There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of excellent and award-winning stories that have been written by staff of the Tiger Rag/Helmsman since 1931 when the University of Memphis’s independent student newspaper began publishing. Here is a collection of some of the newspaper’s best over the years — stories that were so ground breaking that their impact was felt on campus and far beyond. We present these stories knowing full well that the minute this magazine comes off the press, we will remember other stories that should have been included on this list.
• Bowery Boys Inspire Censorship Threat — In the fall of 1975, a story and photos by Mike Maple were published and went on to win first place in the regional Sigma Delta Chi awards, but the university administration was not favorably impressed. Maple had interviewed men from the rough Bowery district of New York City, and he quoted the men exactly as they actually spoke — with much profanity. A censorship committee was formed by the university, and there were threats of firing the Helmsman editor-in-chief Kini Kedigh. When Commercial Appeal stories defended the Helmsman’s editorial decision, the trouble blew over.
• Follow the Money — Angie Craig wrote a story about a business professor, who had been accused of misapplication of National Science Foundation grant money while he was a faculty member at another university before being hired by Memphis State. It was published in the Helmsman in the spring of 1992.
• Racism on Campus — When Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter of Watergate fame, spoke on campus in 1996, he said race relations was the most unreported story in the U.S. He urged young reporters to tackle the subject, and Helmsman reporter Kimberly L. Rogers answered the challenge with a three-part series quoting statistics, experts and many students. Bernstein said a journalist’s responsibility is to report the “best obtainable version of the truth.” An editor’s note at the beginning of the series said, “In that spirit, sources have been identified by race to provide a clearer sense of each person’s point of view.”
• Low Pot Prices Fuel Student Use and Sales — This award-winning investigative piece by Brian Douglas established that Memphis had the lowest marijuana prices in the nation. One UofM student told the reporter that he could buy $20 worth of “dirt cheap” weed in Memphis and sell it for $50 when he got home to Middle Tennessee. Sources for this 1996 story were: a narcotics detective who allowed his name to be used, a drug rehab director, U of M public safety director, criminal court prosecutor, student who used and sold drugs and a criminal court judge.
• Snap! It was the first day of classes Fall of 1997, and new Helmsman sports editor Gary Parrish was thinking about the fact that nobody had reported where Jimmie “Snap” Hunter, a stand-out basketball player from Trezevant High School, was going to college or if he was even going to college at all. It was well documented that Hunter had major academic issues. Parrish remembers it this way: “Meantime, I’d already lost my schedule. Remember, this was 1997 — well before you could just
hop online and look it up. You had to actually go to the registrar’s office and ask them to print it out for you. So while I was standing in line, I realized that people were just walking to the window, telling the person their name and getting their schedules printed out. Nobody was asking for an ID. So when I got to the window, the woman said, ‘Last name?’ My response: ‘Hunter and my first name is Jimmie,’ I added, ‘J-I-M-M-I-E.’ Within seconds, I had Jimmie Hunter’s schedule, which indicated he was enrolled at Memphis. By the end of the day, I had it confirmed that he was more-or-less admitted, thanks to what amounted to an exemption from the president. It was the first presidential exemption given to a Memphis basketball player since Penny Hardaway received one in 1990. Like Hardaway, Hunter had to sit out his entire freshman year. He then joined the team as a sophomore and led the Tigers in scoring before transferring after constantly butting heads with the coaching staff. What followed was a professional career that lasted more than a decade, mostly overseas.”
• FedEx Delivers a Tuition Fraud Scandal — Lindsay Goldenberg wrote a story in 1998 about a scheme involving some students who worked at the FedEx hub and their supervisors, who conspired to defraud the company out of money intended as tuition reimbursement, but not used for that. Goldenberg recalls it this way: “When I was a reporter at the Helmsman, I received a phone call from a source who clued me into some suspicious tuition reimbursement activities at FedEx. I remember standing in the middle of the newsroom on the phone, trying to fumble for my notepad and write down every piece of information I could get. While most stories I covered at the time involved everyday, feel-good campus activities, this felt like something much bigger. It taught me a lot — from how to build trusted relationships with sources, to learning how to "follow the money" when investigating a story. It also taught me the importance of having a boss who believed in you, and Candy Justice did just that. She was the mentor every student needs, offering me invaluable advice along the way that helped me hone the story, and encouraged me to think of things I never would have as a young reporter. The story ran, and we scooped the Commercial Appeal on one of the biggest tuition scandals the city had ever seen. What's better than that?”
• Escalade Gate: Players Driving $50,000 Vehicles — The Helmsman’s Amos Maki on the last day of the spring semester of 2002 wrote a story that began, “At first glance, the parking lot at the Larry O. Finch Center resembles a new car lot with brand new Cadillac Escalades and DeVilles packing the tight spaces. But a closer look by the Daily Helmsman revealed some irregularities regarding to whom two of the vehicles are registered.” The rest of the investigative story revealed one car registered to a sports agent.
