CEO - Jay Allred - Richland Source

Jay Allred is the CEO of Richland Source, which covers local news for Richland, Ashland and Knox Counties.  The company was started in 2013 and has a group of 10 professional journalists that provides their online content.  Allred was born in Montana, attended high school in Texas and is a graduate of Ashland University.  Jay, as a kid, spent time growing up in several states, due to his dad being in the newspaper industry. Jay Allred shares about his family, hobbies, and more about Richland Source, on the podcast.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The CEO you Should Know, broughtto you by Roby Foster Miller Eric Insurance.
This week's CEO, Jay Allread,CEO of Richland Source, Good morning
and great to see you. Oh, it's great to see you too,
Aaron. I'm really glad to behere. Yeah, thrilled. I think
it's been five years since we've kindof touch base. Maybe it's been a

(00:22):
while. Yeah, I think twentynineteen it was the last time I was
here. Excited, and I alwayskind of begin this program the same way.
If somebody is maybe they moved toRichland County, maybe they just moved
to midd Ohio and they don't knowabout Richland Source. Let's kind of start
right there. Tell people what youguys do at Richland Source. Right.
Richland Source and our sister sites,Ashland Source and Knox Pages cover local news

(00:45):
for those three counties. We doit online at our individual websites and provide
advertising and marketing services just like youwould expect to local businesses, and do
that with a team about ten professionaljournalists that work together to cover those three
counties. So we're sort of localnews without the paper. Let's talk about

(01:08):
the history. How long have youguys been in operation. Then. We
were founded in twenty thirteen, andwe were coming up on our eleventh anniversary,
which will be I think June eighteenthof this year. How about that
eleven years already. I know,it's amazing, it's gone by so fast.
When we were founded with this ideathat while the stories that we were

(01:33):
telling about our community in twenty thirteenwere accurate and true, we were missing
the whole story of the community,and we wanted to try to endeavor to
do that, to round out thestories that we told about our community.
And in the local news business,there's a long standing tradition that crime cells

(01:53):
and controversy cells and bad news cells, and it's true, that's the reality.
I think anybody that's in this businessknows that if you report on something
that is hard to read, peopletend to flock to it. What we
wanted to try to do was roundout that so that we could report on
the challenges of our communities but alsoreport on the successes and the folks that

(02:15):
are working really hard to make ita great place to live. You're hearing
the voice this morning of the CEOof Richland source Jay Alright. This week's
CEO you Should Know as we learnmore about their organization. You and I
had a great chat actually before weturn the microphones on, and we were
talking about there's so many stories outthere kind of what you were alluding to
there that you guys go out,you find, you talk to people,

(02:37):
you report on that maybe people wouldn'tknow about, right if your reporters weren't
out in the field. That's absolutelyright. I mean, and I think
that every local news organization in theecosystem here is doing that work in their
own way. I'll give you anexample. Right now, we have three
reporters, Katie Ellington, Sarau,Mariah Thomas, and Grace McCormick who are

(02:58):
collaborating on what's going to end upbeing probably a nine to eleven part series
on the topic that virtually everyone onCEOs You Should Know talks about, which
is how do I find workers?How do I create an environment for them
that they want to stay in Ican't find talent? And that series is
called Tomorrow's Talent. I think we'rethree or four stories into it. Most

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recently, we dropped stories about whatgen Z wants from work, which was
the result of a survey of morethan a thousand local high school students.
So when you think through the powerof local journalism, that's the kind of
work that we're trying to do.It was supported by sponsors and investors.
Our lead investor on that was theGorman Rupp Company who helped us fund and

(03:42):
make that reporting possible. You know, that's some of the stuff that a
local newsroom can do. It canbe big stories like that Aaron, or
it can be little stories that arereally inspiring that you just wouldn't know if
you didn't have a reporter digging thoseup. Chatting this morning with re Source
and their CEO j already with us. So we're learning more about Richland Source.

