Daily newspaper war going full steam in Mayberry -- er, Mount Airy, N.C.

"What would Sheriff Andy Griffith think about the newspaper brawl going on in his old Mayberry?" asks Jock Lauterer, director of the Carolina Community Media Project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He reports on a visit to Griffith's hometown, Mount Airy, N.C., which after decades of conflicted feelings and sharp declines in its traditional industries (textiles, tobacco and furniture) has embraced tourism and the "Mayberry" monicker:

When Heartland Publications LLC of Old Saybrook, Conn., bought Mid-South Management of Spartanburg, S.C., last month, and began to cut staff and consolidate operations at the daily Mount Airy News and weeklies in Elkin, Yadkinville, West Jefferson and Stokes County, leaders and staff of the Mount Airy and Elkin papers started The Messenger, a five-day-a-week newspaper for Surry County.

"After securing financial backing of a local investor who is said to have deep pockets, they set up shop in a local shopping center and went about the adventurous business of creating what Publisher Michael Milligan claims is the first daily start-up in North Carolina in 40 years (although I’ve just learned there a new daily in Fayetteville that may have beat the Messenger to that claim). Be that as it may, the Messenger is pretty unusual," Lauterer reported on his blog July 17. "And another thing the new paper’s leaders wanted me to know, the Messenger is an investor-employee owned paper. That’s a different breed of cat, and accounts for the energy I witnessed at the Messenger office during my visit today."

The Messenger reports a free, home-delivery circulation of 8,973, with rack sales making the figure around 10,000 -- more than the Mount Airy News' 9,200. Heartland is fighting back with a lawsuit accusing the former publishers of “raiding” key personnel, circulation records and computer passwords. Lauterer writes, "I’m not going to stick my foot in this legal donnybrook. . . . My job is to try and help ALL community newspapers of this state. That’s what I was trying to do last month when I phoned the new editor of the Elkin Tribune, and when I began chatting about the change in ownership, he abruptly hung up on me. In my publisher’s playbook, that is an unforgivable sin. You don’t hang up on people no matter what. So excuse me if I’m not feeling very charitable towards Heartland Publications LLC right now."

Lauterer notes his "decades-long relationship with many of the folks at the old News and Tribune," and his placement of "one of my most outstanding community journalism students, Meghan Cooke, at the News for an internship there this summer, never suspecting that the rising junior from King might get caught up in the teeth of this newspaper slugfest. Visiting and counseling with Meghan today, I was relieved to hear her say that the experience, though harrowing, has been valuable. With the News staff down to a skeleton crew, her workload (and number of clips) has increased tremendously, making her all but indispensable to the News."

Lauterer got a better reception in Mount Airy, where Heartland Publisher Gary Lawrence gave him some time."I left the News feeling a little better about Heartland," he writes. "At the busy office of the Messenger, I watched an impromptu newsroom jam session where publisher Milligan delivered a stirring pep talk. “We’re on the cutting edge!” he told his staff with the vigor of a high school football coach dishing out a halftime locker-room pep talk." He calls Editor Rebel Good (yes, that's his name) "the wise old civics teacher. Their chemistry works. . . . And the Messenger is on the cutting edge. In a country where most all dailies are distributed by paid subscription, starting up a daily and offering it for free is a bold and risky business model.
But if anybody can make it work, these folks can. Their online edition should be up and working some time in late July. Go to www.surrymessenger.com."