• Sex for Sale in University Center — Nevin Batiwalla, who would eventually be editor-in-chief of the Helmsman, wrote his very first Helmsman story in 2006, bringing to light a prostitution ring operating in a restroom at the University Center on campus. A UofM public safety officer, when asked by Batiwalla about the sex-for-
sale operation, told the reporter, “We have had this problem for at least the past 13 years,” which begged the question, “Then why didn’t you stop it?”
• Football Player Murdered on Campus — It was 9:45 on a Sunday night in 2007 when the Helmsman adviser got a call from Managing Editor Nevin Batiwalla saying that a football player had been shot and killed near Carpenter Complex. The entire campus was on lockdown because the shooter was still at large. When the adviser got to campus a short time later, she found Helmsman editors, reporters and photographers swarming around the crime scene, and one of them, Nikki Bussey, became the first newsperson in the city to identify the victim as Taylor Bradford, a junior defensive lineman from Nashville, who had been shot while sitting in his car. $7,400 in cash was found by police in the car. A former Helmsman editor, Daniel Ford, was quoted that he had been near Bradford at a Tunica Casino not long before the shooting and that the football player seemed to be winning big. Three days later, the Helmsman was the first news outlet in the city to report that Memphis police officers were on campus asking about two UofM students who were being sought for questioning. Over the next 10 days, the Daily Helmsman published 15 stories and editorials on the Bradford murder, including the arrest of three non-students accused of killing the football player during a robbery attempt and the arrest of Devin Jefferson, 21, a UofM student who would go on to be convicted of plotting the crime in his university dormitory room. He was convicted of first degree murder committed during the perpetration of attempted robbery, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The Helmsman reporting team on the case were: Trey Heath; Nevin Batiwalla; Nikki Bussey; Travis Griggs; Ryan Poe; Erica Walters; Shari Lofton; Joseph Russell; TJ Werre; and Stephen Hackett.
• A Day in the Life of a Self-Appointed Policeman — The Helmsman’s Casey Hilder in 2009 spent a night riding around the Central Gardens area of Midtown with a resident whose goal was to protect his neighbors from crime. Hilder’s gift of description brought the situation vividly to life.
• Helmsman Speaks Out on Rape — On March 28-29 in 2012, the Helmsman team of Chris Whitten, Michelle Corbet and Chelsea Boozer reported on issues related to rapes on campus and whether the UofM was keeping students informed about the dangers. Whitten wrote two stories about police charging a man who had been convicted of rape of a child four years earlier and was now accused of raping a woman on campus. The rape occurred while he was a squatter in Carpenter Complex. He was a registered sex offender living yards from the campus day care center and Lipman School. The same day that Whitten’s first story was published, Michelle Corbet wrote about her month-long efforts finally resulting in the release of another rape report by the UofM, which it is legally required to do. The Helmsman published Boozer’s open letter to the UofM director of public safety complaining that campus police sent an email to warn students that several cell phones had been stolen, but failed to inform students that an alleged rapist was at large on campus.
• Student Green Fees Go to Corporation — In 2015, Helmsman investigative reporter Jonathan Capriel uncovered a misuse of money on campus. His reporting
disclosed that more than $150,000 intended for green initiatives was used to build an outdoor dining area where Aramark, a multi-billion-dollar food corporation, could sell food. Every penny from mandatory student green fees are supposed to support projects and practices that make campus more energy efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable. The proposal for the dining area did none of that. Capriel’s story included examples of how many green initiatives could have been accomplished with that $150,000.
• Students Protest Treatment of Rape Victim — A female UofM student raped twice in 20 days told her story to Helmsman reporter Mitchell Koch, who also cited documents from the Rape Crisis Center and several UofM documents in his 2017 reporting. Because the victim felt the university had not done enough to protect her from her assailants after the rapes, UofM students demonstrated outside the University Center waving copies of the Helmsman and holding protest signs.
• Uneven Treatment of Accused Rapists — As a follow-up to Koch’s story, Helmsman reporter Blake Fussell in 2019 did an in-depth examination of the seemingly uneven treatment of students accused of rape. UofM football player Ernest Suttles , who was one semester away from finishing his master’s degree and was thought to have a future in the NFL, was kicked off the UofM football team and banished from the campus immediately after he was accused of rape, while two students, Nick Wayman and Raymond Tate, indicted for rape in a separate incident, were allowed to remain on campus, and one was even allowed to take a class with the rape victim. The rape charge against Suttles was dismissed in 2019, but not before his reputation and NFL prospects were harmed, according to his civil lawsuit against the UofM.
