Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed editor and publisher Rebecca Bynum of the New English Review in studio to discuss what it’s like to be a publisher in the ever-changing world of online media.
Leahy: We’re talking with Rebecca Binam, who is the founder, editor in chief, CEO of New English Review Press. That’s a book publisher. And there’s also an online magazine. And these books are fabulous. And it’s a business that’s been around for how long?
Bynum: 15 years.
Leahy: And you’re making money. I’m so impressed by that. I’m so impressed that you’re making money. And you’re doing great books, of course. Our friend Michael Rectenwald I guess, is your number one author?
Bynum: Absolutely. He sells a lot of books for us. Absolutely.
Leahy: A very impressive guy. He’s written books like Thought Criminal and other books of that nature. He’s been a guest on our program several times. We’ve had permission to republish several of his commentaries at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network. Tennesseestar.com. Now, this new book, I’m so interested in how this came about. The book is a Dangerous God, A Defense of Transcendent Truth by Albert Norton Jr. How did this particular book come about Rebecca?
Bynum: Albert Norton is an attorney down in Georgia, and he sent me his manuscript. I started reading it, and I was so impressed. He’s a wonderful philosopher. And I said, listen, this is important. We need to publish this. And so we did.
Leahy: Now, let’s talk about that a little bit. How did he know about the New English Review Press here and a publisher based in Nashville, Tennessee? Because you know Rebecca, Nashville is now the center of America’s conservative media. Right here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I guess you started it, Rebecca. (Chuckles)
Bynum: Well, I’m part of it. I’m part of it. And I’m so pleased to be here with you. Your publishing empire is growing as well you’ve been telling me.
Leahy: Yeah, I tell everybody it’s growing. (Laughs) We do have the tennesseestar.com which we launched in February of 2017. We average about a million page views a month there.
Bynum: That’s excellent. But we’ve added six more states. We’re going to end up in years from now we’ll be in the 35 states where freedom is still possible with State House reporters. And we’re going to rival the Associated Press. But we’ll give honest, conservative-based worldview reporting.
We are now in Virginia with The Virginia Star, Georgia with The Georgia Star News, Ohio with the Ohio Star, Michigan with The Michigan Star, Minnesota with the Minnesota Sun, and this week, we’re delighted to have launched The Florida Capital Star, based in Tallahassee, with a fantastic crew down there, led by our managing editor, Steve Stewart.
Bynum: That’s fantastic. It gives us hope, doesn’t it that you could accomplish all this so quickly?
Leahy: And I think your public publishing company, the New English Review Press, gives people around the country hope because these are really great books for thinkers about the world in the American condition. How is it that the author of your new book by Albert Norton, Jr. how did he know that the New English Review Press based here in Nashville, run by you, Rebecca Bynum know about you, number one? And how did he decided to send you the manuscript?
Bynum: He knew about Theodore Dalrymple, who is one of our major authors. And he found an article by him on our website and saw that we published books and just sent me the manuscript.
Leahy: Now, when the manuscript arrived, was it a complete manuscript?
Bynum: Yes. Yes. It was already done.
Leahy: Now, as a small publisher of important books for anybody in our listing audience who’s interested in becoming a published author and who thinks they have something that you might be interested in, would you rather receive a completed manuscript or an abstract summary of the book?
Bynum: Either way. It depends on how far along the author is in the book. Sometimes they’re not quite finished when they send their pitches around to various publishers.
Leahy: Let’s talk about this in particular. How many submissions do you get in a month?
Bynum: Oh, maybe three or four.
Leahy: Okay, three or four. So it’s not terribly taxing to review them and determine if it’s worthy.
Bynum: It takes some time. I don’t want to just quickly look at something and put it aside. I like to take my time looking at the manuscripts.
Leahy: Now the publishing world is going through a lot of the changes that the media is going through. And so in media, you’ll notice that something is disappearing and it’s called the printed daily newspaper. It’s going away, right? Because what we find is local advertisers who used to support print newspapers just don’t see the value in it anymore. They can do Google or Facebook and get a better return on their investment. That’s one of the reasons why local newspapers are going away except for The Tennessee Star and our constellation of Stars around the country in the Star News Network. Local newspapers really aren’t local anymore.
