News-Record.com

Sad news indeed.

I hope, for the sake of all the good folks at the N&R, that the Battens find a decent buyer who will let y'all keep doing your jobs so well.

Thanks, Jonathan. There's a meeting this morning to hear more. I'll put more information up then.

You know, the Rhino always jokes about the N&R being "the 11-county area N&R" but in reality it is far from it. It is GSO, HP, Guilford Co. and that's pretty much it.

You all have massively cut back on your outlying bureaus, so we really don't get that regional coverage. Coincidentally, the W-S Journal doesn't cover that much east of the Forsyth Co. line either...this is much a disgustingly segmented media market, it's nuts.

If the N&R is sold (the McClatchy's???), I would like to see that regional coverage built back up, vis-a-vis the News & Observer of Raleigh, which is a good regional paper, even in Durham and Chapel Hill. I would like to see a real working relationship with a local news station, I guess CBS-2 is all that's left (FOX-8 has a partnership with the Journal and NBC-12 has a small partnership with the Enterprise), or News 14 Carolina (which I watch over all the others for my local news).

Mark's doing a good job out of Raleigh, I would like to see more statewide coverage. And re-beef back up the business coverage.

Send them a check, E.C. All those things cost money, and when a media conglomerate buys a publication, they rarely decide to spend MORE money on it. Just ask the staffs of Creative Loafing's and Village Voice Media's new acquisitions.

I need to pull together some investors.

It wouldn't be unprecedented Sam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Tierney

Welcome to the "our employer's up for sale" club, John!

Would it be ok to say I am tickled pink. It puts us people on the right in a win , win game. If the paper stays a liberal tabloid, we have lost nothing! If by chance the new owners decide to tell us about the corruption in Raleigh, we win again. Heck who knows we righties might even get a LTE once in a will explaining whats going on in Raleigh. Saying that I still hope no one loses a job.

Good luck, John.

In a high tech era where young people listen, look, and punch buttons rather than read and contemplate, a profitable newspaper must be one that is innovative and nimble. News content becomes a factor in profit determination; particularly to an absentee owner. Industry consolidation is the norm in American business today. I don't track newspaper ownership but would bet most daily papers in the state are owned by larger news or communications organizations. Recently cable news outlets were approved to own newspapers. Money is the name of the game.

The Rhinoceros Times appears to be a hugely profitable weekly that publishes in Greensboro and Charlotte. It has hit a home run formula that rings with its readership: don't be surprised one day to find that its owners decided to sell to an outside organization. Look at what happened to Starmount Company. Money counts!

If N&R ownership changes let's hope the resulting paper will be one holds reader's imaginations and equals the impact of dailies in Charlotte, Raleigh, or Wilmington. I carried the Greensboro Daily News in 1949, when I was nine years old, and devoured it page by page. In more recent years I've felt the News & Record failed to reflect Greensboro in the positive way it once did. Maybe that comes with outside ownership. It's been a long time since I felt any "ownership" in our newspaper.

I should add to my previous comment that I hope I'm wrong. Here' hoping the sale, if it happens, doesn't result in the loss of any more good reporters and other staffers, both for their sake and for Greensboro's. For all the (sometimes legitimate) complaints people have about the N&R, I think it's one of the better dailies in the current industry.

This is sad news. Having worked for several of the big newspaper chains (but not McClatchy), I've always had fond memories of Landmark.

The folks looking at this in political terms are once again missing the point. Politics has absolutely nothing to do with this. The Rhino is "successful" because it's doing the easy stuff -- love-it-or-hate-it political opinion, photos from local bars, etc. It's good at what it is, but it's not a replacement for a daily newspaper, and I'm confident Hammer and company would say the same thing.

Landmark doesn't dictate politics. It dictates HR policies and watches the bottom line. Until the layoffs, it was a far kinder boss than most. (Ahem ... NYT Regional Papers? I'm looking in your direction.)

You could possibly give some of the blame for the layoffs in Landmark's direction, but anything else you don't like about the N&R is the fault of your neighbors. (Or a mistake on your part. :)