The News & Observer is an American regional daily newspaper that serves the greater Triangle area based in Raleigh, North Carolina. The paper is the largest in circulation in the state (second is the Charlotte Observer). The paper has been awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, the most recent of which was in 1996 for a series on the health and environmental impact of North Carolina's booming hog industry.[3] The paper was one of the first in the world to launch an online version of the publication,[4]Nando.net in 1994.[5]
On May 17, 1995 the News & Observer Publishing Company was sold to McClatchy Newspapers of Sacramento, California, for $373 million, ending 101 years of Daniels family ownership. In the mid-1990s, flexo machines were installed, allowing the paper to print thirty-two pages in color, which was the largest capacity of any newspaper within the United States at the time. The McClatchy Company currently operates a total of twenty-nine daily newspapers in fourteen states with a combined weekday circulation of 1.6 million and a Sunday circulation of 2.4 million. With McClatchy's acquisition of most of Knight Ridder's properties in 2006, North Carolina's two largest newspapers (the News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer) are now under common ownership.[6][5]
History
The News & Observer traces its roots to The Sentinel, which was founded by the Rev. William E. Pell in 1865 and who used, "the newspaper to fight against the domination of carpetbaggers and other forces during Congressional Reconstruction."[5] The paper's struggles to stay relevant and make money led to new ownership in 1868. With the new owner The Sentinel began to cover the Democrats' push to retake the North Carolina Legislature, along with the impeachment of Gov. William W. Holden in 1871.[5]
Josephus Daniels, the principal shaper of The News & Observer
The Sentinel went bankrupt a little over ten years after the paper was first founded. The owners of the newly founded Raleigh Observer, Peter M. Hale and William L. Saunders, bought the now-bankrupt paper, ending its publication and focusing on the Raleigh Observer. After about ten years the paper ran out of money, so the two owners sold to the owner of the Raleigh News, Samuel A. Ashe.[5]
Ashe combined the two papers under the new banner The News & Observer in September 1880, making it the sole daily paper in Raleigh. Ashe ran the company personally until 1894, focusing on politics and the Democratic party. Ashe used connections within the Democratic Party to get an upper leg on upcoming stories. This model worked well for the paper until Ashe lost favor in the Democratic caucus, leading the paper to fall on hard financial times for the fourth time in its history.[5]
In 1894 the paper was sold at auction, this time to a Washington, North Carolina, native who was a strong Democratic supporter. Josephus Daniels, with help from Julian Carr and other friends, bought the paper. Quickly Daniels refocused the News and Observer to combat rampant corruption and other problems he saw within the state. Put differently by Daniels himself, "The News and Observer was relied upon to carry the Democratic message and to be the militant voice of White Supremacy, and it did not fail in what was expected, sometimes going to extremes in its partisanship."[7]:39 Daniels believed that "the greatest folly and crime" in U.S. history was granting Blacks the right to vote.[7]:37
In the findings of the Wilmington Race Riot Commission, Daniels is the only name mentioned as a cause of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898,[8]:1 According to historian Helen Edmonds, the paper "led in a campaign of prejudice, bitterness, vilification, misrepresentation, and exaggeration to influence the emotions of the whites against the Negro."[8]:61 The result was the only successful coup d'état in American history, the overthrow of Wilmington's elected government by force.[5]
1913 ad showing circulation numbers in prior years
In 2006, on occasion of the release of the report of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, the newspaper offered "an apology for the acts of someone [Daniels] we continue to salute in a different context…and for the misdeeds of the paper as an institution." The newspaper published a 16-page special report on the events of 1898.[10]
After Daniels
Daniels continued to run the paper until his death in the mid-1940s. After his death his four sons assumed management of the company. All four sons contributed to the operation of the paper, but Jonathan Daniels, editor from 1933 to 1941 and from 1948 until 1964, kept the paper in the direction of appealing for school desegregation and a reduction in race related discrimination. It was also under Jonathan's leadership that The News and Observer bought out the Raleigh Times and moved to a building on South McDowell St. in downtown Raleigh, where they stayed until the building was sold in 2015.[5]
On September 3, 1934, The News and Observer began a column about state politics called "Under the Dome", which started on the back page, moved to the front and now runs in the local section.[11]
In 1968, the Daniels family hired Claude Sitton, who had been a correspondent for The New York Times and later an editor there. Serving as the editorial director of the paper, he promoted The News & Observer as a government watchdog and moved the news of the paper away from the personal and partisan stances it had taken under Josephus Daniels. However, its editorials were still often aligned with the Democratic Party. A year later, the Mini Page children's supplement was created and published. Today, it is one of America's most widely used children's newspaper supplements.[5]
In 1971, Sitton became the editor and the paper began buying and publishing smaller local newspapers, starting with The Island Packet in Hilton Head, South Carolina and The Cary News in Cary, North Carolina.[5]
On March 16, 1980, a welder's torch started a fire and burned through newsprint threaded through the press, injuring three and causing millions in damage.[5]
In 1987, the staffs of The News & Observer and The Raleigh Times merged, and on November 30, 1989, the last edition of The Raleigh Times was published. In 1988, The News & Observer endorsed its first Republican candidate for statewide election, showing, perhaps, a distancing from Democratic partisanship.
