Cox puts up "For Sale" sign

The N.C. papers include the Greenville Daily Reflector, the Rocky Mount Telegram and the Elizabeth City Daily Advance.

Not a good day for N.C. papers.

 

No, no, John Paxson's getting into the newspaper game. He's going to send Kirk Hinrich down to Elizabeth City and call up a copy editor.

... dammit.

 

Not at all.
Greenville is the source for East Carolina football, and does a great job with a high schools area that is full of state champion-level teams.
Rocky Mount is all over the ACC and for a paper its size does an admirable job. Their high schools coverage is nothing short of outstanding, breaking the molds of how things are "done" in eastern North Carolina. It picked up its first APSE this year, a honorable mention for Sunday sections.
Elizabeth City has an impossible deadline and a two-man staff, yet whenever I talked with them, they were doing what they could with they had.

These are good people. They haven't lost their jobs (yet), but I would hope most are now papering the world with their resumes.

 

I worked at a Cox paper for a while, and still know most of those guys. Best of everything to them ... and I can only hope Paxton and CNHI leaves them be.

 

Wouldn't be shocked if Wehco started sniffing around some of those papers. Word is the owner has been looking to expand.

 

why would any company be dumb enough to buy a newspaper right now?

 

Austin is the type of community where SOME kind of daily information presentation will make money eventually. Buying the newspaper brand name could be worth it. That's a prosperous place.

 

More than a word.
Austin fits the profile perfectly for what they are looking for: Daily paper in a state capitol.
They just paid cash for the Jeff City paper in Mizzou and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Wehco make that buy in Texas.

 

CoxNC has been pretty generous, paying its employees better than the industry average, and the building in Greenville, where The Daily Reflector is produced and the papers for Greenville, Rocky Mount and Elizabeth City are all printed, has top-notch press equipment.

It's not likely that a company willing to sink that kind of money into things is in major debt. And we can only hope a responsible owner buys them and looks carefully before attempting any serious wholesale changes. These papers are not broken and aren't in dire need of fixing.

Elizabeth City's deadlines are nuts and they're spending a lot of money on fuel trucking those bundles back to Pasquotank County, but I bet they're getting a better printed product and making better use of that new facility in Greenville. Rocky Mount, at least in sports, acts and looks like a bigger market than it is. And Greenville has done a top-notch job with its coverage of East Carolina University and the high schools around Pitt County.

Some owner could walk into a better-than-average situation. Here's to hoping it doesn't get Paxton-ized.

 

Interesting to point out Wehco. Already owns the Texarkana newspaper, as well as the cable TV provider in Longview.

 

Fixed that for you. I know why he is called "Boo" as well. Not a nice story and Arkansas's version of Monty Burns expands to Texas.