Chapel Hill News
It isn't "Throwback Thursday" yet it feels like old times. I'm covering the Board of Aldermen (after a more-than-a-decade pause) and Orange County/Northern Chatham at large once again. This time, for the Chapel Hill News | News & Observer. I won't be covering affordable housing for the time being as I continue as Chair of the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners until January, but of course I can pass those stories along and encourage good coverage (like any good reporter would). This is freelance work, not full time, but I'm so glad to at least have my toes in the waters of local coverage once again.
First story should appear on Wednesday. If you have news about Carrboro or the County at large, please send it my way!
Email to [email protected] or Tweet to @jeanbolduc
Thanks so much to the Chapel Hill News for recognizing the good work of OrangePolitics and our recent leadership transition. Fortunately (or unfortunately, perhaps) the online version does not include my 1999 campaign headshot! Alert reader John Rees snapped a photo of it though.
Today's Chapel Hill News published a letter by someone named Yelena Francis equating the people who protested at the Silent Sam statue on Sept 1 with Russian Communists who destroyed Tsarist statues. The newspaper gave this letter the title "Leftist déjà vu" and place it just below an amateurish cartoon showing Silent Sam being carted away and replaced by a statue of Dean Smith.
This pisses me off for one simple reason:
The students did not call for the removal of Silent Sam, and the Chapel Hill News should know this.
They called for a plaque to be placed on the side of the statue explaining when and why the statue had been erected and what it represented and still represents. They were wise enough to realize that we need to keep Silent Sam and learn from it over and over.
Sunday's edition of the Chapel Hill News includes two letters in response to Molly De Marco's recent guest column imploring the Boy Scouts of America to welcome gay people into the organization. The paper's editors decided to publish the letters, despite the authors' inflammatory statements and deeply hateful rhetoric toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. In doing so, they have sent a message to our community that the Chapel Hill News is a no-holds-barred forum for the discriminatory fantasies of bigots.
One of the letters, by Tom Evans of Pittsboro, describes LGBT people as defective and mentally dysfunctional. The other letter, by Alan Culton of Hillsborough, likens homosexuality to violent assault, marital infidelity, and pedophilia.
Congratulations to the C H News winning awards from the NC Press Association: Editorial page: first place; use of photographs, second place, and in investigative reporting, Mark Schultz won 3rd place -- but Mark is to be congratulated for all three awards.
I read the Town Council candidates' responses to the
League of Women Voters' questionnaire in the Chapel Hill News this morning. (A valuable service, but shouldn't the CHN actually publish reporting on the front page?) I noticed that the candidates were unanimous in their support for putting increased density (if it happens) in transit corridors, but not a single one of them named an appropriate area or an example of how this should be done.
It's easy to be reactionary and rail against tall buildings and vague notions of density or against East 54 in particular. Where are the courageous candidates that can hammer out policies, make the hard decisions, and stand up to the inevitable complaints about change? Evolution of this community's landscape is not optional. We must put on our thinking caps and establish some direction for doing this in the best way for our collective future.
The state of the local media is a subject of much concern here on OP, and there have been some very interesting shifts in recent weeks. The most exciting change is the announcement by the Carrboro Citizen that they will be expanding to cover Chapel Hill and increasing circulation by 20%. (See this OP post by CC editor Kirk Ross last fall soliciting our feedback on the expansion.) They have hired Margot Carmichael Lester who is an experienced reporter and a local native. It is really gratifying to see this locally-owned paper succeed. I think it's good for the entire community.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group, which bought the Herald-Sun several years ago, is continuing the downward spiral of that paper. Recently, they yanked Chapel Hill Herald editor Neil Offen and swapped him out with Durham metro editor Dan Way.
Fiona Morgan at the Independent reports that a number of newsroom staff have accepted the buyout offers that the McClatchy-owned News & Observer offered last month.
Among them is Samiha Khanna, who covers Durham County and its school
system; Matt Dees, a former Durham city reporter who was recently
transferred to the Orange County bureau; and Cheryl Johnston Sadgrove,
who covers Orange County government. Until the newsroom is reorganized
to adjust for these losses, that leaves one Orange County and four
Durham reporters.
- Triangulator: N&O loses more reporters, 9/22/08
I still can't understand the business model that has them eliminating the one uniquely valuable thing that the paper has. No-one's going to buy the paper just to pick up wire reports and local classifieds. Or as McClatchy's CEO said:
Fiona Morgan, over at the Indy,
reports that the N&O's parent company
McClatchy has the
Chapel Hill News building up for sale.
"I think if we got the right price, we'd be interested in talking with somebody," John Drescher, The N&O's executive editor, said in an interview.
Is this inevitable? Can the Carrboro Citizen pick up the slack? Is it time for more startup papers to run tight ships with old school newspaper values?
I for one am pretty sad it has come to this but am not surprised one bit. For more details see another recent article by Morgan called
What's Up? More bad news at The N&O.
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