Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden. And on today’s episode, we have Randy Capps, the owner of JNOW Media, which controls Johnston County Magazine and JoCoSports.com.
We’re going to talk to him a little bit about his evolution in media. The different types of media he’s been involved in. Why he started Johnston County Magazine? Why he started the JNOW Awards? And how the JoCo Sports Network came to be doing high school football games in Johnston County every Friday night in the fall for the last few years?
But before we get to that, I wanna remind everybody to like, follow, or subscribe to The Best of Johnston County podcast wherever you’re seeing it, whether it be on Apple, Spotify, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, or any of the other Best of Johnston County podcast social media pages. So that, you’ll be made aware of future episodes of The Best of Johnston County podcast.
We would also like you to leave a 5-star review if you’ve enjoyed this podcast because it will help us reach more people [00:01:00] who will learn more about The Best of Johnston County podcast. And they will listen to it as you’re listening to it because we all love Johnston County. Welcome Randy to the show.
Randy Capps: Thanks for having me, man.
Jonathan Breeden: All right. No problem. So, you and I have been friends for a long time, but a lot of the listeners probably don’t know you or your brands. It’s amazing how much it’s grown since we first met. So, just start with, what’s your name? Where you’re from? All that good stuff.
Randy Capps: I’m Randy Capps, as you mentioned. My wife and I are from South Carolina, originally, she’s from Dillon. So, if you ever drove by South of the border, that’s where she had her prom. That was our second date. There’s some context about where Marion and Dillon are. We’re both media survivors. She worked in advertising for television stations and newspapers in North and South Carolina.
And I worked with newspapers, pretty much since high school forever and ever. Our last stop was The Fayetteville Observer, where I was paid to find the worst stories I could think of and put on the front of The Fayetteville Observer website. And as you might imagine, that left me with a sour taste in my mouth about my chosen profession.
So, The Forbes Journal was the antithesis of that, which is no murder, no crime, no [00:02:00] mayhem, all positive stuff. You would cut out and put on a refrigerator, and show my kid hit a home run in the little league game, or won the spelling bee or something like that.
And that’s how it started. That’s the short version. There’s obviously a much longer version, but this is a 30-minute podcast.
Jonathan Breeden: I got you. So, where’d you go to school?
Randy Capps: I have a degree in Communication Studies from Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. They were foolish enough to let me walk onto the tennis team. And as an 18-year-old, that sounded like fun. So, that’s what I did. I had a great time.
My wife finished her degree at NC State. She started at Winthrop and went back later as an adult and finished it up in NC State. So, we’re both North Carolina-educated, if not South Carolina-born.
Jonathan Breeden: I got you. Well, growing up in Laurinburg, I definitely know where Dillon is, and we played them in football, and going down there, the sort of the battle of the borders. And south of the border, of course, being the sort of central point.
The funny thing is, I’ve had the good ability to travel all over this country over the last few years, and people were like, where’d you grow up? And if I say south of the border, probably, [00:03:00] 70% of people I talked to, regardless of where I am in the United States, know where south of the border is.
Randy Capps: It is hard to miss.
Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. And while I did not know the owners personally, my dad did. And one of his good friends was their accountant.
Randy Capps: Ellen Schaefer and company. Yes. I know them well.
Jonathan Breeden: And it was just a fascinating marketing and concept. And how Mr. Schaefer drew the billboards himself with color chalk on a stencil. And it’s just a fascinating study and somebody should probably make a Netflix special about how it came to be, how it got marketed, how they got the road to go where the land was. Some politics with Strom Thurmond and all of that.
But anyway. So, when did you leave The Fayetteville Observer?
Randy Capps: I left The Fayetteville Observer in March of 2015. I was made a surplus to requirements, is a nice way to say it. Literally know a hundred journalism friends that have been laid off and I’ve just like them, we had already started planning The [00:04:00] Forex Journal.
In fact, my wife had already quit and was working on it. So, what we did is we changed our plan. She went back to The Fayetteville Observer. They were happy to have her back. She was their best salesperson. And I started working on the magazine full-time in 2015. Our first issue was May. So, we’re coming up on our 10-year magazine anniversary next year in May, which will be amazing, and interesting, and humbling in a lot of different ways.
And it went from there. And your next line of questioning would be, how do we get from a magazine just delivered to the zip code in Four Oaks? Which is what that was to Johnston Now. And the answer is, everybody else wanted one. Matt Zapp at the time was, but the town of Benson, he was like, how can we get that here?
