Coolarity Radio’s, Thayrone X talked to CEO and Editor in Chief of Star News Digital Media, Michael Patrick Leahy, about the launch of their new site, The Michigan Star. The men discussed the need for local conservative news outlets which has prompted the creation of The Michigan Star and similar sites in states otherwise monopolized by national media conglomerates.
Thayrone: I’m going to take a call immediately. Standing by is Michael Leahy I think is his name. Michael, did I get that right?
Leahy: Michael Patrick Leahy Thayrone. You and I talked about two years ago.
Thayrone: Hang on a second. If you got three names your highly suspect to being a serial killer because of your middle names, not Wayne.
Leahy: (Leahy laughs) On top of your game Thayrone, as always.
Thayrone: So your website is TheMichiganStar.com. I got some info from a nice lady on this. This is a conservative news site, isn’t it?
Leahy: It is. In Michigan, we think a conservative news site is needed because all of the other newspapers there are either owned by large out of state organizations like the Detroit Free Press owned by Gannett. And the Detroit News owned by Digital First Media. Part of the vulture capitalists is taking down the…
Thayrone: Well those, you’re talking a hamster cage liner. That’s what that stuff is.
Leahy: (Leahy laughs) That’s exactly right.
Thayrone: It’s true.
Leahy: You took the words out of my mouth.
Thayrone: Feel free to use that because they really truly are. They’re completely misinformed. They go with the progressive lean if you will. Lean into progressivism at every opportunity. Especially I’m on your site right now. I tried to bring this up the other day and it wasn’t up. This has now been launched right?
Leahy: Launched this morning.
Thayrone: Looking good. This actually, this is very impressive.
Leahy: Well we’ve been doing this. The parent corporation is Star News Digital media. And by the way, I’ve kept my Breitbart gig. Still writing at Breitbart. I started a company called Star News Digital media and we own the Tennessee Star which launched two and half years ago in Tennessee. Like in Michigan, Tennessee has virtually no conservative news outlets.
The newspapers are owned primarily by Gannett. Gannett owns the national Tennessean. The Knoxville News Sentinel and the Memphis Commercial Appeal. And you know in Tennessee, President Trump won the state by 26 points. Still no conservative outlets. Like Michigan, he won by what? Ten thousand votes?
Thayrone: Right. Well, he won by more than that but I’m convinced they gamed the system. No, no. He probably won by 30, 40, 50 thousand.
Leahy: And the point is, people who live in Michigan, who support the Trump agenda, who want accurate, factual news written from a conservative perspective do not have an outlet.
Thayrone: Correct.
Leahy: And now they do with The Michigan Star. We’ll do probably fourteen or fifteen stories a day. We change them every night at midnight. We have two reporters up in Michigan. That are based in Michigan. They cover state and local news. And we do some national news as well. Typically we publish things from the Daily Caller or other conservative news outlets from a national perspective.
Thayrone: You’re kind of like what Drudge does?
Leahy: A little bit. Although not an aggregator in that sense. We will republish. Like last night I think we had sixteen stories on Michigan, for the Michigan Star and there were probably five or six that were local and the balance were national of interest to conservatives living in Michigan.
Thayrone: Hmm hmm. I’m looking at it right now. It is voluminous. That’s why I was wondering if you were a repository if you will. That’s what Drudge does. He’s great at ti. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Leahy: Yeah.
Thayrone: A point where people can go and get real news as opposed to fake news.
Leahy: That’s exactly right. And oftentimes there are stories people will know that are happening in Michigan but aren’t being reported. And so we’re here to address those kinds of stories.
Thayrone: And you’ve got Michigan in here but this is national stuff too. Which I really like. You’ve got everything in here.
Leahy: Yeah. Exactly. So we’launched the Tennessee Star in Tennessee covering the state and local news primarily in Tennessee in February of 2017. Lots of traffic. We have about a million unique visitors a month in Tennessee.
Thayrone: OK.
Leahy: And then we opened The Ohio Star and The Minnesota Sun about a year ago. We have another site called Battleground State News which kind of summarizes what’s going on in all seventeen states. And then opened the Michigan Star this morning.
Thayrone: Fantastic. Well listen, I have one critique. Are you ready?
Leahy: I’m listening.
Thayrone: Ok and I know other guys don’t do this either really, but you see this really but you know the banner across the top where the logo and where it says home news? If that could freeze. You know how you can do that panels with spreadsheets so that when you’re going down it’s always there.
Leahy: Yeah.
Thayrone: So anytime you want to you can jump to entertainment if your halfway. Because I went all the way down the page and there’s a lot of great stuff there. But I didn’t see any jump to get back to the top and it would be really cool if that was always rolling.
Leahy: I think that is a fantastic idea and we’ll talk to our Chief Technology Officer who put that together and see if we can get that fixed.
Thayrone: Yeah, well I want to see one other thing before we talk about something else here. Let me hit a story. Yeah, this is good. You’re hitting other stories and it opens another page as opposed to the page your on. So, yeah, it would be great to be able to get to entertainment instantly or commentary instantly.
Leahy: Yeah.
Thayrone: How many staff writers do you have doing this.
Leahy: We have about twelve reporters around the country. Two based in Michigan. So we’re pretty busy.
Thayrone: Well this is great. Now, are you going to have a launch party? Are you going to give away any free Wendy’s doubles or anything like that?
Leahy: (Leahy chuckles) No, but we’re open to ideas. And by the way Thayrone, we also do a one-hour weekly program called the Battleground State Report which we’re happy to send you a copy of and you might be interested in airing it on your station.
Thayrone: No we can talk. We can talk. I would very much like you to. The lady that sent me the email, her name escapes me at the moment here. Is she your publicist person?
Leahy: Cindy’s our national sales director. She is based in Michigan.
Thayrone: Just have her give me an email with all the other information on that.
Leahy: Terrific. It’s always great to talk to you. It’s always fun and entertaining to be a guest on your program Thayrone.
Thayrone: (Thayrone laughs) That’s a polite way to put it.
Leahy: (Leahy laughs) Well you’ve got to be on your toes.
Thayrone: I think this is great. I tell people all the time. I list sites like CNSNews.com. FrontPage Mag, David Horowitz’s place. All that stuff, and I say, “These are sites you need to check every day at a minimum you need to spend a half hour a day. Fifteen minutes just going through these sites to get the real view of what’s happening.” I’m going to add yours to it. I’m going to bookmark it both here and at my home office. It will be one of the sites I’ll check daily. I’m not just saying that. For commentary.
Leahy: Good. Well, we appreciate that. If there’s a story you find interesting we’d be happy to come on and talk about it or have some of the reporters talk about it. And likewise, you know if you have, if it’s OK with you, if you have an interesting segment that you want to send down to us we can turn your interview of anybody up there, into a story at The Michigan Star. We’re happy to do that.
Thayrone: Let’s stick you up there. Let’s throw this up there.
Leahy: Alright we’ll do that. We’ll put this up. We will put this interview up in tomorrows Michigan Star.
Thayrone: Well I think this is great. And we’ve got to get the word out on this. This is outstanding. Well, thank you so much, Michael Patrick Leahy. Thank you, sir.
Leahy: Take care.
Thayrone: This is really good stuff people. What you want to do is immediately get to The Michigan Star.com. The Michigan Star.com. Now I need to bookmark it. It really looks good. I ain’t just saying that.
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