alabama
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The $2,000 Bet That Became Nine Acres of Second Chances
Rev. Shawn Collier started with $2,000, one employee, and a mortgaged building. The durable idea was smaller than the campus that followed: recovery works differently when a facility tries to feel like a family.
Alabama Media Group stopped the presses. The reporting kept going.
The company behind AL.com traded newspaper delivery for a digital portfolio of investigations, local editions and Southern humor. Its hardest assignment is making that mix pay.
The Garbage Trucks That Went to War With Urban Blight
A University of Alabama economics experiment strapped cameras to trash trucks to map urban decay. Five years and $15 million later, City Detect is doing the work of 40 code officers with one vehicle - and cities are starting to fix blight before it spreads.
The Birmingham startup that made pharma pay for trust it never earned
Del Smith and Tiffany Whitlow built a 200,000-member community first and an AI second - and got seven of the ten biggest drug makers to buy the trust they earned.