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Thursday, January 23, 2020

N.C. papers collaborate on watchdog function, fill gaps in rural areas that have lost papers or attention of metro media

Newspapers small and large in North Carolina, many of which have long competed against each other, are collaborating to increase the efficiency of watchdog reporting in the state.

Kristen Hare reports for the Poynter Institute that 22 papers are in the North Carolina News Collaborative, "or NCNC ('nick-nick') for short. Most of those papers have published for more than 100 years. But this is a first for all of them."

“Our egos were the biggest thing getting in the way of us doing this in the past,” Robyn Tomlin, the executive editor of the Raleigh News & Observer and the Durham Herald-Sun and the McClatchy Co.’s Southeast regional editor. “Now we’re at a point when we recognize that in order for us to be as strong as we need to be for our communities. We have to work together.”

"Egos might seem like a luxury nowadays," Hare writes. "Newspaper employment shrunk 48 percent between 2008 and 2018, according to a study by Pew. In North Carolina, weekly and daily newspaper circulation dropped by 38% between 2004 and 2019, according to the University of North Carolina’s research on news deserts, and the state lost four dailies and 40 weeklies."

In addition to sharing content and resources, the papers agreed to "look for additional resources to increase coverage of the rural area between newsrooms that have become and are becoming news deserts," Hare reports. "In December, NCNC papers published a seven-part series about the growing rural/urban divide in the state. "

Former editor Melanie Sill, a professor in the communications school at Davidson College and the former editor of the NC Local newsletter, did its last edition mainly about NCNC, Hare reports.

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