Bloodletting at Lee papers in Greensboro, Winston-Salem

Sad day for sports fans in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina. Lee Enterprises just laid at least half of its remaining sports staffs at the Greensboro News & Record and Winston-Salem Journal.

According to Twitter feeds and text, columnist Ed Hardin and Jeff Mills are out at the N&R. Wake Forest beat writer Conor O'Neill and preps writer Patrick Ferlise are out at the Journal.

All good people. Please help them if you are able.

 

Very sad news. Ed Hardin is one of the best columnists in the country.

 

I remember going through Greensboro the Monday before Memorial day in May, 2017. I counted three local bylines. I posted that and someone said that I had caught the paper on a bad day, given the limited weekend staffing left after numerous reductions. At one point it was posted Greensboro was down to about dozens staffers. After these cuts how many people will be left or will they be able to produce more than three stories a day.

And I saw the Wake Forest writer got fired. Is someone else going to pick up the beat or is Winston Salem not going to put a staffer on the school?

 

I remember the old days when the N&R had an 18-person bureau in High Point. A bureau. Of course that was a long time ago.

 

Is the High Point Enterprise still there? When the owner gave up on Durham I started to wonder when the Enterprise and the smaller papers in its group would be sold or folded.

 

It's still there, owned by Paxton. Shell of a staff. Back in 2003, they had an eight-man sports staff!

 

HPE laid off all three sports guys in the spring. Brought back preps beat writer this week with private schools back in action.

 

This is terrible news. I knew Ed from the ECHL and ACC. The writing has been on the wall for a while, especially when they started eliminating NASCAR writers like Mulhern, Dustin Long, etc. High Point, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Burlington were all great stepping stones for people moving up or just wanting to be in a medium market with colleges, minor league baseball, the ACC and racing.

Was it Greensboro that went to the "minimum byline per day requirement" rule a while back? I still shake my head at that idea.

 

Sucks. I don't think the Triad has an Athletic 'beat?' One of those would be a natural landing spot for one of these guys.

And what are you even doing if you're the Journal and you don't have a Wake Forest writer?

 

It ain’t just Greensboro. It’s the whole company, yet again, and for the zillionth time since Mary Junck pranced into the annual editors meeting in 2004 and gleefully announced that the bankers out of the goodness of their hearts had just given her $1 billion to buy the Pulitzer chain.




That’s not bad considering that you can get 100 shares of Lee for less than $90 right now.

 

Mary f**king Junck ... she (and Lee's board of directors) just has to have that quarterly bonus fix ...