Eric Barnes has been the publisher since 2003 of The Daily News Publishing Co., which includes the daily business and politics paper The Daily News; the weekly edition of that paper The Memphis News; the real estate information service Chandler Reports; and a newspaper in Nashville, the Westview.

He first got into journalism in the 8th grade when he started writing for the student newspaper. Later, after college, he became a community reporter in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. He then moved to New York City and worked in book publishing and then for a business magazine and earned his MFA in writing from Columbia University. He then began publishing short stories in 1994 and published the novel Shimmer in 2009.

While television certainly isn’t his primary source of news and information, he does seem to gravitate toward those programs that keep him up to date on current events. “I have 600 channels on my TV,” he said, “but seem to only watch Charlie Rose, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.” Also, “I’ve watched, in their entirety, each of the eight episodes of Ric Burns’ PBS documentary New York at least six or seven times.”

Barnes and The Daily News have been partners with WKNO for some time. Last year, The Daily News was part of WKNO’s outreach project “Facing the Mortgage Crisis,” and in May, Barnes moderated the Tennessee Republican Gubernatorial Primary Forum, which aired live on WKNO/Channel 10 and across the state on Tennessee’s public television stations.

As for why he thinks Behind the Headlines is an important endeavor, “WKNO is making a commitment to produce a locally focused program, which fits perfectly with what we at The Memphis Daily News do,” he said. “This is a great opportunity to use television to delve into the type of locally relevant issues that affect the whole texture of the city. There are already many TV outlets for breaking news. This is a chance to talk about the deeper issues and the bigger issues.”