Tim Kerigan at Smithfield, how can we get that here? The folks in Clayton, the same thing. And instead of doing five different magazines, we decided to do one big magazine. So, we dumped out the 401(k)s, and Shanna quit her job at the Observer, and we dove right in and started with a Johnston Now magazine in December of 2016.
Jonathan Breeden: Okay. I remember, my first meeting was usually, we’re doing the Four Oaks journal, I think I [00:05:00] bought an ad in that, if I’m not mistaken. And I really thought it was neat. I thought it was a neat concept. It was positive. It wasn’t breaking news like you had done at The Fayetteville Observer.
And so, it was probably a good idea. Seeing the success now of Johnston Now Magazine to take the concept of, let’s do something positive, community-oriented, and take it to the whole county. That’s got 275,000 people now.
Randy Capps: And it’s funny when we started, obviously Johnston County was a much different place. If you think about 2008 when I moved here, there were probably 85,000 people here, maybe something like that. And now there are 230. So, as we’ve grown, the county has as well, and we’ve had to evolve. But the idea really isn’t new or innovative, in fact, it’s old. It’s what newspapers used to be.
And I’m a newspaper guy. It’s all I ever wanted to do. But newspapers have changed, they used to be owned by people, and now they’re owned by hedge funds, and they’re run accordingly. Instead of telling people what they want to know and need to know, it’s gender driven. We can have a whole different argument about why that is. But the point is, people used to get the newspaper to see what their neighbors were doing. [00:06:00] And that’s really all the magazine is.
Jonathan Breeden: Okay. And you’ve kept the concept of positive stories, community features, the articles you read, part comedy to me, I find them funny and entertaining. This is what I’ve done, and your story of stuff you’re doing.
Randy Capps: You’ll enjoy next month, so you wait.
Jonathan Breeden: Okay. All right. Yeah. That’s good. So, how did you figure out to go out and be able to sell it and market it to where it would become profitable? Because that’s always the hard part of any of these types of things.
I was in radio a little bit in high school, interned at WRAL for a number of years. And so, while I don’t have the background you have, I have a pretty decent idea of what should happen on the back end. And the product’s, one thing, selling it’s another.
Randy Capps: Yeah, it absolutely is. That’s so true. I’m fond of saying that, without my wife, I would have starved to death a long time ago. It’s a hundred percent true. She is the brains of what we do from a business standpoint. She has the marketing mind. She can sell ice to Eskimos. I don’t know how she [00:07:00] does it because I can’t sell anything to anybody and people like me.
And so, if people didn’t like me and didn’t know me, I wouldn’t have a chance. But no, she’s done all of that. I just provide the product in a lot of ways. I’m the talent, as we say in the office, and she makes it all work. But you need both pieces. I know, lots of people like me that have tried to start magazines, or websites, or podcasts, or whatever. But you don’t have the sales end.
You have to find a way to monetize it. And that’s really the trick with media as a whole, not only what we’re doing. But you have to find a way to not only get people value and content that they want and need, but you have to monetize. You have to find people like you willing to support the ventures that you’re trying to do.
And you have to have partners in that and you have to find a way to make it all work.
Jonathan Breeden: So, the Johnston Now Magazine is a monthly magazine, correct? When does it come out and where is it distributed?
Randy Capps: First of the month, about 180 different places around the county. Basically, anywhere you buy groceries, a lot of places you eat, a lot of doctor’s offices, places like that.
We have a bunch of delivery routes that [00:08:00] we run in different parts of the county. DistribuTECH, a company out of Raleigh, helps us get into a lot of food lines. Those are really our biggest distribution spots. It would be challenging to get one in the hands of 230,000 people.
So, we don’t try to do that because obviously, that’s prohibitively expensive. But we try to put them in areas where a lot of people congregate to just give people a chance to see it.
Jonathan Breeden: So, how many, approximately are you printing now?
Randy Capps: About 10,000 a month.
Jonathan Breeden: 10,000. Okay. And they all get given out?
Randy Capps: Most of them get given out. Yeah. It fluctuates from month to month. There’s some months that we’re completely out, by about the 15th of the month. And then there’s some months where there are a few leftovers at the end, it just depends on the month.
Jonathan Breeden: Do you reprint if you run out?
Randy Capps: We’ve never done that, but we could, as you know, paper is prohibitively expensive, especially color, glossy paper, like the ones we use.
It would be a lot cheaper to use Newsprint, but it wouldn’t feel as good, it wouldn’t hold up as long. And one of the things we enjoy about the magazine is it can sit on a table like that for months and months and months, and it often does.
Jonathan Breeden: And true. And because it’s community stories and highlights, the news doesn’t get stale, not even really a news magazine. It’s [00:09:00] a community magazine.
