Greg Henderson
If you’ve seen a fake news story in recent years about an Arkansas politician or business, it was likely a link from the Rock City Times.
The satirical website, which launched in March 2012, features spoofs on politics, sports and national news.
Greg Henderson, the man behind the jokes, said he started the site because he saw potential in blending humor with news, taking inspiration from “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and The Onion. He sold ads on the site, using his more than 10 years of online advertising experience to try to make money online — a goal nearly every media company is struggling to attain.
But despite occasionally hitting 2-3 million visits to the site per month, Henderson said he wanted to expand into “real” news. After a few articles here and there about the local food scene, Henderson made the jump to spin off Rock City Eats in August 2013.
The spinoff — and the later addition of a third site, Rock City Life — has been fortuitous, Henderson said in a recent interview. While Rock City Life is his fastest growing publication, Eats has also seen a recent boost in traffic, which he said was on par with other food websites in the area before its recent growth.
“We grew by probably about 10 times that over the course of January and February. That’s kind of continuing into March, and I really don’t know where that’s going to stop,” he said.
Henderson said that while Rock City Times began the venture, satire is now a “very, very small part of what I do.” Traffic to that site is now down to about 250,000 to 500,000 views per month, and he’s the only writer.
Meanwhile, he said he now employs three people each under the Rock City Eats and Rock City Life banners. And he has hired three more to work on a new arm of the Rock City Life brand in northwest Arkansas. He plans to launch Northwesterner.com this month and eventually develop a “regional network” of websites.
Only one of the nine employees, a manager, receives a monthly salary; the writers are paid per article.
Henderson said he hopes the various websites will encourage people to go to restaurants and take in entertainment around the state.
“A little bit of it is wanting to build a regional hub of very similar type of information, engaging the locals and engaging people outside and trying to build a network of publications to where they’ll work together and work to support local food, local arts, local entertainment across all of Arkansas,” Henderson said.
Henderson said he aims to keep his coverage unbiased and truthful but acknowledged that he does have something of an agenda. He said he wants to provide “constructive criticism” to local restaurants in an attempt to improve on quality across the board, but also steer business to local eateries.
“My No. 1 goal is to see the money shift from being spent on large chain restaurants that don’t really keep a lot of money here in central Arkansas and try to shift some of that money into some of these locally owned eateries — or even very, very small chains that operate like a local eatery,” Henderson said.
Henderson said he still handles all of the advertising for his publications. He referred to his advertising strategy as “a blend” — combining everything from tailored online ads to event partnerships.
Henderson said that while he supports his editorial independence, he is also considering sponsored content, which he made a point to say would be clearly labeled.
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