Durham hit today?

Really sad to hear about Mike Potter ... he was incredibly helpful and gracious to a certain green college kid stringing the women's D-II hoops tournament for the N&O back in '02. One of the kindest human beings I've met in the biz. Here's hoping he lands on his feet, and that those left in Durham can keep their heads above water somehow.

 

I know everybody is understaffed, but how does a newspaper with two D-1 colleges, a D-2 college, a pro hockey team, a minor league baseball team and preps put out a paper with five total people in sports? That's insane.

 

This news really sickens me. Mike is good people -- and a solid reporter who worked his tail off for that paper.

It sickens me, but doesn't surprise me considering the parent company.

I guess they will be riding AP for Hurricanes coverage. Brilliant timing.

 

Here's what kills me. Where I am, the paper is still relatively healthy (relatively being the key word). I think people still pick us up and expect a decent product.

But what happens is you get places like Durham, where they've just gutted the quality of the product to the point where if folks from Durham move where I am, they've been "trained" to think the newspaper is going to be garbage. They've been broken of their newspaper habit before they get here.

So our circulation suffers as more people who move here (granted, it's not a HUGE transplant town) don't even think about reading a paper any more.

Thanks Paxton. And Gannett. And, well, take your pick...

 

Here's another thing: It's a business model other chains will point to. "Well, if Durham can do it in their market, we can do it here, too."

Ugh. I really do try to remain optimistic -- my paper is fairly healthy right now, too -- but news like this is soul-crushing.

 

Try three -- NC State is in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle, too.

 

According to a certain Boston Globe columnist, the Hurricanes play on the NC State campus.

 

I can't imagine how the Herald-Sun is going to cover much going forward because Mike used to run all over the Triangle covering just about everything. He's also one of the nicest guys in the business. I feel bad for those left there.

 

Actually, Central is Division I now, too. That's four.

 

That's what my former ME based his sports department cuts on when it hit the fan last month, and I was one of three full-timers to go. He was bragging to a new hire, a year previous, that he was "going to cut the fat" in the sports department. He said he wanted it to be "the average size" of sports departments are at similar sized papers.

What a tool.

 

I don't think they even try to cover N.C. State.

Today's website again has AP from the Hurricanes and nothing on the homestanding Bulls.

 

They haven't had a writer assigned to the N.C. State beat since Paxton's first layoffs at the Herald-Sun in January 2005. I think they have covered State games sometimes, and obviously whenever it plays Duke or North Carolina.

That will be a busy crew of five with the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference finals and the ACC baseball tournament in Durham next week.

Times have changed, though. During the Canes' run to the 2002 finals, they sent a beat writer and a columnist on the road with the team in the playoffs. Now they don't have a columnist -- although those who remain sometimes write columns -- and it's highly unlikely they will send even one writer to Pittsburgh for the Eastern Conference finals games there. (Of course the Raleigh News and Observer went a few weeks late in the regular season when it wasn't sending a writer on the road with the Hurricanes.)