Hi folks,
If you’re reading this, then you’re at least somewhat interested in what The Kudzu is. So welcome! We’re glad to have you. And I suppose we should probably give you some idea of what to expect and how this came to be.
I’m a recovering journalist; I was fortunate enough to be a part of a small-town newspaper that covered a huge up-and-coming portion of the Birmingham area, and an award-winning staff at that. I left the industry in search of better hours and more stability, but I’ve never been able to shake the ability to see stories and want to tell them. And particularly the stories and vantages found in the American South.
The Kudzu started as a series of columns on our teammate site The Message Pitch, but it became pretty clear pretty quickly that these stories needed their own space. And thus, The Kudzu was born.
We noticed pretty quickly that when it came to Southern-oriented media spaces, they either inject politics, or they take a the-old-days-were-the-best-days approach, or fully lean into the bless your heart, sweet tea, and other stereotypes. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But we noticed there wasn’t a place where you could just go and be, take a break and cast off the cares of the world. So, we decided to make one.
And this is what we came up with.
The Kudzu simply tries to present things as they were, as they are, and as they could be at their best. The webpage you’re on now takes a long-form storytelling approach, the Instagram profile features snapshots from various places across the South, and the Facebook page features a mix of the two.
I can’t promise you’ll love everything we do; you may think we’re taking the easy way out by avoiding politics, you may think we don’t give enough credence to the way things were, you may not even like the way we tell stories or what we tell stories about. But we’re fairly certain you’ll like something we do. And that’s good enough for us.
The world is a beautiful place. You can find breathtaking things anywhere. But no place mixes the magical and organic, the beauty and decay, or the sadness and joy quite like the American South. The kudzu vine was brought in to help with soil erosion in the South, and ended up covering everything without bias and becoming a fixture of the landscape. Our hope is that The Kudzu is able to do the same.
So come on in, enjoy yourself, and if you like what you see, let us know. And if you don’t, well, that’s okay too. Good taste ain’t for everyone.
Kidding, of course. But seriously, thanks for dropping by. We’ll leave the digital front porch light on for you.
Drew
Editor-in-Chief, The Kudzu
The Kudzu 