Berkshire Hathaway Media is selling all of their newspapers to Lee Industries. This includes the W-S Journal and the Greensboro N&R. I think Statesville and Hickory are also included and one more in that area of the state, maybe Marion.

I hope, and assume, this will not hurt App coverage in the Greensboro paper. Greensboro N&R picks up most all of Ethan Joyce's article during football season which is a vast improvement of what it used to be before both papers were under the same corporate entity. I assume all of the BH Media papers in WNC were carrying Ethan as well.

Not as much coverage outside of football but it helps to have both papers under the same corporate umbrella.

I imagine in a few years there will be one Triad paper for both cities with a pull-out section for local coverage but we are not there yet thankfully.

It also includes the Mooresville Tribune. From what I understand Lee has been running the papers for Berkshire Hathaway, so there may not be much of a change.

And in the Catawba Valley area, the deal also includes the Morganton News-Herald.

HkyMtneer wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 31, 2020 5:53 pm

And in the Catawba Valley area, the deal also includes the Morganton News-Herald.

Morganton, Marion, I knew the city had an M as the first letter and it was to the west of me.

Yes, Lee has been operating the BH papers for the past year so I don't see any real changes but now that they own the papers they may look for some cost-cutting which translates to job loses.

In other newspapers news the micro-local NW (Guilford) Observer has a nice picture of two of their readers at the SB FB Championship game on the back page of the Jan 30-Feb 5, 2020 issue. I am not usually in that part of the county to pick up this free weekly but did earlier today and there was App!

McLeansvilleAppFan wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 31, 2020 6:11 pm

HkyMtneer wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 31, 2020 5:53 pm

And in the Catawba Valley area, the deal also includes the Morganton News-Herald.

Morganton, Marion, I knew the city had an M as the first letter and it was to the west of me.

Yes, Lee has been operating the BH papers for the past year so I don't see any real changes but now that they own the papers they may look for some cost-cutting which translates to job loses.

Marion is also a BH paper and part of the sale/purchase. I just don't consider Marion to be a part of the Catawba Valley...they've got their own thing going on up there in MAC-dowell County!

Mac Dow. During the Revolution,British Lt Allaire is quoted , September 15 1780 “ A very handsome place ....this settlement is composed of the most violent rebels I have ever seen, particularly the young ladies.”

I was thinking BH Media had 7 papers in NC and Marion, Morganton, HIckory, Statesville, W-S, and Gboro make 6. I may be thinking of a non-daily as they print a few of those such as in Reidsville.

HkyMtneer wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 31, 2020 6:24 pm

McLeansvilleAppFan wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 31, 2020 6:11 pm

HkyMtneer wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 31, 2020 5:53 pm

And in the Catawba Valley area, the deal also includes the Morganton News-Herald.

Morganton, Marion, I knew the city had an M as the first letter and it was to the west of me.

Yes, Lee has been operating the BH papers for the past year so I don't see any real changes but now that they own the papers they may look for some cost-cutting which translates to job loses.

Marion is also a BH paper and part of the sale/purchase. I just don't consider Marion to be a part of the Catawba Valley...they've got their own thing going on up there in MAC-dowell County!

Does what they have going in any way involve MACtion? I hear there are strains of MACtion that penicillin can not cure now.

The Concord paper is also a B-H outfit.

Marion is a part of the Western piedmont.Asheville is the 800 pound gorilla that tries to dominate.It's good McDowell high is back in the Northwestern 4a-3a.All the H-B papers in the area are printed and controlled in W-S.

asu1978 wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 31, 2020 10:34 pm

Marion is a part of the Western piedmont.Asheville is the 800 pound gorilla that tries to dominate.It's good McDowell high is back in the Northwestern 4a-3a.All the H-B papers in the area are printed and controlled in W-S.

Yes, the W-S printing press is a bit more central and the newest printing press. I think it was purchased a year or two before the bottom fell out of the newspaper industry. I have three things against it but I also understand the rationale.