(04:05):
If people are new to the community, maybe people have been here for
a long time. Maybe you know, they head to your website. The
one thing I've noticed, you guys, do somebody has a question about something
that's going on. Could be inMansiel, it could be an Ashland you
mentioned, could be an inn KnoxCounty. You guys go try and find
out that answer. Right. Iforget what you call it. Yeah,
the service is called open source.It's a form that's on the home page

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or the website and It's really prettysimple. It's to create a way for
our readers who are curious or havea question about what is happening in our
community. They can send us thatmessage and we get those open source inquiries
every day, usually multiple inquiries everyday. We do our best to answer
all of the questions or combine theminto one story, but it's a great

(04:49):
way for us to have that sortof ongoing conversation with the community and to
report the stories that people are askingquestions about. You mentioned rich Ashland Source
Knox Pages. What's kind of thecovered swath for you guys in terms of
you because I know you guys cancover a lot of stories. Yep,
you can cover anything, but youcan't cover everything, so you do have

(05:12):
to make choices broadly. Our coveragearea is we're headquartered here in downtown Mansfield,
and we cover Richland County, AshlandCounty, and Knox County pretty comprehensively,
and then we'll travel if there's aresident of those three counties that's engaged
in something that's newsworthy someplace else.That's our core territory is Richland, Ashland

(05:34):
and Knox County. It's interesting yousay it that way. Somebody traveling somewhere,
and a lot of times maybe thatcould be in sports. I know
you have, you know, multiplepeople that cover sports, and it's been
a lot of success Richland, Ashlandsurrounding counties in recent years. Oh and
you would know that, right.I mean all of the work that you
all do with high school sports inparticular, it's a unifying storyline for communities,

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especially when you see success. Imean, who was not happy for
Shelby's basketball team to see their runin state or we were discussing this before
we went on air, who didn'tfeel great about the run that Mansfield Senior
and Lucas made during the football seasona couple of years back. I mean,
that was just so unifying for thecommunity. People got so behind that.

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And more recently, we sent reportersall the way to Dallas to cover
the AU women's basketball team as theymade their run toward a national championship a
couple of years ago. And youknow that was funded by some folks in
Ashland and some sponsors to help usbe able to cover the cost to do
that. But we were able toprovide comprehensive coverage, and I think that's

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what you mean would we travel iffor sure? Yeah, as much as
we possibly can to cover those outstandingpeople doing outstanding things. All right,
terrific? Ritzland sours in studio istheir CEO? That is Jay already he's
this week's CEO. You should know, all right. So let's step away
from work for a moment. Ifpeople are not aware, let's find out
a bit more about Jad. Solet's go back to the very beginning.

(07:01):
Tell us where was Jay Allread born? So? I was born in Great
Falls, Montana, on the westernpart of our great country. My family's
all from western Montana. Grew upin a newspaper family, so my dad
ran newspapers or worked in newspapers hiswhole career, and we moved around a
lot when I was a kid,so I had the benefit of living in

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a lot of different places as Igrew up. We lived in western Montana,
Eastern Washinggon, Portland, Oregon,San Diego, California, Southeast Texas,
New Jersey. So I got tosee a lot of the country through
those travels as a young person,and it was a really formative experience.
And I got to watch my dadwork in newspapers and in media and kind
of never got out of my blood. Yeah, I guess, now where

(07:49):
actually did you go to high schoolat? Then? I went to high
school at Monsignor Kelly High School inBeaumont, Texas. Okay, Beaumont,
Texas. After high school, tellspotcolleg was at Rutgers University for a couple
of years in New Jersey and thenfinished up university here at Ashland University in
Ashland. So I'm an AU alum. Okay, all right, proud Eagle

(08:11):
alum. Now tell us just Iknow you're Richinal source now and you've been
there a while, but I'm sureyou've worked other places. You mentioned your
dad in the newspaper industry. Totell us a little bit about after college
to now. Yeah, I metmy wife in college, Hi, Amy,
and we're both AU alums. Andas I'd mentioned before, I had
traveled a lot or moved around alot when I was a kid, So
my thirst for adventure I didn't havereally itchy feed. I think the adventure

(08:35):
for me was to try to figureout what would it be like to live
in a place for more than fiveyears and actually get to know people and
form relationships. So I worked atthe Mansfield News Journal for a while in
their USA Today operation at the time, and then left the newspaper business for
about seventeen years where I worked withlocal company Marco Photo Service and was really

