Michael Graff is Charlotte’s Optimist
A new media startup brings a familiar face back to our city’s news
Michael Graff is coming home to Charlotte.
Well, not quite. He never left: Michael—editor of this magazine from 2013 to 2017—has been in Charlotte for 12 years. For the past four, however, many of us have missed seeing regular Michael Graff bylines. He’s been the southern bureau chief at Axios, managing news teams from New Orleans to Nashville to Raleigh, which required many hours confined within a Zoom square, helping other writers with their work. Now, Michael’s launching a new weekly newsletter that will break him out of Zoom and bring him back to Charlotte reporting.
If you read Michael’s magazine stories, you learned a lot about our city and its people, from political leaders to unhoused people to social justice activists. His style, as a writer and as a person, is highly compassionate and empathetic. He seeks to understand, not judge, and his stories encourage readers to do so, too.
Michael was my first editor, and since then, he’s become a close friend. We agree on most things—including the hot-button issues, like brunch being overrated—but we bring different perspectives to our conversations. I serve up idealism with a side of pragmatic pessimism: I hope for the best, plan for the worst. Michael is pure optimist. He can find a nugget of hope in nearly everything. The resilience required to be a lifelong Baltimore Orioles fan will do that to a person, I suppose. When bleak news happens—and oh, boy, it’s happening—I ask him, “What am I missing? What do I need to hear to find the hope in this?” Everyone needs such a friend right now. And now, everyone in Charlotte has one.
Michael’s launching a new solo journalism venture called, fittingly, The Charlotte Optimist. By the time you read this, it’ll be hitting subscribers’ inboxes each Sunday evening. In it, Michael will do what Michael does best: tell Charlotte’s stories, including ones about tough issues, while pointing to the hope in them. This isn’t just a professional move but a personal mission.
“I’ve written for most publications in the country by now, and I came to realize—after writing for Politico and The Guardian and those places—that I can’t fix the country, but I can make a little difference here in our community,” Michael says.
Storytelling is tricky business. It used to mean digging into a topic, talking with people, grappling with details to expose deeper truths and common experiences. But now, storytelling is often about “capturing eyeballs” and “maximizing engagement,” creating something more clickable than revelatory. Media outlets whose survival depends upon ad revenue may tend to turn their attention from the former type of story to the latter.
The Charlotte Optimist will stick to true storytelling, thanks to a novel business model. The newsletter will be free and feature a new in-depth article each week. To escape the pressures of advertisers, Michael has gained funding from big local names—including Ric Elias and Hugh McColl. They have no say in editorial decisions, but they recognize the value in giving one of the city’s top storytellers the opportunity to run an independent news outlet. This backing means that Michael can pursue news, not social media virality or ad dollars.
“I know how to go to city council meetings and write a viral story,” he says. “I know how to get clicks, but I want to do something more valuable.”
During our conversation about The Charlotte Optimist, Michael never mentions trends or algorithms or ChatGPT. What he mentions are the conversations he’s had with people across industries all over town and what he’s learned about their challenges and hopes. He mentions his sons, and how he wants Charlotte to be an even better city for them as they get older. It’s so … human. Pure. This feels like Aaron Sorkin-meets-Substack.
This magazine has a strong tradition of alumni launching independent media ventures. Kristen Wile, former editor, founded Unpretentious Palate, dedicated to food journalism and restaurant reviews. Jeremy Markovich, former back-page columnist, runs North Carolina Rabbit Hole with its purely Jeremy genre that elevates minor mysteries into hilariously serious investigations. Cristina Bolling, who wrote the back-page series You Are Here, serves as managing editor of The Charlotte Ledger. Now, Michael launches The Charlotte Optimist. All are worth your time and attention.
We need our major media outlets: newspapers, radio stations, digital news sites, and (of course) our city magazine. But Charlotte’s incredibly lucky to have this many talented journalists creating startups that complement this work, who tell the increasingly complicated story of Charlotte from new perspectives. They show a genuine love for our city, a real hope for being part of the work to make it better. It makes me feel heartened. Maybe even optimistic.