1) The press operators voted out their labor union back in the 1990s. It has been a while and they have the right to do that but it is also something I wish would not have happened.

2) The N&R has a rail connection and that is how newsprint was delivered. It was nice to see the occasional freight action down town Greensboro and that is not happening now, which I lament. With the current size of the workforce at the N&R the BH company will sell that land in a few years I imagine and make a ton of money and the paper employees will move to a floor or two of a building downtown. There is a reason the real estate was not included in the deal. The W-S printing press is nowhere near a rail line so the paper is getting trucked in. Just not as good.

3) The N&R is getting printed much earlier now so late news and mainly sports is missing. I am not subscribing to the paper for late breaking news, the internet can do that, but I am subscribing to support a free press and their ability to keep an eye on local government for the community at large. We, as society, or at least those or us that care about open and transparent society, are likely going to regret losing our local press when they are gone or so small they don't really function as they once did. We are getting close to that now, and in some places that has sadly happened.

I guess it is time to get off this soapbox. I came into my classroom this morning to get some organizing done and here I am wasting time on YC.

I'll leave you with this---

Go Apps! Kick some LR ass!

The Hickory paper has not served as a watchdog for many years now. Their purpose is to publish ads, period.

CVAPP wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 01, 2020 2:50 pm

The Hickory paper has not served as a watchdog for many years now. Their purpose is to publish ads, period.

They are down to under 10,000 circulation from what I have read. I think that is 1/3 of what it used to be.

One thing about print ads is that you can skip over them. A smaller paper like Hickory, even in the best of times, was not doing a lot of investigative journalism, partly due to size, and they had a conservative slant that was not going to have the paper push the local power structure much either, at least I don't remember much in that manner or reporting when I lived in the area and my family subscribed. Then again I was young at the time.

Much like merging most of the W-S and GRO papers could save some money and have a local section for each city, I could see Morganton and Hickory merging the national and international section and then having one section for each county where local news and sports are printed. Might even be able to do that for the entire state and have a consistent layout that shared a good bit down to the layout. That is easier when the papers are about the same size in number of pages. Otherwise a smaller paper would have to cull parts to fit their ad to article ratio.

I agree, I can't recall reading investigative journalism that was a product of anyone on the HDR's staff, ever. But, they did at one point cover a little more in the way of local government news. Council meeting recaps, etc.. That was back when they had the now defunct Hickory News as a quasi competitor.

I never read the Hickory News much unless I was hanging out downtown and picked up a copy. I grew up north of Conover in the county. HDR delivered pretty much in the entire county and I assume maybe into parts of Burke and Caldwell. Hickory News either never delivered or had a much smaller footprint that was pretty much the city limits. I think the same case held for ONE in Newton. Was the News and ONE true dailies or did they print 3 or 4 times a week?

I did like reading the Hickory News the few times I picked it up. They seemed to be a bit spunky and relish their role. I think they were also connected to a free weekly, Focus maybe. Maybe I am confusing my memories of 3 decades ago between the publishers of the weekly and the publishers of the News, but I was thinking there was a connection at one time.

Interestingly, I can't find anything on Hickory News on the internet. That includes a wikipedia article and list of current newspapers and defunct newspapers in NC going back to the 1700s.

Amazing how smaller cities like Greensboro could maintain two papers with a smaller population than now up until the mid-1980s and now barely able to keep one going. Greensboro and the Triad does have two free weeklies but not really covering city hall much in a consistent way. I generally pick them up when at a restaurant The Rhino Times did do a good job as a free weekly covering local gov't in Guilford but they had a very right-wing slant. That is there right to have that slant but I would only read it to see what the other side had to say and then put the paper back in the rack so as not to help with their circulation numbers. I think they may still be online.

I would be nice to have two papers in a city, if only to not have to hear the bitching and whining from the John Birch members in my area complaining about a very moderate Gboro paper being the second coming of Marx and Ingles.