(08:58):
lucky to work there and earned thedigital photography business and work inside that space,
and I learned a ton about entrepreneurshipthere from the folks that owned it
and the folks that I worked with. And then ultimately in twenty thirteen,
I got this opportunity to start andfound and really get Richland Source off the
ground, and it just checked allthe boxes for me. It had the

(09:22):
entrepreneurial opportunity, the ability to getback into media, to serve my community,
to create something from scratch where therewas a need and an expressed need
in the market for something different,And you know, I'm just really glad
we made the move and really wereable to build something that has had a
lasting impact we think, you know, And obviously there's still lots more work

(09:46):
to do and we've got a greatteam doing it, but that's kind of
the journey anyway. All right,spending time this morning great chat learning about
Jay Alread, CEO of Richland Source. This week's CEO. You should know
all right before I get back toSource with a few more questions. I
heard you say, wife, Amy, I don't know if you have kids
or not. Tell us about Jayand the family. Yeah, my wife,
Amy is a teacher at Richland Schoolof Academic Arts, and I have

(10:11):
two adult daughters, Eleanor Ellie andMargaret who we call Maggie. Maggie works
for us at Source Brand Solutions,and Ellie works at two Cousins Pizza Downtown.
So two great adult kids, lovethem dearly and really proud to raise
a family here. How about sparetime? What do you do when you
are not working? Do you haveany hobbies? Yeah, I'd love to.

(10:33):
I'm a bicyclist, have been fora long time, so cycling is
kind of my first love in termsof getting out on the bike and being
able to just kind of clear myhead. And I love to read and
be among people, and sort ofthe low key hobby most people don't know
that I have is I love skateboarding. I took it up when I was
a kid when we lived in Californiaand have always had boards. And no,

(10:58):
I can't do a kickflake, butjust the sense of rolling down the
street is just a has always beensomething that's helped me kind of clear my
head and just kind of reconnect withwhat it's like to be free and young
and kind of without cares or worries. So I was super excited when Brass
House Boardroom opened downtown. And thisis a great story, right if I

(11:20):
can put a plug in for thework that those folks are doing. But
when you look at what's happening withthe Liberty Diy skate Park in Mansfield,
and what Gauge Goodwin and Tanner andor and Robert Price at Skate Ohio,
and what those guys have done tocome together to take tennis courts which had

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effectively been abandoned and build something forkids to have a place to go to
take up and learn skateboarding and allthe things that it can teach a kid.
It's just like it's that's the exactstory that Richland Source was built to
highlight and look at, which isregular people taking on challenges that benefit the

(12:03):
whole community. So I just wantto put a plug in for those guys
in the work that they do.They're awesome to learn about. Jay Alreddin
and the one of the next peoplehe sees is going to walk up to
him and say, I had noidea. You love skateboarding. It's coming.
No worries people that know that don'tknow about his story. Great,
Well, let's get back to work. CEO of Richland Source, Jay already
joining us this morning. What areyou guys working on right now? I

(12:24):
know you know there's so many projectsyou've already mentioned, but I know you're
proud of a lot. What's thelatest at Richland Source right now? I
think the thing that we're probably spendingthe most time on right now is really
thinking about the Tomorrow's Talent series thatI mentioned earlier. This is a really
important topic of conversation around our communitybecause as the Intel project grows just south

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of us in Columbus, it's goingto create a different kind of business ecosystem
for our state and that's going toaffect all all of us in one sense
or another. And you've got ageneration of kids coming up coming out of
college that are entering a world thatwas different than the world that I entered,

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where the expectation was go to collegeand get higher education. And what
we're finding is that that is absolutelystill incredibly important, and these kids are
really mindful about taking on a tonof college debt, and employers are trying
to think through how do we attracttalent, how do we retain talent.

