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“It's a bit of a leap-of-faith, a bootstrapping effort,” says Hellbender columnist and managing editor Rikki Hall. “The Corner Lounge fundraiser (see separate story) is intended to raise seed money for implementing that plan.”

Hall, an amateur naturalist and Metro Pulse columnist, may be one of the more visible members of the Hellbender staff, but he was not there at the very beginning. Hellbender Press was established by Mike Knapp, Rick Vaughan and Thomas Fraser (now an editor at The Daily Journal in Vineland, N.J.) Fraser and Vaughn had been journalism students on the UT Daily Beacon staff; Vaughn and Knapp met in an eco-philosophy class led by UT professor and regular Hellbender essayist John Nolt. Fraser and Knapp were “already best buddies from Oak Ridge High School where we graduated in 1990,” Knapp recalls.

The group dynamic was further cemented by years of hiking “where a special bond and trust also was established. This helped us stick together for many years as co-publishers. With this collective reporting ability, the three of us had numerous connections to reach out to and get leads on stories. We share a strong sense of the old-style muckraking, gonzo approach to journalism,” Knapp says. The trio found mutual inspiration from the works of journalists and philosophers like Edward Abbey, Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Edward R. Murrow, Seymour Hersh, George Orwell, and Tom Wolfe.”

Knapp remembers how the inspiration to create Hellbender came in no small way from a desire “to carry their collective standard forward since it had become clear that very few in the mainstream did, back then, nor now.”

As a springboard into publishing, the three had common experience working with longtime East Tennessee environmental advocate Bob Grimac whose Tennessee Green may have been the first professional quality enviro tabloid in the area. A decision to branch off on their own was made. “We have nothing but respect for Bob who is a stalwart East Tennessee Green,” Knapp says. “Without his leadership getting Tennessee Green going, who knows if Hellbender would've ever been started.”

The three young men settled into a division of labor that worked as they dealt with the nuts and bolts of news gathering, meeting printer deadlines and paying bills. But no one seems to be able to remember how the slimy, foot-long hellbender salamander became the publication’s totem spirit. It had something to do with the fact that the hellbender is an “indicator species,” meaning, it has a canary-in-a-coal mine sensitivity to environmental degradation. Plus, there’s the fact that it is a uniquely homely critter that lives in very few other places in the world outside of Appalachia and is dubbed with the kind of name that gives pause. “We wanted something that would stand out, visually, aurally and philosophically. So ‘Hellbender’ stuck,” Knapp recalls.

“One of the biggest challenges early on and still today was making sure we had enough cash flow to pay the print and layout costs. We were blessed to have had a printer who worked with us, waiting for us to scrape together enough funds to pay the entire bill, oftentimes after the paper was pressed. This is the challenge of small papers, understaffed with non-paid employees. In the same vein having only volunteers writing means that often the deadlines were, let's say, very fuzzy. This holding pattern was also in effect while waiting for folks to pay up. Another big challenge, a very time consuming one, is that we did our own distribution. Lots of time spent driving around the town,” Knapp adds.

The best moments over the past decade involved “hanging out and publishing the paper with good friends and people saying thanks for doing it.” Over the years, some financial relief came in the form of fundraisers, but being able to compensate writers and editors as a regular thing began to look possible with the emergence of Knoxville businessman Mike Evans as a patron.

Hall says he would like to see the paper be able to hire a real advertising salesman to “pull us to profitability.”

Hellbender ‘s journalistic track record over the past decade includes exposes of religious reactionaries; coverage of the hemlock woolly adelgid invasion that threatens the Smoky Mountains; Champion Paper’s contamination of the Little Pigeon River and pending recovery; coal mining’s controversial “mountaintop removal” and strip mining policies; and Nuclear Fuel Services’ uranium downblending scheme. The paper has become a vehicle for some of the finest reporters and writers around, including Leslie Wylie and Scott McNutt. Hellbender continues to provide a pulpit for Nolt as well as Mike McKinney and Dean Hill Rivkin, also UT professors, and Ijams naturalist Lyn Bales. Other regular columnists provide advice on green living, wildlife, gardening and landscaping. Hall’s own entomological musings, “Six Legs and a Buzz,” are another regular feature of the paper.

The 2007 Hellbender Symposium is coming up this summer, June 10-13 in Wheeling, W. Va. Anyone with an interest in Hellbender conservation or watershed protection is urged to attend.

Read more about the Hellbender Press Benefit Show here!

Hellbender staffers Gregg Baird (intern), Amanda Womac (assistant editor) and Rikki Hall (managing editor) enjoy an art auction fundraiser held at Sapphire last December. Photo by Randy Neal.