Bynum: Are you online only?
Leahy: We’re online only. Absolutely. It doesn’t make any sense to print.
Bynum: Exactly.
Leahy: It doesn’t make any sense at all.
Bynum: Exactly. I get a lot of inquiries about the magazine thinking that the magazine is also in print. But we have never done the print magazine.
Leahy: It’s just it’s an additional level of complexity, and it requires additional capital. And it’s not sustainable in most instances in today’s world.
Bynum: No, you have to have so many subscribers. It’s really not sustainable.
Leahy: Let’s talk a little bit more about the business model of publishing and surviving. You take a look at the big publisher’s today and they have a model I don’t think works. They’ll give some famous person like, I don’t know, I think they gave Andrew Cuomo a $3 million advance for a book that probably didn’t make that nearly that much money.
Bynum: There is something fishy there. (Laughter)
Leahy: Oh yeah. Big-time fishy.
Bynum: I think so. I think that these big publishers get some kind of deal with the government to print…
Leahy: Government-related stuff.
Bynum: Yes, and then they can offer the governor in this case, a great book deal.
Leahy: I’m guessing that your business model calls for minimal author advances.
Bynum: Right. (Leahy chuckles)
Listen to the full first hour here:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Editor and Publisher Rebecca Bynum of the New English Review Press in studio to touch on media mogul Conrad Black’s controversial past and her new book coming out in May entitled Stones of Contention by Timothy Ives which debates the findings of alleged ancient Indian sacred rock artifacts in the forests of New England.
Leahy: In studio, our good friend Rebecca Bynum, the CEO, Editor in Chief, and Publisher of the New English Review Press. We’re talking about this great new book, Dangerous God: A Defense Transcendent Truth, by Albert Norton Jr. coming out in May.
Bynum: May 24th.
Leahy: Now, Conrad Black, a prolific writer journalist, a guy who has quite a story to tell. The author of a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, gave you a back-checked blurb for this book by Albert Norton, Jr., A Dangerous God, A Defense of Transcendent Truth. Let me read the blurb from Conrad Black. ‘This is a refreshing reassertion of the unanswerability of the God argument without unnecessary elaboration or extra claims. And alerted but never recondite reminder that it is not so difficult to be sensible and morally confident without being unphilosophical or hidebound. An informative, often delightful read.’ Can you help me out here on the vocabulary front? Recondite. R-E-C-O-N-D-I-T-E. I don’t know what that means.
Bynum: Recondite.
Leahy: I even got the pronunciation wrong. (Bynum chuckles) This is why you are the publisher of the New English Review Press. Recondite. Recondite is the word of the day.
Bynum: Oh, gosh.
Leahy: It was an interesting word choice on his part. Recondite, we’ll find out that definition. While I’m looking up, the definition of recondite, recondite is little known or abstruse. Little known or abstruse.
Bynum: Without being recondited.
Leahy: Yes. That is interesting. Conrad Black, he’s a fascinating character. I followed his career because he got started, and I think he came from a wealthy family in Montreal. My family history is from the 1840s my great great grandfather bought a farm in Hemingford, Quebec, in the Eastern Townships area just South of Montreal, North of the border with the states.
My dad was born on that farm in 1929. We still own three acres up there. And I go up there every other summer. So he got to start by buying some newspapers in the Eastern Townships. And so I read the biography of his story. And then he owned some newspapers.
Bynum: Oh yes. He The Daily Telegraph in England. He owned the Chicago Sun-Times. He owned a number of newspapers. He was really prolific newspaper owner.
Leahy: He had a business, I think it was called Hollinger International, the media company. And then he was prosecuted for something I never understood what the charges against him were, and he was convicted and spent five years in prison?
