Letter from Camel City Dispatch editor Chad Nance regarding the City Council’s $100k loan to the Winston-Salem Chronicle:
Should this loan be approved, it will look like the City of Winston-Salem is playing favorites in our local media market. Are you going to bail out the Winston-Salem Journal or CCD if we are about to go under? How about Yes! Weekly? What if WXII or Fox 8 come to you for help in saving their local news divisions? Who are you going to choose? Any choice you make to support one of these outlets will look partisan. Everyone knows that the Winston-Salem Chronicle has a heavy bias toward the Democratic Party. Would that mean that if the Winston-Salem Journal, with their Conservative lean, came to you for help that you would have to pony up for fear of being accused of playing partisan favorites?
So the Journal’s been silent. As for the City Council’s continued venture into the shopping center business, the Journal harshes, calling the “tangle of shoddy workmanship, delays, accusations and lawsuits” surrounding the Ogburn Station project the ” butt of jokes about wasteful government spending.”
Still, they’re pulling for Ogburn Station, saying “the neighborhood needs to see this worthy project work.” As for the Chronicle, they prove they’re independence from their debtor by digging into the brownfield certification for the former Winston Mutual building, where City Council member Derwin Montgomery has his office.
