N&O moves Bull City staff to Chapel Hill in cost-cutting move

It continues to be a rough year for our friends in print media. Just weeks after the Herald-Sun announced its most recent round of cost-cutting staff reductions, the News & Observer has announced that its Durham newsroom will be relocating to Chapel Hill.

As of just a couple of weeks ago, the Durham staff were prepping for a move to the SouthBank Building in downtown Durham, a few blocks and a few bucks down from their current location in the Richard Morgan-owned Peabody Place in Brightleaf Square.

No longer so: editor Rob Waters announced in today's The Durham News that, in a reversal of fortunes, the Durham team will be moving south, to co-locate in the N&O's Chapel Hill offices, a McClatchy-owned facility that's available at no cost.

I won't try to put lipstick and a lace bonnet on this pig. It's going to be harder to cover Durham from a Chapel Hill base. But a dollar we save in rent is a dollar we don't have to cut elsewhere. If moving preserves a reporting or photo job, it's a good tradeoff....

Our move does not signify any diminished commitment to Durham or a sign of problems with our operation here. The Durham News makes a nice profit, and The N&O is one of McClatchy's top performers. We're just doing our part in the company-wide penny-pinching.

It's a tough move for the N&O folks -- especially in days of nearly $4 per gallon gas -- but kudos to Waters for approaching the subject forthrightly, unlike the cryptic pronouncements of the Herald-Sun's Bob Ashley in that paper's recent cutback.

(Disclaimer: Besides blogging at BCR, I occasionally write a paid freelancer column for The Durham News.)

Comments

[ACW]

My initial reaction was to say something really snarky about the gas to be wasted driving back and forth, but with the technology I'm sure they have, it probably isn't necessary to drive there all that often, really. My sincere hope is that they're not one of those companies with ridiculous policies about folks driving half an hour to clock in, only to drive half an hour back to their home turf to begin work... assuming, hopefully, that they maintain Durham-based writers.

[Joe]

I now drive back and forth to Chapel Hill every weekday, so I feel like it makes sense for me to say that this is stupid. Can't keep their own staff in the city they cover? God.

[Steve]

Does this mean the Robertson bus is going to be a lot more crowded?

[Rob]

Only one Triangle-based newspaper sent a staff writer to cover last night's debate at WTVD here in the city between McCrory and Perdue. The Herald-Sun, Durham's paper? Of course not. The News & Observer? Nope, they used the Charlotte guy, which quickens their pace towards the eventual merger and becoming the "USA Today of North Carolina." Only The Daily Tar Heel had one of their own file a story in today's papers.