I just heard a rumor that the Paxton Media folks are going to kill The Chapel Hill Herald. If that’s true, then I guess I can cancel my plans to attend the 20th anniversary of the starting of that paper. I was the first editor of the CHH and I remember the six months leading up to our first issue (on June 6, 1988) as the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life. A lot of good people worked on that project. Sadly, most of them no longer work at The Herald-Sun.
I remember the rationale of the late Rick Kaspar, then the publisher of The Herald-Sun, in starting a daily edition in Chapel Hill. He knew The Herald-Sun owned Durham, circulation-wise, and he wanted to own Orange County and Chapel Hill too. With two points of the Triangle sewed up, he felt, it would be difficult for The News & Observer to dislodge us. But it was expensive, no doubt. Extra staffing, more newsprint, office space, lots of overhead. But it kept The N&O at bay. Don’t know how long that will be the case, however.
Anyway, if the rumor is true, I’ll raise a glass tonight to the CHH and that early crew. I remember a staff luncheon we held at Breadman’s a few days before our inaugural edition. “Remember,” I told all the young reporters and copy editors (most of them right out of school or close to it), “when this starts, it will never end.” From the looks on their faces I don’t think they had ever thought of the CHH project in those terms. A daily is, after all, put out DAILY, 365 day a year, no breaks. It scared us all.
But it looks like it will end after all.