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Many of your listeners might not knowthis because of the narrative around Richland County
in Ohio for the last thirty years, but Richland County's actually grown in population
over the last couple of years.It's not been huge, but it stopped
decades of decline. You're starting tosee that folks are moving back. We
have a housing shortage that tells ussomething right around the work that our communities

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are doing. Mount Vernon and Ashlandare dealing with the same broad trends,
and so when we think about thework that we're really trying to do,
it's to leverage our newsroom and toleverage our ability to dig deep into those
kinds of stories to try to bringsomething worthwhile out of that and into the
community so that the community can useit as a way as a jumping off

(14:22):
point for decision making. We can'tmake those decisions for folks, but we
can try to inform them. Andthat's really the work that we're trying to
do more and more for the communitiesthat we're serving. The voice you hear
this morning is Jay already he's thisweek's CEO. You should know he is
the CEO of Richland Source. Ihave a few more questions for him before
we let him go. All right, So I believe I'm accurate. If

(14:43):
I'm wrong, you can correct me. I believe you are a part of
the group that went down and dealwith the Mansfield Rising project that has got
a lot of great ideas and havecame back and have implemented a lot of
those and there's been just a tonof excitement energy downtown. Right, might
correct on that, Yep, forsure. Yeah, you could talk about
that for a moment. Back intwenty eighteen, the first Mansfield Rising group

(15:07):
went to south By Southwest, cameback. There were fifteen of us,
wrote the Mansfield Rising Plan and thenwent through the process of trying to understand
how you flip redevelopment on its headto where you think about this from not
from the point of view of we'regoing to hire an outside consultant. We're
going to pay them a ton ofmoney to come into our community, tell

(15:28):
us everything that's wrong with our communityand what we have to fix, and
then they drop a three ring binderon a bunch of different desks around the
community, they get on an airplaneand then they move to the next job.
That's usually how that model has worked, and back in twenty eighteen twenty
nineteen, with the help of theRichland County Foundation, we were able to

(15:50):
try to run an experiment and flipthe model and say, well what if
Instead of doing that, we investedin fifteen human beings that live here that
have a stake in the game.They have a dog in the fight,
use whatever cliche that you want,but they have a reason to stay invested
in this. We had no ideawhether that plan would work. We didn't

(16:11):
know if it was going to blowup on the launch pad, so to
speak. But what it ended upbeing was an investment of roughly seventy five
thousand dollars out the door for thefoundation has turned into tens of millions of
dollars of public and private investment inthe downtown area of Mansfield. Mansfield Rising
has catalyzed people and given them somethingthat they can rally around to say,

(16:36):
I think this is an idea thatfits inside the Mansfield Rising framework and therefore
I think I can maybe get partof it funded or I can get people
excited about that idea. It's createdcollaborative networks among people that barely knew each
other. And so recently in March, we sent another group. This trip

(16:56):
was privately funded and we were ableto send a new folks to south By
to engage more people in the MansfieldRising effort in terms of planners and folks
that were catalysts for action. Butfrankly, it's been five years. People
didn't think that they were signing upfor a five to six seven year volunteer

(17:18):
project. So we needed reinforcements andthis was a great opportunity to bring people
in and so they've been to southBy, we've done the trip. Jennifer
Khim, the CEO of Downtown MansfieldIncorporated, and I kind of acted as
camp counselors on that trip for thosefolks. Just this week they pitched their
ideas which are going to ultimately bein the plan to each other, got

(17:41):
feedback on that. Really excited toshare with the community the ideas that these
folks have come back with because theyare so focused on creating a better community
for every person that lives here,for really tackling the problems that the community's
facing and innovative and small art ways, and we're excited for when they become

(18:03):
official and we're able to share themwith the community and perhaps have some folks
in to talk to you. Yeahsounds great, Yeah, that becomes official.
It's great to learn about all thegreat things happening throughout the area.
You mentioned then, I know,the talking to the mayor. A lot
of people excited about that Main Streetcorridor project. So it's going to be
so it's going to be so transformative. It's just a lot of really good
things happening right now when you thinkabout the area, and people always say,

(18:26):
you know, want to call itpositive momentum, but you just want
to as you say, I'm asports guy, but just grab that baton
and keep going with it, right, you really do. I mean,
there's this thing that you can kindof imagine. You can sort of look
at us in two different ways.You can look at us and imagine us
for all of the things that wedon't have, or even all of the
things that we've lost over fifty years. And there's no question about that.