Bynum: He spent a number of years in prison. I’m not sure if it was quite that long, but it was a case of absolutely malicious prosecution. They went after him because he was a big fish. He was a prize for their trophy wall, and it was ridiculous. And they destroyed his company. It was a billion-dollar company completely.
It destroyed the company and all of the shareholders lost everything and all because somebody made some kind of complaint about some really trivial thing. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was ridiculous. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Leahy: He served a couple of years in prison. I don’t know exactly the time of it. But they went after him and they destroyed his media empire. He’s a very interesting fellow. And, you know, Conrad?
Bynum: Yes. I know him. I haven’t met him in person but I’ve corresponded with him a lot. And we publish his work on the New English Reboot blog.
Leahy: I don’t know if he’s got more books coming. He’s done a very interesting biography of Franklin Delanor Roosevelt.
Bynum: An absolutely excellent biography of Roosevelt. And he points out that Roosevelt was much more conservative than you would think, and that he really saved capitalism at that time.
Leahy: Yes. I think that’s his argument. I’m not sure I agree with that, but nonetheless, he’s a fascinating fellow. And does he have any additional work coming out that you know of?
Bynum: Not that I know of, but whatever it is, I want it for the New English Review Press. (Laughter) I’m trying to contact him.
Leahy: Conrad, if you’re listening, we are talking now with the New English Review press here in Nashville because Conrad, Nashville is now the center of conservative media in the United States. Tell us a little bit about some of the new books coming out in the rest of the year. You talked about this interesting land development issue up in New England.
Bynum: Up in New England, yes. So my next book will be one by Timothy Ives who’s an archaeologist working in New England. And a recent phenomenon has come about where old piles of stone up in New England that are just piles of rocks here and there in the forest. And the Indian tribes are claiming that these are sacred places of worship from the ancient Indians. But the historic record is quite clear. They’re old farms, and they’re just piles of stone where farmers have removed the stones from their fields. It’s very rocky there.
Leahy: Timothy Ives is the principal archaeologist at the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.
Bynum: Yes.
Leahy: This is a big debate over the origins of stone heaps commonly found in New England’s forested hills. It’s fascinating that that is a big issue of public debate.
Bynum: Isn’t it? It’s amazing. It’s this whole thing against colonialism, the settlers and in his claim is anti-colonialism. If that makes sense.
Leahy: It does make sense, actually. Does that book have a title yet?
Bynum: Let’s see. Stones of Contention.
Leahy: Oh, that’s a nice title. Stones of Contention. Now, it seems like an obscure topic, but it’s quite interesting for those of us who are interested in history and archaeology. Rebecca Bynum, what a pleasure it always is to have you here in studio. What an interesting conversation.
Listen to the full first hour here:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Rebecca Bynum” by New English Review and “Conrad Black” is by Julian Mason CC 2.0.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed editor and publisher Rebecca Bynum of the New English Review in studio to discuss a new book she’s published entitled Dangerous God, A Defense of Transcendent Truth by Albert Norton Jr. which examines the underlying destruction of metanarratives in society.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome to our microphones in studio this morning our good friend has been in studio before. Rebecca Bynum, who is the editor of the New English Review Press. We’ve talked about her books before. I have one here. Rebecca, I’m delighted to have you in studio. I found out that you are one of the few people in Nashville who get up as early as I do.
Bynum: I do. I’m an extreme lark. I get up by 4:00 a.m. every morning. 3:30 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. It’s ridiculous.
Leahy: Wow. How did that happen?
Bynum: I’ve always done that. I was a dry cleaner for a number of years because that worked in with my schedule. I’ve always been an early riser.
Leahy: Well, I’ve not always been an early riser at this level. When I delivered newspapers in college, I got up about this time and then I would go back to sleep after I delivered the newspapers. But we’ve been doing this for two and a half years, up at 3:30 every day and in studio. Today was unusual because I knew you were coming in. We got in here about 10 to five.
