Spunky N.C. weekly, created from merger of two failing papers in 2018, is sold to North State Media Group

An award-winning North Carolina weekly newspaper has been sold to an expanding media group in the state The Chatham News + Record, which has won more awards from the North Carolina Press Association over the last three years than any other paper its size, is now owned by North State Media, based in Raleigh. So reports Buck Ryan of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media, who has done particpatory case study of the newspaper, created by the purchase of two money-losing papers in 2018. In the latest installment, Ryan reports:

  

Bill Horner III

Melanie Sill, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and founding executive director of the NCLocal News Workshop at the Elon University School of Communications, said “My friend and fellow journalist Bill Horner III has done a heck of a job in the past few years transforming the Chatham News + Record into what in many ways is a model for a community paper in 2023, with a lively, people-rich and news-packed approach online and in print.”

 

North State Media’s flagship is the North State Journal, which it calls “North Carolina’s only statewide newspaper,” claiming reach across all 100 counties in the state through its print edition and its website, nsjonline.com. Sill, a former executive editor of The News & Observer in Raleigh, described the Journal as having “a mix of news and opinion that both tilt to the right, and a pretty strong point of view.”

In the News + Record’s story, Neal Robbins, North State Media’s president and the publisher of the North State Journal, said “We are excited to add the Chatham News + Record to the North State Journal family. We believe the long-term viability of North Carolina’s independent press lies in local ownership and strategic business planning. This acquisition furthers our goal to elevate the conversation across North Carolina while ensuring local communities are part of that conversation.”

 

Chatham County is the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area.

Chatham County, which is in the central Piedmont region of the state, will be the sixth county with coverage by the media company. Two are adjacent to Chatham: Moore to the south and Randolph to the west. The other three counties are Forsyth (couty seat Winston-Salem), Hoke (Raeford) and Stanly (Albemarle).

“We’ve built an audience. We’ve had a lot of fun and we've worked hard,” Horner said in a Facebook post. “Our weekly ‘chat’ features have given readers direct access to the county’s leading civic, nonprofit, business and government voices. Our in-depth coverage of Chatham’s municipalities, the county government and Chatham County Schools has helped make residents there aware of critical issues, and our elections coverage has introduced people in Chatham County to issues and candidates and made them better-informed voters.

 

Horner and his partners, real estate developer Kirk Bradley and construction company executive Chris Ehrenfeld, purchased The News and The Record, two money-losing, family-owned papers, in 2018. Horner, a third-generation newspaper publisher in North Carolina, came out of retirement to continue a publishing tradition in Chatham County dating to 1878.

Horner said March was the paper’s most profitable month of the year, though bridging a $100,000 annual revenue gap remained a challenge. “It all comes down to reader engagement,” he described the challenge of finding the sweet spot in his politically divided county with a 50-50 split of Democrats and Republicans. 

 

“We weren’t always popular,” Horner said in the Facebook post looking back on his tenure. “A single-copy seller kicked us out of his stores because he didn’t like our coverage of Chatham’s Black and Brown community. Our reporters have been harassed and slandered. We’ve been accused of being ‘woke’; in reality the better word is: aware. But nearly everywhere I went, I would hear the same refrain over and over from subscribers: Thanks for giving us such a great newspaper.”