PERSONAL ESSAY | By Tabitha Evans Moore | Editor & Publisher

It was just a simple, little end-of-the-year roundup piece. The article contained no new information, and yet, there he was in the comments.

“Does The Times (air quotes) have any comment on recent complaints made in the upcoming Gateway apartment and zoning lawsuit that it is ‘not a newspaper’?”

The piece in question didn’t even mention the recent lawsuit filed in Moore County Chancery Court by Gateway Companies, but I knew exactly what he was referring to: that other newspaper kept adding “editor’s notes” to articles litigating whether The Lynchburg Times is a real newspaper.

And technically, he’s right. The Times is not a newspaper because we publish digitally. In the beginning, and out of habit from my Moore County News days, I sometimes referred to it as such, but I have since corrected myself.

I now refer to my publication as a newsroom or a media company – one which, I might add, over 14,000 social media followers and 600,000-plus folks across the globe read in December according to my page metrics. I also partner with Lakeway Publishers editorially, and my pieces get published in The Moore County News, The Tullahoma News, The Herald Chronicle, The Elk Valley Times, The Manchester Times, and The Bedford County Post – six whole hold-it-in-your-hands newspapers.

Not every week and not always every newspaper, but often enough that I’m gaining a journalistic reputation around Southern Middle Tennessee. People trust me to deliver neutral facts. That’s what matters to me.

I am also proudly digital-only just like The Pulitzer Prize-winning Lookout Santa Cruz or Baltimore Banner.

I adore print. It holds a lot of energy and nostalgia for me. I absolutely see the value in it. In fact, my dream is to grow to the level where I can print a weekly Sunday newspaper – one locals can devour just like I devour the Sunday Tennessean and Chattanooga Times Free Press every week.

But anyone stomping their foot at the semantics of print versus digital just isn’t living in 2026. The traditional newspaper business model doesn’t work, and you can quickly go broke trying to prove otherwise.

Is my newsroom tiny? It sure is. It’s just me and a handful of contributors, but I am doing what I was put on this earth to do. That’s all I care about. Not the title. Not authority. Certainly not the money. I just want to have a positive influence in my hometown.

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They say, what’s meant for you will always find you. It will keep circling back until you’re ready. I can tell you for certain that it has been true in my life.

In 1998, Deborah Eason, the founder of Creative Loafing – an alternative newsweekly out of Atlanta – took a huge chance on me. At the age of 28, she named me as editor and publisher of Creative Loafing Birmingham. At the time, I was one of the youngest publishers in America. She invested in my training. I frequently attended Poynter Institute courses. She saw something in me and decided to develop it.

Around that same time, an author and sportswriter named Allen Barra – who writes for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and others – also took an interest in me. I can’t remember how we met, but we kept in touch and he became a kind of writing mentor to me. He grew up in Birmingham and his mother still lived there. Whenever he’d come home on assignment, the publication would give him a per diem, which he never spent because he stayed at his mom’s house. Instead, he’d take me to The Alabama Booksmith – a used bookstore that sold first editions – and tell me to do my worst. There, Allen and Jake, the owner, would stack my arms full of books I just had to read if I were ever going to write anything good. And I read every single one … twice.

Eventually, the publishing world constricted and the Easons decided to sell their Birmingham imprint to a competitor. As one might imagine, there’s not enough room for two sheriffs in one town and there’s definitely not enough room for two editors at one publication, so that chapter closed.

That was circle number one.

A few years later, my nephew Kyler was born. I knew the second that little dude took his first breath that I needed to come home. I felt it in my bones, but I had no idea how to accomplish it. So, I did what any sensible person would do and I called Bonnie Lewis. If you know anything about Lynchburg, you know Bonnie know everyone and everything. I call her Lynchburg Google. I knew she was the recent editor at The Moore County News, and if there were any publishing gigs in Lynchburg, she would know about them. And as luck would have it, The News was looking for a new editor. So, I cold-called Terry and Marilyn Craig, and they hired me in less than a week.

I cannot explain how much I loved being the editor of that newspaper. I stayed at the office late. I worked Saturdays – and sometimes Sundays too – busting my tush trying to make The News the best possible version of itself. It was working too, so when the Craigs started talking about selling it around 2009, I started to formulate a plan to buy it.

Then a true southern gentleman serendipitously stepped in. The recently retired Jack Daniel’s Master Distiller Jimmy Bedford found retirement boring and needed a new adventure. I have no idea how he knew to ask, but one day he stopped by and invited me to pop by his house after work. As Miss Emily brought us cokes, we sat around his patio table and he told me he believed in me and what I was doing. He also wanted to invest in the newspaper and run it together.

I’m not often speechless but I just sat there dumbfounded. Over the next few weeks, we’d hire local legal fox John T. Bobo to help us work the deal. On Wednesday, they agreed to our terms. On Thursday, Jimmy called me while boarding a plane home from Sturgis.

“So, I hear The Craigs agreed to our price?” he said.

“They sure did,” I grinned.

“Do I need to meet you at the bank tomorrow morning?” he asked.

“No sir. I’m going to Savannah for the weekend with a friend. Let’s just do it on Monday, say 9 a.m.?”

“That will work,” he said and he hung up.

It would be the last time I ever spoke to Jimmy Bedford. On my way to Georgia the next day, I learned that he died of a heart attack on his Highway 82 farm. I was devastated and it had nothing to do with not getting to buy the newspaper. Jimmy – like Deborah Eason, and Allen Barra before him – saw something in me and supported it. That’s rare.

The timing didn’t feel right then, so I decided not to pursue buying the newspaper alone.

That was circle number two.

Instead, Lakeway Publications bought it and promoted me to editor and publisher – but it was never a good fit back then. In 2013, they fired me right before Christmas. My contract included a non-compete clause, so I had to sit things out for a year.

And let me be honest and vulnerable for a minute. Being fired from a job you know you’re good at changes you. It’s an uppercut to your self-esteem and confidence. It took me several years to recover.

What I didn’t realize then, but I now realize is: when enough people with discernment believe in you over time, that’s a pattern and it’s time to start believing in yourself.

So, one Saturday in July 2019, I woke up and just couldn’t not be a newspaper (or whatever you call it) editor any longer. I set up a website, and social media pages and started publishing at least five stories a day trying to build publication name recognition. People already knew my track record, but building an audience takes time.

This is circle number three.

Over the past six years, I’ve built a publication that garners name recognition that extends much farther than Lynchburg – all while earning a reputation for being a fierce watchdog of not only my little town but also of the rural way of life. We’re at a crossroads here in Lynchburg and what we do in the next five years could very well change this community forever. Lynchburg needs to be well informed. That’s my job.

That’s all I’m here to do – use my education, experience, institutional knowledge, and sources to present neutral facts with nuance and historical context, so this community can make the best possible decisions for itself. My voice isn’t the important one here. Yours is.

And that’s why I do what I do. I don’t give a damn what you call it. •

About The Lynchburg Times: We’re independent, reader-supported, and proudly homegrown. We hold the history, relationships, and journalistic craft to deliver professional reporting from one of America’s tiniest and most famous towns. Because of that, there are some stories you’ll only read in The Lynchburg Times. Every dollar of reader support stays right here in Moore County, funding local writers, photographers, and storytellers. When you support The Lynchburg Times, you’re not just backing a local news room — you’re preserving the art of storytelling in the South. [Join us here.]