I’m trying to get used to my new News & Observer. You see, on Monday the paper rolled out some major changes in response to its corporate owners dictate that it cut expenses. The paper laid off a bunch of good folks. It also eliminated its stand-alone business section and its zoned editions in order to save on paper costs.
The result rolled out this week. Only one page of opinion on Mondays. State, local and business news all jammed into a “Triangle & Co.” section. Shared sports and political coverage with the Charlotte Observer.
Some of the changes I don’t mind. I like reading Jack Betts, and don’t mind seeing a little Bobcats coverage in the Raleigh paper. So those are pluses.
The rest of it, well, I ain’t too happy. What I noticed this week was a lot of stories attempting to be “regional” in impact, hardly any Durham news that didn’t involve a sensational (and likely false) claim of satanic activity, and a heavier Raleigh focus.
The paper’s public editor, Ted Vaden, asked readers to be patient in his column today:
Here’s the message I’ve been trying to communicate back to the readers who have contacted me. First, give it a chance. The Monday front page, the combined local news and business section and the consolidated Monday opinion pages do look different, but you may find some improvements…
Second, be aware that the changes are being done out of sheer necessity, for a purpose. This is not a situation, as some readers still suspect, that The N&O or its parent company is trying to squeeze more profit out of the paper.
I can dig patience. It was a holiday week, and one in particular that is historically slow for news. I hope that’s why I saw some of the Durham-based writers getting Chapel Hill bylines.
But they’ve only got a few weeks to win me over. My subscription is up in August and if I’m only going to be getting one (or less) Durham stories a day, as I did several days this week, then why shouldn’t I just seek those out online?
What I hope is the paper will make an effort to find space for local news that matters to people in each of the distinct regions of the Triangle. When I moved here, I took the Raleigh paper because it gave me an adequate amount of Durham news while providing superb coverage of state politics, sports in the Triangle, and the University of North Carolina, which is particularly important to me at the moment. If all my Durham news is going to be in the free paper the N&O launches into my neighbors yards every Saturday, I’m not sure I need to take the paper everyday.
Leave a Reply