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. 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. The paper was one of the first in the world to launch an online version of the publication, Nando.net in 1994. Daniels believed that "the greatest folly and crime" in U.S. history was granting Blacks the right to vote. 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."
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.
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.
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 and 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 party that in 1968 held different positions on integration than the party of Josephus Daniels' day. 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. 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.
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.
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. Layoffs and buyouts have continued since then.
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. In March 2020, The News and Observer moved to a six day printing schedule, eliminating its printed Saturday edition. By June 2021, the paper only employed 64 reporters.
Awards
- 1983 – Pulitzer Prize in Commentary
Claude Sitton was awarded for his distinguished commentary.
- 1989 – Pulitzer Prize in Criticism
Michael Skube was awarded for his writing about books and other literary topics.
- 1996 – Pulitzer Prize in Public Service
In the winter of 1995, The News & Observer published a nine-part series on the booming pork industry in North Carolina. The series covered environmental and health risks of the waste-disposal systems used within the industry.
See also
- List of newspapers in North Carolina