Deep South Today

Publications

Deep South Today’s main news sites are Mississippi Today, which covers state and regional news, and Verite, which primarily covers the New Orleans, Louisiana area. ¹

Mississippi Today was founded in 2016. Since then, it has received endorsements from organizations such as the Institute for Nonprofit News, which provides training and resources with a left-leaning slant to news outlets, as well as the Knight Media Fund, a project of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. ³

Mississippi Today adopts a left-of-center framing on controversial issues such as abortion and gender identity. The publication’s coverage of natal males attempting to participate in women’s sports has described policies to prevent this in the state as “restrictions on transgender Mississippians.” ⁴ The publication has also claimed that pro-life “fetal personhood” laws mark “a significant shift towards criminalizing mothers.” ⁵

Verite, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, was launched in 2022 and markets itself primarily to Black and other racial minority populations. Its mission statement claims that race-based disparities in wealth, crime, and other factors are the result of “systemic” social forces. ^{6 7} Verite frames pro-life legislation and Louisiana as a negative, claiming that the state is an “abortion desert” and that minority and low-income populations are “more vulnerable” as a result. ^{8 5}

Controversies

In 2022, Deep South Today’s lead publication Mississippi Today published a multi-part report claiming that former governor Phil Bryant (R) had corruptly allocated $77 million in federal welfare funding to benefit his family and associates. The publication went on to receive a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting. ⁹ The story received significant attention in part because it involved money allegedly being shifted to former National Football League star Brett Favre. In May 2023, Mississippi Today chief executive officer Mary Margaret White was forced to apologize to Bryant for incorrectly claiming that he was facing criminal charges. Two months later, Bryant sued the publication, citing other allegedly defamatory claims. ¹⁰

Leadership

Andrew Lack is the executive chairman of Deep South Today and the former chairman of NBC News. ¹¹ Lack spent a little over five years at NBC before leaving abruptly in 2020, with some sources indicating he had been forced out as part of a leadership restructuring. During his tenure, Lack was frequently criticized for his management decisions, including the refusal of NBC to air a report on the apparent sexual misconduct of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and the hiring of right-leaning commentator Megyn Kelly. While Lack was in charge at NBC, reports also surfaced that he had been involved in an extramarital affair with a subordinate several decades prior, when he held a management position at CBS News. ¹²

Warwick Sabin joined Deep South Today as its inaugural president and chief executive officer in August 2023. He served in the Arkansas state legislature as a Democrat from 2013 until 2019. ¹³

Adam Ganucheau is the editor in chief of Mississippi Today. He previously worked for several other publications covering the region. He has also written for the New York Times and the Washington Post. ¹⁴

Kayleigh Skinner is the managing editor of Mississippi Today. She started out with the publication in January 2017 as a reporter covering education. Skinner previously worked for the Tennessee affiliate of Chalkbeat, a nationwide left-of-center education news agency which has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She also completed a reporter instructional program with the left-of-center investigative journalism organization ProPublica, which received founding support from the Open Society Foundations of billionaire liberal activist financier George Soros. ¹⁵

David Francis is the executive editor of Verite and the former publisher of the New Orleans-based Times-Picayune. Francis also previously held management positions at the Pepsi-Cola corporation and the Deloitte multinational consulting firm. ¹⁶

Lottie Joiner is the assistant managing editor of Verite. She was previously the editor in chief of the Crisis Magazine, the official publication of the NAACP. She has also written for several other publications catering to black audiences, including Ebony, The Grio, and the radical-left online magazine The Root. ¹⁶

Financials

Deep South Today’s revenue increased from just over $1.56 million in 2019 to approximately $2.54 million in 2020 to more than $5.18 million in 2021. ¹⁷ During that time, major financial backers of the organization’s leading publication Mississippi Today included the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as well as the Ford Foundation. ¹⁸

When the organization launched Verite in 2022, it initially raised nearly $3 million, with a large portion of the funds coming from the Ford Foundation. ⁷