Pick up the print edition of today’s News & Observer, and you’ll find a Don Carrington photo prominently featured on the front page. The Carolina Journal executive editor originally took the photo for his own investigative work in 2006 involving a questionable land deal tied to former Gov. Mike Easley. Three years later, the N&O adds some new details in this story (also published in the Charlotte Observer), which cites Carrington’s work. Carrington also recently granted an interview to Business North Carolina for its September cover story about former state-funded economic developer Rick Watson. (Roanoke Rapids officials who rubbed shoulders with Watson now want nothing to do with him. Vann Rogerson, Watson’s successor at the commission, says the organization’s staff and board won’t talk about Watson. But Don Carrington, a vice president of the John Locke Foundation — a nonprofit Raleigh think tank that espouses virtues of the free market — is glad to. Carrington, also executive editor of Carolina Journal, the foundation’s monthly and online newspaper, has investigated Watson’s endeavors and written articles accusing him of conflicts of interest. He was the first to detail agreements that Watson helped negotiate between Parton and Roanoke Rapids.)
