News & Record (Greensboro) cuts 9 jobs - 6 in newsroom

My grandfather was a newspaperman in the western United States and since I liked to read I idolized journalists. Because I went to elementary school in Greensboro I started to read newspapers there. My Dad went hunting with Bodie McDowell so I got to shake his hand at a gun club. I still remember it as a thrill of my childhood.

 

There were also cuts made in Winston-Salem ... one of those was Scott Hamilton, the Journal's sports columnist ... that leaves just three columnists working at N.C. papers -- Ed Hardin at Greensboro, Luke DeCock at Raleigh and Scott Fowler at Charlotte ...

 

The SE at the Journal also got let go.

 

If Winston-Salem just fired their columnist and SE it would appear that the sections are going to be combined.

On the same subject are Durham and Raliegh going to maintain separate sports desks or be combined. Will the entire Durham paper be combined into Raleigh?

 

I would say what's left of the Durham paper will be absorbed by the N&O. Sad that it's come to this.

 

I picked up the Herald a few days in a row, recently. As a standalone product, it's much better than it was under Paxton because they're using a lot of N&O - and a little Charlotte O - content.

On the sports page almost everything was from the N&O. Looks like they let the H-S Carolina writer go and are pulling all that coverage from the Raleigh newsroom. Using the N&O's columnist, too. Only H-S bylines I saw were the SE writing Duke hoops and a preps writer.

N&O is also picking up H-S stories on Durham topics.

Seems inevitable they'll eventually be merged, though.

 

The Herald-Sun did not let the UNC beat writer go. He left on his on in February to take a communications position with a local school system.

 

Sadly, if you are at the Herald-Sun and can find a relatively stable job with decent health benefits that pays more than $12 an hour you need to leave.

 

Columnists are the LEAST valuable writers at newspapers these days. Everyone has an opinion. Message boards and Bloggers have virtually made the newspaper columnist invisible. All across the country, columnists have been cut back in every area, sports, news, entertainment, outdoors, features, etc.

Nobody gives a shit about what the newspaper guy's opinion is any more. They look at the sad, shitty shape of the newspaper industry and think "Why in the hell would I care what that guy thinks? He's on the Titanic and won't get in a lifeboat."

If I were Ed Hardin, Luke DeCock or Scott Fowler, I'd be looking for a lifeboat.

 

Hit that one on the screws, Doc.

Plus there's this: Message boards, bloggers, Facebook preachers, etc. all provide their content for FREE.

 

You'd think this, but then every metric I look at says columnists drive traffic to our site.

 

Exactly. They're the closest thing a newspaper has to a tv anchor/quasi celebrity.