both work very hard each month to create a product we are all proud of. I’m also glad they let me be a part of it. And I’m very appreciative of Sanford for supporting us.
So, I’m wrong a lot, but it usually works out. The next fantastic idea they have, I will just say yes.
* Gordon Anderson: I got occasional grief in the years before we went to print from people who knew about my past work in campaign consulting. The suggestion was that because I had worked virtually exclusively for candidates of one party, I couldn’t be fair to either side if I continued to write about politics and government.
But I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I did that work because I don’t see it as disqualifying in any way. If anything, it made me able to do this job even better. And I think our record over the last five years backs that up for anyone willing to take an honest look at our work, what we’ve reported, who we’ve been critical of and who we’ve praised. It didn’t take long for it to become far less of an issue anyway, because we brought someone in to do most of our political and government reporting for us.
* Billy Liggett: Our approach with The Rant Monthly was to build the paper around a strong cover story every month. We knew for that first issue, we needed a strong strong cover story. We decided to write about the Prince Motel, a rundown motel that was the site of several arrests (drugs, assaults, prostitution) over the last several years and a place that we’d heard was taking advantage of those down on their luck with ridiculous rent and terrible living conditions.
“The Problem With the Prince” required us to go on property (only to be “strongarmed” away by a big guy working what amounted to security that day). We talked to people living there, people who’ve stayed there, government officials who said their hands were tied, local police and groups who have helped the motel’s residents with food, clothes and additional shelter.
The story ran five years ago. Today, the Prince is home to no one, and the building itself faces a very high likelihood of demolition. Who’s to say this could be said in April of 2024 if The Rant didn’t approach this story back in April of 2019?
* Richard Sullins, government reporter for The Rant: Just out of college, in the town where I was living at the time, the local radio station was looking for a news director. So I did that. And that got me involved in covering county commission meetings, town council and school board and those sorts of things that are similar to what I’m doing here.
I’d lived in Sanford previously, back in the mid 2010s. And I came back to Stanford in late 2020, early 2021, when I married the pastor of the Trinity Lutheran Church here.
I had retired from the North Carolina Community College System a couple of years before that. And I was just married, and my wife was working full time as a pastor, and I was just sitting there all by myself during the day. And I decided that I want to just do something besides read, as much as I enjoy reading.
She had been gifted a subscription to The Sanford Herald, and they would come in, I think, at that time, it was five days a week. She would bring them in and give them to me, and two minutes later, I’d read the whole paper. So we were out at a restaurant, and there was a rack there that had The Rant in it. She picked one up and she said “take this and read it, this is going to be more to your liking anyway.”
I thought, “Well, these guys aren’t taking themselves too seriously. This looks like a fun thing to do.” So that’s when I approached.
After I did the first few stories, I had a few people that I knew from the community and from church and so forth come up to me and say, “Hey, I saw your story on the redistricting here in the county or in the city, and I think it was great.”
And so when people would start doing that sort of thing it was like, wow, people actually are paying attention to the work that we’re doing. I have a church men’s group that meets every Tuesday morning for breakfast. And a part of that meeting every week is they will ask me, “What’s going on you that you know about, that we should also know about?”
About once a month I get an email from someone who says, “you know, I appreciate what you’re doing on this particular story. Or another one will say “you know, there’s something going on with this or that.”
Occasionally somebody will come up to me if we’re out to dinner at a restaurant and say “are you, Richard? Are you with The Rant?” And then they’ll say, “I just wanted to introduce myself and thank you for what you’re doing.” Or, you know, “you guys are really terrible.”
* Jon Owens: We often get comments about how we’re taking on The Herald, but that’s not true at all. I’m grateful to the Herald for giving me a chance out of college, for making me learn so much about the business, and for giving us an opportunity to meet and start The Rant.
I guess you could say The Rant is like the cool spinoff of The Herald — like Family Matters to Perfect Strangers. In fact, it’s exactly like that.
We all three respect the role a daily paper has in a community like Sanford. I think, when we worked there, we were so caught up in the grind that we couldn’t do a lot of in-depth features or more off-beat things. The Rant Monthly has given us that outlet.
* Mary (Mason) Stokes: Billy, Gordon and Jon are serious journalists who don’t take themselves too seriously. They tell meaningful stories and terrible jokes. They shed light on stories that would not see the light of day in other publications. They bear witness.
And, as they did for me, they make space for voices that should be heard. As The Rant celebrates this anniversary, Sanford celebrates their continued dedication to keeping our community informed and empowered. The witty headlines don’t hurt, either. Keep it up, The Rant.
* Gordon Anderson: On the one hand, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to go down this road five years ago if I didn’t believe it could be done. On the other, there’s nobody more surprised than me that we’re still here half a decade later. Less than a year after we first appeared in print, COVID hit and everybody got trapped inside for several months. Obviously there was plenty to write about, but I do remember wondering if a pancaked economy would bring down our advertisers and in turn bring down us.
We decided to shift a lot of our distribution to local restaurants who stayed open for takeout as a way to encourage people to patronize those businesses.
In 2022 we joined the North Carolina Press Association, and won press awards — recognitions from other people in the industry — two years running. We’re gradually increasing our print run to get more copies out to the public. Any time there’s an issue with our website or something like that, the emails I get are a wild reminder that we’re being paid attention to. We’re really lucky to have so much support from the public and from the many businesses in town who make doing this possible.
* Billy Liggett: The Rant was never to be taken seriously. As a radio show, it was a comedic and creative outlet for three young, underpaid journalists who worked too much. As a news website, it was a form of revenge against the system that kept us from speaking our mind. As a podcast, it was an opportunity to talk about the things going on around us (most of that talk revolved around local concerts).
And as a printed publication, it was a challenge to see if we could create what amounted to an “alt-monthly” — something you really only see in large markets — in a small city that already had an established daily newspaper.
Here we are in 2024, and The Rant Monthly — despite our best intentions — is taken seriously. We’ve reported the news. Exposed perceived wrongdoings. Celebrated our growing community. Helped those who needed a voice. Provided a message board during a global pandemic.
Yet through it all, we’ve kept the same fun approach to creating this as we had on Day 1 of the radio show. That’s why I still love doing this.
We realize it’s self-serving to dedicate one of our issues to our own history, but we’re proud of what we’ve created, and we’re over-the-moon thankful to the many people who have supported us and advertised with us along the way.
Here’s the past five years, and here’s to what we hope are many, many more.