Do You Value Local Journalism?

Dec 02, 2024

Between 1923 and 2019 (96 years!) southern Orange County had its own, locally focused, newspaper, The Chapel Hill News. Over the years, the paper changed names and ownership several times, with its heyday running from 1954 to 1987 under Orville Campbell’s ownership.

Local news was always the paper’s focus but under Campbell’s leadership, it won more than 150 state and national awards and produced numerous successful journalists. After Mr. Campbell sold the paper to a national company in 1987, the hyper-local focus began to fade. It was purchased again in 1993 by the News & Observer which was then purchased by McClatchy in 1995. The Chapel Hill News remained active during those years but with a smaller and smaller staff until it ceased operations completely in 2018. For a fuller history, see “The Life (and Death) of the Chapel Hill Times.”

Several local organizations have either supplemented The Chapel Hill News (CHN) or sought to fill the void once it shut down. I don’t have an accurate list or timeline, but here are a few that I remember:

Daily Tar Heel (1893-1993, 1993 to present): The DTH has played an integral role in the local media landscape for more than a century. It has been a constant, reliable news source for the community, although it does not cover the full spectrum of local activities, concerns, and issues that a major newspaper would cover. From 1893-1993 it was a branch of the university. In 1993, it severed financial ties to UNC to become a separate, but related, business.

OrangePolitics (2003-2021, Ruby Seinrich, founder). Ruby is a Chapel Hill native with a passion for political activism and technology. With OrangePolitics (OP), she put the two together, introducing the local community to citizen-directed journalism. At the height of its tenure, it provided nuanced views on local issues that were beyond the scope of The Chapel Hill News.

Chapel Hill Watch (2010-2020, Nancy Oates and Don Evans). Nancy and Don, both journalists prior to moving to Chapel Hill, attended Town Council meetings (Nancy was eventually elected to Council) and reported on those issues that interested them. They presented a more moderate perspective on local politics than did Orange Politics and the two often clashed. But The Chapel Hill News was still available for those who wanted “just the facts.” IMHO, during the overlapping years of CHN, OP and CHW the community enjoyed a rich, multi-layered media landscape whose varied publications helped residents understand community conflicts, such as town budgets, growth, light rail, and many more.
The Carrboro Citizen (2006-2012, Robert Dickson, publisher). The Citizen was a free weekly print newspaper that also published a digital version. It had a paid staff of journalists, led by Kirk Ross, a long-time, well-trusted local journalist. But as with The Chapel Hill News, it wasn’t profitable or even self-sustaining, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing recession.
Chapelboro (2011). Radio station WCHL has been a staple news source in Chapel Hill/Carrboro since 1953. Following Barry Leflers’s purchase of WCHL in 2009, the Chapelboro website was added to provide additional local news coverage. Both WCHL and Chapelboro were sold in 2015 to Leslie Rudd, who now owns it in partnership with four other local businessmen.

The Local Reporter (2019 to present). The news desert created by the loss of The Chapel Hill News prompted a small group of civic-minded residents to form The Friends of Local Journalism (FLJ), a non-profit organization. Led by Del Snow, the founders of FLJ met over several months with members of the DTH and other regional publications, faculty from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism, and interested community members to find a solution to the lack of local news coverage. With generous community support, in August 2019 the group launched The Local Reporter, an online newspaper staffed by a combination of professional journalists and local contributors. Like public television and public radio, TLR is funded entirely by grants and reader donations.

Numerous blogs, websites, and Substacks written by local citizens like myself who take an interest in particular topics but not the larger community landscape that traditional newspapers cover.

In Robert Dickson’s final editorial for The Carrboro Citizen, he wrote: “What I’m really worrying about now is the future of our type of journalism: news coverage where the story is written in-depth, objectively and professionally, by a reporter actually on the scene, with facts and sources verified specifically, not a slanted viewpoint by some blogger watching the proceedings on TV in his jammies.”

Newspapers are businesses and that means the owners have to make a profit and the professional staff have to be paid a decent wage. Anyone who has watched the subscription price for the News and Observer go up and up and up over the past few years knows that the current financial model of advertising and subscriptions isn’t working.

So what’s the solution? I like Robert Dickson’s proposal: “A locally owned and operated nonprofit, however, could supplement ad sales with reader support and maybe a few grants, and come up with a sustainable model for local long-form journalism….We can have all the instant information we want, but we have to be able to trust it to make reasonable decisions.”

The Local Reporter (TLR) meets the criteria set out by Dickson. Michelle Cassell, the current editor, has worked as a professional journalist for over 30 years. She worked as reporter, photographer, and editor as well as general manager and managing editor prior to moving to North Carolina. Three of the four current members of TLRs board of directors are also trained journalists.

The obituaries TLR publishes free of charge would cost bereaved families hundreds of dollars (if not more) at the N&O. John News gives a local kid a public venue to “bring happiness in these trying times.” Local columnists regularly provide informative articles on gardening, community heroes and history, and bicycling. Neil Offen’s humorous observations have spun off into a book and another website. The TLR staff and contributors are making one heck of an effort to publish an inclusive, broad-based community newspaper, and overall, they are succeeding.

Some of the criticisms leveled against TLR have merit; others are unwarranted. The news media landscape has been in turmoil for many years

and this new nonprofit model poses new challenges to those used to working in the for-profit model. For example, how do you provide adequate content with limited staff (due to limited funding)? Recently, TLR published some articles by a non-local author who is most likely someone’s bot. The articles weren’t inflammatory or even controversial, but the writer should have been vetted more carefully. Lesson learned with no negative consequences.

Those who criticize TLR fail to acknowledge the value it offers the community. We once again have real journalists attending town meetings on a regular basis, reporting the facts, not advocating for a particular stance. Have you read the excellent report Adam Powell recently wrote concerning the Chapel Hill Town Council’s discussion about eliminating advisory boards? Powell helps us understand the differing perspectives the Council members brought to the table and why the discussion remains ongoing. That’s the level of reporting we used to expect and is only available today from TLR, unless the single reporter the N&O assigns to our area decides to cover a given meeting. But a single reporter can only provide so much coverage, no matter how hard she works.

In 2012, there was an all out effort to save The Carrboro Citizen. Those efforts failed and it was seven (7) years before The Local Reporter began publishing. Seven years during which local news coverage continued to erode, and we became more and more dependent on local bloggers for news of anything other than major stories. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate bloggers (obviously). But we also need unbiased news coverage like we get from TLR.

Giving Tuesday (tomorrow!) is the perfect time to show that you value the work of The Local Reporter. If you want Chapel Hill and Carrboro to continue having a local news source, written and managed by professional journalists, I hope you will consider making an end-of-year donation to TLR. They are working hard to earn your trust and your support.