And the show starts at 5:06 and I’m usually in here by 5:05. And our producer Scooter is going, I hope he shows up this morning. I hope he shows up. Well, you have been in studio before. You’re going to be with us for an entire hour this morning. It’s about midday for you. You are leading the way.
I’m so impressed with you and I’m so impressed with the New English Review. Your books are fantastic. Although you are set up as a non-profit, you’re making money. It’s incredible! You’re making money publishing books as a small publisher and my hat is off to you for doing that, because, as we said during the break, I’ve self-published about five books. I haven’t made money on any of them.
Bynum: It’s difficult. It’s very difficult, but yes our books cover the magazine and cover everything that we need to do. And we have been able to stay in business for 15 years now.
Leahy: Incredibly impressive. And we’ve had a couple of times one of your authors here, Michael Rectenwald who is a great thinker and former NYU professor. That guy knows exactly what’s going on in America, and it’s always a delight to have him on.
Bynum: He’s interesting because he was a former Marxist himself and so he really understands the mindset of the left and articulates it beautifully.
Leahy: Now, you have a new book here. We’re going to talk about it. It’s called Dangerous God, A Defense of Transcendent Truth by Albert Norton, Jr. You’re pretty excited about this book. Tell us why.
Bynum: Yes. It’s a wonderful book. Anyone who’s interested in what’s going on now, as far as why we can’t talk to each other anymore and why this great split in thinking and perceiving the world. And it comes back to the idea of what is truth. Pontius Pilate’s old question.
Leahy: When you say, in defense of transcendent truth, what exactly does that mean?
Bynum: There’s a difference between what contains truth and what is truth. There’s a difference between what contains goodness and what is goodness. What contains beauty and what is beauty. And these transcendent values are attributes of pure spirit.
Leahy: Let me read the first paragraph of the introduction of this book, Dangerous God, A Defense of Transcendent Truth by Albert Norton, Jr. published by the New English Review Press. That’s the company that you operate.
Bynum: Yes.
Leahy: ‘There is a sickness at the heart of Western civilization. It is worse than racism, sexism, xenophobia, injustice, incivility, loneliness, isolation, or inequality. We are anxious about these things, but not about what underlies them all. We’re like a person with both a hangnail and terminal cancer obsessed with the hangnail because the pain is more immediate.
The more lethal sickness which we too often ignore is the collapse of belief in objective goodness and truth. From transcendent truth springs the meta-narrative of faith we have inherited, but which we are on the way to destroying. The meta-narrative that built civilization should be mended, not leveled. The sickness is curable, but only if we see it for what it is.
Bynum: Yes, I absolutely agree with that. We’ve come to the point where secular society is taking over the role of religion in a lot of ways. We’re having religious and moral responses to things that are not spiritual.
Leahy: Climate change. Critical race theory.
Bynum: Absolutely. These things are becoming very dogmatic as much as the medieval church was ever dogmatic.
Leahy: Perhaps even more in some regards.
Bynum: Yes.
Leahy: You talk about climate change, for instance. And there’s a physicist out there I don’t know if you’ve talked about this but his name is Koonin, I think. And he basically was the policy advisor at the Department of Energy under Obama in the first couple of years. And he said, basically, the climate change rouse is just that, a rouse.
He says objectively since 1900, he believes that the evidence supports the claim that the worldwide temperature has gone up one degree. And he thinks that over the next hundred years it looks like based upon the models that he believes and it’ll go up another one degree. But beyond that, to call it the man-made and not a natural change in climate that’s happened for eons he says, is just ridiculous.
Bynum: Yes. And think about the hubris. The climate has changed throughout all history and throughout the time the earth has been in existence, the climate has been changing. We have the hubris that we should fix it to what is right now during our lifetimes, forever and ever. And it should never change. It’s odd. It’s strange.
Leahy: And the fixes are, let’s be honest, idiotic.
Bynum: Yes. Absolutely.
Leahy: There are so many things about the use of science in public policy today that are idiotic. We could spend the entire program listing an example of those.
Listen to the full first hour here:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Rebecca Bynum” by New English Review.