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The Midwest in general has faced incredibledisruption around its economic space and how people
go to work and where they goto work and what they make. You
can also choose to view a communitydifferently. You can view it for what
it has and what it could be. All of that disruption has left us

(19:11):
in a place where we get toreally start to decide what we want to
be and how we want to existin the world as a community, and
I think that fundamentally shifting the mindsetthere is what I've seen among our city
and county leadership. I've seen thathappen, especially recently in the local elections.
I've seen a sense of optimism andmaybe even better than optimism, really

(19:37):
well grounded hope that we are movingin the right direction and that there is
something beyond what Mansfield and Richland Countyused to be. That the future is
brighter than the past. And I'velived here long enough to know that that
has not always been the prevailing belief. So it's really heartening to see people
lean into this is a pretty goodplace to live. Stuff going on right

(20:00):
now before I let him go,visiting this morning with Jay Allread, CEO
of Richland Sorts this week, CEO, you should know technology, you know
you think about it with your business. You know, I Just think about
me broadcasting prior to the pandemic.I still took out an antenna when I
would broadcast. And it's weird howwe may have had this technology that was

(20:22):
there, but we weren't using it. Now thanks to the Internet. Well
broadcast from my living room for afor a while. And when we broadcast,
all right, broadcast football, basketballgames. You know, we're using
ethernet, We're using Internet. It'samazing with technology. I think about,
you know, stuff that I dowith radio every day. With you guys,
I'm sure technology has been a biggame changer, right, Oh,
it's huge. The Internet allowed usto imagine a local newsroom and the startup

(20:48):
of a local newsroom without having toimagine buying printing presses or installing expensive broadcasting
equipment or any of those things.And you've seen that happen in your business.
It happened, It's happening all overmedia in general. I think that's
really your expertise in mind is inmedia. So I certainly won't speak on
the you know, pump manufacturing business, although I would imagine that the folks

(21:11):
at Gorman Rupp would say that,hey, technology has impacted us too,
right, it's had an impact onall on all businesses. But I think
what it's really done is allowed forfolks to become involved in storytelling around their
communities a little bit more easily thanmaybe they could have before. And I

(21:32):
think overall, lowering the barriers toentry to telling stories about your community that
round out the way that it seesitself is a positive thing for sure.
Well, as I let you go, and we've touched on this a lot,
but I end with everybody on theCEOs, you should know about what
makes your company, your organization special. So and I know you guys have

(21:52):
a great staff. You mentioned youknow, hard workers covering so many different
stories. But what makes Richland Sourcemaybe in words, what makes you guys
unique? I think if you're talkingabout what makes us unique, I think
it's a couple of things. NumberOne, it is the staff. It's
everybody that I see in that officeand that I know is out engaging with

(22:14):
our community on the regular. Theseare three dimensional human beings that you see
at church, at the grocery store. They live in our community, they
care about our community, They havekids in our schools, they go to
our churches. So we talk alot about it's much better to do journalism
for and with people than to themunless they deserve it. And sometimes you

(22:37):
do have to do journalism to people, but really ninety five percent of the
time you can do it for themand with them. And I think that
our staff has really taken that toheart since our founding in twenty thirteen.
It was kind of a revolutionary ideawhen we were founded. It's become part
of our culture and I think itshows up in all of the different work

(22:59):
that everybody on the team does.And that's what we try to be,
is a newsroom that does local journalismfor our communities and with our communities whenever
possible. All right, learning aboutagain Richland Source Ashland SORTCENX pages this morning
with the CEO, Jay Allred.Well, it's great to have you in.
Great to learn the story all thegreat work you guys are doing.
Thanks so much for being with us, and as always, we wish you

(23:22):
continued success. Hey, we appreciateit very much. Thanks for having me
on. Jay Allred, CEO ofRichland Source, the CEO you should know,
read a bio, see a photo, and here the extended interview at
WMA n FM dot com. Leadingmeans having a vision and sharing it with
others. I'm John Roby of RFMEInsurance. We're excited to bring you this

(23:44):
program featuring CEOs from our area whowill share the thoughts and what it means
to work and live in north centralOhio.