Throughout the early 1990s, The News & Observer divested itself of various local newspapers in South Carolina and the North Carolina mountains, and by September 1993, Sunday sales of The News & Observer reached 200,000 for every week. However, the newspaper still owns The Cary News, Chapel Hill News, and the Smithfield Herald among other newspapers. In 1994, the paper created Nando.net, becoming an Internet service provider and began publishing the NandO Times online newspaper.
In 1999, The News & Observer was named one of America's 100 best newspapers by the Columbia Journalism Review, and one of the 17 best-designed newspapers in the world by the Society for News Design.
In 2004, The News & Observer along with three other news publishers filled suit against the Raleigh–Durham International Airport for preventing the company from adding new newspaper racks in the terminal. After appeal, a 2010 decision from the Fourth Circuit determined that the restriction was a violation of the first amendment because it put a restriction on expression.[12]
In September 2008, the News and Observer offered buyouts to all 320 newsroom employees, approximately 40% of its staff, in an effort to cut expenses. Previously the company had shut down its Durham news bureau and in a separate event laid off 70 employees.[13] Layoffs and buyouts have continued since then.[14]
In 2015 the newspaper announced it would sell its facility in downtown Raleigh for redevelopment, which will entail demolition of much of the facility. New presses will be installed at the newspaper's auxiliary production facility in Garner. Editorial offices will remain in a portion of the redeveloped facility.[15] By June 2021, the paper only employed 64 reporters.[16]
Michael Skube was awarded for his writing about books and other literary topics.[18]
1996 – Pulitzer Prize in Public Service
In the Winter of 1995 The News & Observer released a nine part series on the booming pork industry in North Carolina. The series covered environmental and health risk of the waste disposal systems used within the pork industry in the state. The award was presented to the paper for the work done by Melanie Sill, Pat Stith and Joby Warrick.[3]
Other publications
The News & Observer Publishing Co. formerly published a number of bi-weekly newspapers that focused on local news in various triangle-area communities. These included:
In June, 2017 these papers were shifted in focus from local community news to entertainment, food, and light features, and in January, 2018 were consolidated into a single bi-weekly paper titled Triangle Today, however that paper was discontinued in January, 2019.
The News & Observer Publishing Co. owns Insider State Government News Service, a newsletter publisher about state government.[19]
Raleigh is the capital city of the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeast, the 41st-most populous city in the U.S., and the largest city of the Research Triangle metro area. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees, which line the streets in the heart of the city. The city covers a land area of 148.54 square miles (384.7 km2). The U.S. Census Bureau counted the city's population as 467,665 at the 2020 census. It is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. It is ranked as a sufficiency-level world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city of Raleigh is named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who established the now-lost Roanoke Colony in present-day Dare County.
Wake County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, its population was 1,129,410, making it North Carolina's most populous county. From July 2005 to July 2006, Wake County was the 9th-fastest growing county in the United States, with Cary and Raleigh being the 8th- and 15th-fastest growing communities, respectively.
Cary is a town in Wake, Chatham, and Durham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina and is part of the Raleigh-Cary, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to the 2020 census, its population was 174,721, making it the seventh-most populous municipality in North Carolina, and the 148th-most populous in the United States. In 2023, the town's population had increased to 180,010.
The Research Triangle, or simply The Triangle, are both common nicknames for a metropolitan area in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of North Carolina. Anchored by the cities of Raleigh and Durham and the town of Chapel Hill, the region is home to three major research universities: North Carolina State University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, respectively. The "Triangle" name originated in the 1950s with the creation of Research Triangle Park located between the three anchor cities, which is the largest research park in the United States and home to numerous high tech companies.
