The N&O Story
Once upon a time, there was a great and powerful newspaper: The News & Observer.
Everybody from the Governor on down read it every morning.
It covered everything that moved in state government and politics.
Its investigations took down crooks, incompetents and corrupt politicians.
Its editorial pages stood up for the little guy and stuck it to the powerful and privileged.
Now, the once-giant N&O is a pygmy, a shell of its old self.
The rise and fall of the paper is recounted by Rob Christensen (photo), North Carolina’s premier political reporter and a 45-year N&O veteran, in his new book Southern News, Southern Politics: How a Newspaper Defined a State for a Century, published by UNC Press.
Rob writes, “Having a state capital paper serve as an aggressive watchdog should not be undervalued. For decades, the paper uncovered misdeeds by public officials, dug up scandals in the sports departments of major state universities, discovered shenanigans among labor leaders, and spotlighted miscarriages of justice. The paper was often excoriated for doing so.”
With his insider’s perspective, wealth of research and gift for storytelling, Rob tells how the paper reported, paralleled and propelled the state’s transformation from a bastion of white supremacy in the 1890s to a beacon of progress in the 20th Century.
He is unsparing and insightful on the N&O’s founder, Josephus Daniels, who was both a rabid racist and a political progressive – in Rob’s words, “a Jim Crow liberal,” a label that’s hard to grasp today but reflects Josephus’ time and place.
After Josephus died in 1948, the paper slowly shed its racism and became a voice for liberalism under three subsequent generations of the Daniels family.
Former Governor Jim Hunt told Rob the N&O “was probably the second most important force in the state” – behind only the University of North Carolina.
But the N&O has been sinking since the Danielses sold the paper in 1995 and the Internet tidal wave swamped the newspaper industry.
Rob writes, “It is arguably not a coincidence that North Carolina moved to the political right” as the N&O and other newspapers declined.
In 2019, he notes, the N&O ran nine stories about the opening of a new Wegman’s – and only four in-depth stories about the Raleigh’s mayor race.
For decades, the paper – and its competitors – kept politicians, if not honest, at least on their toes.
No more.
The loss of the N&O has been a loss for North Carolina.
At Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh last week, 115 people – including a few of us N&O veterans – showed up to buy Rob’s book and hear him talk about it. Order it from UNC Press or from an independent bookstore like Quail Ridge, not Amazon.
Photo by Robert Willett
The N&O Story
Once upon a time, there was a great and powerful newspaper: The News & Observer.
Everybody from the Governor on down read it every morning.
It covered everything that moved in state government and politics.
Its investigations took down crooks, incompetents and corrupt politicians.
Its editorial pages stood up for the little guy and stuck it to the powerful and privileged.
Now, the once-giant N&O is a pygmy, a shell of its old self.
The rise and fall of the paper is recounted by Rob Christensen (photo), North Carolina’s premier political reporter and a 45-year N&O veteran, in his new book Southern News, Southern Politics: How a Newspaper Defined a State for a Century, published by UNC Press.
Rob writes, “Having a state capital paper serve as an aggressive watchdog should not be undervalued. For decades, the paper uncovered misdeeds by public officials, dug up scandals in the sports departments of major state universities, discovered shenanigans among labor leaders, and spotlighted miscarriages of justice. The paper was often excoriated for doing so.”
With his insider’s perspective, wealth of research and gift for storytelling, Rob tells how the paper reported, paralleled and propelled the state’s transformation from a bastion of white supremacy in the 1890s to a beacon of progress in the 20th Century.
He is unsparing and insightful on the N&O’s founder, Josephus Daniels, who was both a rabid racist and a political progressive – in Rob’s words, “a Jim Crow liberal,” a label that’s hard to grasp today but reflects Josephus’ time and place.
After Josephus died in 1948, the paper slowly shed its racism and became a voice for liberalism under three subsequent generations of the Daniels family.
Former Governor Jim Hunt told Rob the N&O “was probably the second most important force in the state” – behind only the University of North Carolina.
But the N&O has been sinking since the Danielses sold the paper in 1995 and the Internet tidal wave swamped the newspaper industry.
Rob writes, “It is arguably not a coincidence that North Carolina moved to the political right” as the N&O and other newspapers declined.
In 2019, he notes, the N&O ran nine stories about the opening of a new Wegman’s – and only four in-depth stories about the Raleigh’s mayor race.
For decades, the paper – and its competitors – kept politicians, if not honest, at least on their toes.
No more.
The loss of the N&O has been a loss for North Carolina.
At Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh last week, 115 people – including a few of us N&O veterans – showed up to buy Rob’s book and hear him talk about it. Order it from UNC Press or from an independent bookstore like Quail Ridge, not Amazon.
Photo by Robert Willett