Randy Capps: It’s community magazine. I’ve done the breaking news thing. I’ve put the breaking news bar on websites, and I’ve chased all those sticks. And the folks at WRAL do a fantastic job with breaking news. And if that’s what you want, that’s where you should go. That’s not what we’re doing.
We’re not trying to compete with anybody doing the day-to-day news stuff. Even the Johnstonian folks, that’s where you go for news. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re community living. We’re community lifestyle. We’re stuff that you can’t find anywhere else.
Jonathan Breeden: And I’ve enjoyed reading it over the years. And can somebody go and, Order it? Can you get a subscription to it?
Randy Capps: You can read it for free on our website. We used to do subscriptions, but we can’t find a way to make sense of, let’s buy the envelope, let’s put the magazine in the envelope, let’s mail it to somebody and not charge them an arm and a leg to do all of that because it’s expensive.
And so, because we do the free version online, we usually just steer people in that direction. Now, that being said, if somebody emails me from Nebraska and saying, I really like a copy of this magazine, I’ll throw one in the mail.
But I don’t announce that except on your [00:10:00] podcast. But we find ways to make that happen, it’s always humbling to me when anybody actually cares that we do a magazine.
Jonathan Breeden: That’s cool. So, how many employees does the magazine have?
Randy Capps: We’re at eight. JNOW Media has eight. The magazine itself is only small cog now in the JNOW Media empire, if you will, because we do a million different things now. So, we have eight people on staff. We have the office over in the home master’s building in Smithfield on the way out of town, and most of that building is now us behind desks, toiling away at various projects that we do.
Jonathan Breeden: So, what else is in JNOW Media? I know you have the magazine, I think you have this internet sports day. I don’t quite understand all of it.
Randy Capps: So, the JNOW Media umbrella is, of course, JNOW Media is the big umbrella. And then there’s Johnston Now Magazine. There’s JNOW Digital, which is our website company.
We build websites. We do search engine optimization, search engine marketing. We do social media management for people, blogs, you name it. All the digital stuff that you can do on your phone and work in that realm. We do JoCo Sports, which as you mentioned earlier, is [00:11:00] the Game of the Week broadcast.
And my attempt to keep track of what’s going on with Johnston County high school sports, those are the main cogs in the wheel. And then, of course, we’ve done some other projects as well. Johnston Now Honors, which is the annual awards program is part of that as well. It’s tied to the magazine, but it has become its own thing over the last seven years or so.
Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So, is it JoCoSports.com? I think I’m right, right? Okay. So, that is a website largely dedicated to high school sports in Johnston County.
Randy Capps: Yes.
Jonathan Breeden: And does it have employees? Is it updated regularly?
Randy Capps: I am the only person that updates it and it gets updated pretty regularly. The web designer that we had back in the day helped me build it. So technically, he worked on it as well. But I could spend all day and do nothing else in the world in which I had that kind of time, and keep that website updated as it is.
I do a few posts a week and obviously, the Game of the Week broadcaster and football season.
Jonathan Breeden: So, when did y’all start doing the Game of the Week?
Randy Capps: That’s happened last year. Our old employee of mine, the dear friend, Mike Bollinger, and I wanted to cover sports again because we were both sports guys. That’s all I ever [00:12:00] wanted to be, was a newspaper sports guy.
And that’s all I was until the turn of the century, basically. But we decided we want to do the Game of the Week, that and Rick, of course, sold 102.3 to Curtis Media. And I didn’t know that they were going to do it again. And I wanted to keep doing the Game of the Week. And so, we’re like, fine, we’re going to start it.
Now, we found out later that they were going to continue doing it under Kix and blah, blah, blah. That’s a whole different media discussion. But we just wanted to keep it going. I had done the Game of the Week with Rick. Every broadcast he ever did, I was on. I think it was five years, had a great time and just wanted to keep doing it, which is really the whole reason behind it.
Jonathan Breeden: So, that was done on 102.3 FM, and it was owned by Rick Howman. It was the country superstars who was at station. And Rick, I guess sold that to Curtis Media when he retired. Is that right? That’s my understanding. And I remember talking with Rick when he was first thinking about doing it, and because I had done high school football when I was in high school on a Curtis [00:13:00] Station in lower North Carolina.
And so, I had a pretty good background on it. I talked about, possibly being helping do the broadcast. The issue was, with young children and a growing business, to say, I could be somewhere 13 straight Friday nights was not going to be possible. And I was like, Rick, like, I can do maybe half of those.