Josephus Daniels was an American diplomat and newspaper editor from the 1880s until his death, who managed The News & Observer in Raleigh, at the time North Carolina's largest circulation newspaper, for decades. A Democrat, he was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I. He became a close friend and supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. After Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, he appointed Daniels as his U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, serving from 1933 to 1941. Daniels was a vehement white supremacist and segregationist. Along with Charles Brantley Aycock and Furnifold McLendel Simmons, he was a leading perpetrator of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898.
The McClatchy Company, or simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law. Originally based in Sacramento, California, U.S., the publication became a subsidiary of Chatham Asset Management, headquartered in Chatham Borough, New Jersey as a result of its 2020 bankruptcy. The publication operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states and has an average weekday circulation of 1.6 million and Sunday circulation of 2.4 million. In 2006, it purchased Knight Ridder, which at the time was the second-largest newspaper company in the United States. In addition to its daily newspapers, McClatchy also operates several websites and community papers, as well as a news agency, McClatchy DC Bureau, focused on political news from Washington, D.C.
Nando was an American internet news service and Internet service provider (ISP), founded in 1993 by the publishers of The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina. Initially it relied on access via bulletin board technology. One of the first 24-hour news websites, the Nando Times, was launched in 1994, providing edited information from major news agencies that had not then developed their own websites.
Alfred Moore Waddell was an American politician and white supremacist. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. representative from North Carolina between 1871 and 1879 and as mayor of Wilmington, North Carolina from 1898 to 1906.
The Charlotte Observer is an American newspaper serving Charlotte, North Carolina, and its metro area. The Observer was founded in 1886. As of 2020, it has the second-largest circulation of any newspaper in the Carolinas. It is owned by Chatham Asset Management.
The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington coup of 1898, was a coup d'état and a massacre which was carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, on Thursday, November 10, 1898. The white press in Wilmington originally described the event as a race riot caused by black people. In later study from the 20th century onward, the event has been characterized as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by a group of white supremacists.
The Herald is a daily morning newspaper published in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in the United States. Its coverage is York, Chester, and Lancaster counties. In 1990, the paper was bought by The McClatchy Company of Sacramento, California. After McClatchy claimed bankruptcy in 2020, the paper was bought by Chatham Asset Management.
Julian Shakespeare Carr was an American industrialist, philanthropist, and white supremacist. He is the namesake of the town of Carrboro, North Carolina.
The Island Packet is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper owned by Chatham Asset Management, serving primarily the residents of southern Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States, particularly the towns of Hilton Head Island and Bluffton.
The Herald-Sun is an American, English language daily newspaper in Durham, North Carolina, published by the McClatchy Company.
WKIX is an AM radio station with an oldies format, licensed to Raleigh, North Carolina. The station is owned by Curtis Media Group, and serves the Research Triangle area.
The Josephus Daniels House, also known as Wakestone, and later the Masonic Temple of Raleigh, was a historic mansion at 1520 Caswell Street in Raleigh, North Carolina. Built in 1920, it was the home until his death in 1948 of Josephus Daniels, influential Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, as well as a controversial editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh for decades. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. After Daniels' death it was purchased by the local Freemasons, who made additions to the building and continued to use it as their meeting hall into the 21st century. The building was demolished in August 2021 to make way for a new development of high end homes.
Claude Fox Sitton was an American newspaper reporter and editor. He worked for The New York Times during the 1950s and 1960s, known for his coverage of the civil rights movement. He went on to become national news director of the Times and then editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Alfred Daniel Jones or Buck Jones(July 3, 1857 – December 9, 1893) was an American politician who served in North Carolina and as Consul General of the United States in Shanghai.
The Third North Carolina Regiment was an American military unit composed of colored troops from North Carolina mustered into federal service in the Spanish–American War. Unlike most regiments at the time, it was entirely led by black officers. The unit did not see active service in conflict and spent most of its existence in camps in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia.
The Caucasian (1884–1913) also published as The Daily Caucasian in 1895, was a newspaper in North Carolina which operated from 1884 to 1913. Established as a Democratic Party aligned paper, it became Populist with the era of fusion politics. The paper relocated several times including to Raleigh, the state capitol.
1 2 Campbell, W. Joseph (1999). "'One of the fine figures of American journalism": A Closer Look at Josephus Daniels of the Raleigh News and Observer". American Journalism. 16 (4): 37–55. doi:10.1080/08821127.1999.10739206.
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