Sports Editor, Dunn, N.C.

There is AP wire copy but no photos. It is not all-local though, as you might guess, the local is heavily stressed. You can cover ACC sports and the Hurricanes but it's on your own dime and your own time. PM me if you want to know more.

 

If memory serves, this paper was the subject of an extraordinary story by the Wall Street Journal a few years back. A success story in the midst of a dire newspaper environment. Circulation penetration was something ridiculous ... 104 percent.

Their focus was local, local, local, to the extent that -- again, if memory serves -- when a plane crashed near Charlotte, and everybody else in N.C. ran it as the main story, the Dunn paper put it at the bottom and lede was a piece on a bear leaping into a pickup truck, or a grocery store, or the like.

Obviously, they'd found the magic key we're all looking for.

Anybody else remember this, or am I hallucinating????

 

No, they haven't. The people there have all but made the founder and his son, now the publisher, infallible. They have early deadlines, thinking that people who already have subscriptions will buy single copies from boxes with their lunches.

While I didn't believe that, it's otherwise hard to fathom why their penetration is what it is. WSJ wanted to see how they managed to be OK, but don't believe the "they're thriving" bullsh_t. That doesn't explain why the publisher brought in an efficiency expert, claimed he had lost $100K one year and fired five people without any severance package or anything else.

Did WSJ do a folo story on that?