And he’s like, well, I really need somebody that can do them all. And he’s like, you know, we’re gonna create a paid position. I was like, that’s great. He’s like, I’m going to make this really professional. And I’m like, I don’t know how professional I am, but no, I completely understand.
But I did have several meetings with him just talking about, giving him ideas of how to do it and different things. And I don’t know how much of it, he took to heart or didn’t. He knew more about radio than I ever did. He’d been in his whole career, I have this huge heart for high school football, just like you do. Being from Laurinburg and Scotland County, high school football was life when I was growing up, there was nothing else to do in these small towns.
It was one school, one community. Everybody went there. Your big rival is Richmond County, another [00:14:00] one school, one community school. A ton of fun. And they do a nice job here in Johnston County. I think the high schools do a nice job. It helps when they win. A lot of them win.
Princeton has been extremely successful over the years. Of course, Cleveland hasn’t lost a regular season game in five years. I think, six straight conference championships. Clayton is now good again if they could figure out a way to beat Cleveland. But yet other than Cleveland, they win a lot of games now.
I’ve always thought of high school football as helping, giving a sense of community, particularly, I in Cleveland where we don’t have a town. And we don’t have a chamber of commerce anymore. The fire department with Kim Lawter and Chris Ellington did us a Christmas parade.
And they do July 4th now, they took that over from the Celebrate Cleveland committee and Cookie Pope, which is great. But other than that, we don’t have a community out here anymore. And I think it’s great that the high school football team is there. I think it’s good cause people like a winner, Scott Riley and Joseph Castle, did a great job.
It’s just a big thing. And so, I’m glad that you’re promoting high school sports on JoCoSports.com. That Curtis Media continued doing a high [00:15:00] school game of the week as well over the air on 102.3. I bought sponsorship on that from them, and now there’s JoCoRadio.com, which is a whole new thing, and they just do Cleveland high school games.
So, we’ve got a lot of people promoting high school kids playing the game of football in this county. And to me, that can be nothing but positive.
Randy Capps: Absolutely. And people ask me, are you competing with them? And in the sense that we ask the same people for money, yes. But in the sense that we’re covering high school sports, no. Like the other week, there were four broadcast outlets scheduled to be at a Clayton game.
And I was the fourth one. And I’m like, you know what? I’m not doing that. I’m going to change my game. So, I went to Triple S and watched their game with Westover and was there by myself.
And I was like, you know what? This is better. Because now, instead of covering one team in the county four times. We’re covering two teams in the county, which should be what it’s all about. And the folks at the county athletic department, Josh Polisko, and his staff, were super helpful. Anything I need from them, I get.
And they’re the same way with all the broadcast crews in [00:16:00] the county. And we all just work together to get more kid’s names out there, which is really the whole idea.
Jonathan Breeden: Do you know why WRAL was not covering as many games live as they were? Did you ever hear the story on that?
Randy Capps: The short answer is money. Capital Broadcasting is a huge company. They have lots of things going on. I know, Nick Stevens and his staff at high school. It’s he really well, I did a show last week. It’s a great guy. I get along with him. Great. They’ve cut back a little.
They’re still doing a great job covering the whole state, which is a really ambitious project that they took on a couple of years ago. From Murphy to Manteo, they’re trying to cover it, and that’s massive. And really, they’re the only organization that I can think of that’s trying to cover prep sports statewide and do it well.
Where we’ve suffered a little bit here locally, a lot of other places have gotten more coverage because of what they’ve tried to do. And I like to think that, that folks like us and JOCO Radio and CRN and Curtis are trying to fill the gap that has been left as WRAL has expanded its reach statewide.
Jonathan Breeden: Good. I didn’t know the answer to that. And I was disappointed that they’re not doing as many [00:17:00] games as they were. But I did get a subscription to NFHS. Which has some of the games on them. It’s like $79 a year or something.
Randy Capps: I did a game for them, and they still charge me to watch it. Amazing. I was like, I’m doing the game. I can’t get a link. No, sorry. It doesn’t work that way. Awesome. Thank you so much.
Jonathan Breeden: So, let’s pivot from high school sports, which you and I love both. We could talk about that all night. To the JNOW Awards, you’ve been doing that for seven years now. I think I’ve been a sponsor of the Firefighter of the Year for three or four or five of those years, most of those years. Where did that idea come from? And what is it?
Randy Capps: My son gets the credit for that. My son, Ethan, he’s 22. We were watching the Oscars or he was, cause I don’t watch those. And he came in and he’s like, you know, I wish we had something locally where we could give awards to people that did really cool things.
And his mom and I were like, what a neat idea. And this is of course, before really The Best of Johnston County and The Johnstonian took off and we had some chamber awards around the County, but we wanted to give awards to people [00:18:00] that don’t win awards, firefighters, police officers, healthcare professionals, veteran service folks, nonprofits, people that are doing amazing things.
And me as a storyteller, I get to tell these stories, which is feels what I call my passion bucket, which is why I get up in the morning. And it’s so much fun to be able to shine a light on people doing cool things in the county that don’t want awards, but really deserve them. And so, it’s always fun to meet these people and say, gosh, I don’t deserve this. Yeah, you do.
Jonathan Breeden: I’ve enjoyed going and meeting the different award winners. Usually, the awards are in the summer. It’s usually the third or fourth week in July, and y’all take nominations starting in March.
Randy Capps: It was actually around the turn of the year, really. Early January, we throw it open and then we start really pushing hard in February, and March and try to wrap it up in April so we can plan the next shindig, if you will.
Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. And there’s 12 winners every year. And I’m not gonna be able to rattle all the different awards off.
Randy Capps: I doubt I could, sir.
Jonathan Breeden: I mean, I’ve always sponsored Firefighter of the Year. There’s Police Officer of the Year, there’s [00:19:00] Volunteer of the Year. There’s Nonprofit of the Year. There’s Coach of the Year, Rising Star for a Teen of the Year. I really enjoy meeting the people. And you’re right, it’s not the people who normally win awards, winning the awards. There’s a red carpet.
It’s really a lot of fun. So, if you’re listening to this, this episode will be coming out at the end of 2024. So, the nominations, you can go to.
Randy Capps: JohnstonNow.com/Honors. And if it’s the end of the year, if you get into January, it’ll actually be open. If you have one now, just email it to me. I’ll take it.
Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. So, this episode will be running near the end of the year. So, email Randy or wait until January and go to.
Randy Capps: JohnstonNow.com/Honors.
Jonathan Breeden: And see the awards categories, and nominate the people that they don’t always get the recognition. I just think about the firefighters, and saving people’s lives, and putting their lives on the line every day. I really enjoy being able to sponsor awards, meet the people, and read the bios of them. And it’s just absolutely amazing. And the banquet gets better every year.
I think this year was the [00:20:00] best, in my opinion, that it’s been. I know y’all take feedback to try to make it better. So, we’ve done JoCo Sports, we’ve done the Johnston Now Awards. So, I guess, the next question would be, what do you love most about Johnston County?
Randy Capps: It reminds me of where I grew up, or at least it used to. Back when there were 85,000 people here, it was a lot closer to Marion and Dillon County than it is now. But what I like about it is that people care about each other. And I know that sounds hokey. You go to the grocery store and you probably know the cashier.
And so, you have to talk about how everybody’s doing. The lady that takes care of your dog, and your doctor, and the person you meet at the walking track. It’s a community, even though Benson and Kenly for example, very different places. Clayton and Kenley, very different places.
We’re all part of a community in Johnston County and even the folks out here in Cleveland that don’t really have a town per se. It’s a community, and it’s a lot like where I grew up. And it’s comfortable, it’s easy to be here. I wish the traffic situation were a little better.
Jonathan Breeden: The traffic is what it is. The Interstates project is now just about done. By the time this runs, it will be done. That’s gonna be nice. But then, [00:21:00] we get to get ready for the next phase of 540, which will go through Clayton over to Knightdale.
And then of course, hopefully, in a couple of years, they’re gonna start on the Highway 42 expansion from Highway 50 to Highway 70, and add some lanes there. So, we’re just going to continue to be traffic, but they’re trying to build the roads and all that stuff.
If anybody wants to get up with you and see about advertising, and any of the J NOW products, or they want to get J NOW to do their SEO, how’s the way to do that?
Randy Capps: Obviously, the website, JohnstonNow.com is the place to visit. Our email addresses are easy, mine’s Randy@JohnstonNow.com. My wife’s is Shanna@JohnstonNow.com. We’re not tough to find, 1260 West Market, Downtown Smithfield. Pop by, we’re usually there.
Jonathan Breeden: That’s cool. We’d like to thank Randy Capps for coming on and being our guest on this episode of The Best of Johnston County podcast. As we mentioned earlier, please like, subscribe, or follow this podcast wherever you’re seeing it. So, you’ll be aware of future episodes of The Best of Johnston County podcast. If you like what he said, give us a 5-star review down at the bottom.
Tell us what you liked about Randy or [00:22:00] your experiences working with Randy or reading his magazine. And he would love to hear it, we’d love to see it, as well as we enjoy reading Johnston Now Magazine. And I try to look at it almost every single month. Until next time, I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.
