Last week, Paul Chesser’s CJ Exclusive detailed the unfulfilled promise of jobs made to the state by a fingerprint technology firm, in exchange for receiving $307,575 from the state’s Tobacco Trust Fund. The story about Privaris, and North Carolina’s Northeast Partnership Executive Director, Rick Watson, whom sources say is an investor in the firm, caught the attention of the Washington Daily News. This week, the paper published a story that relied heavily on Chesser’s piece and which noted that “Carolina Journal raises questions about the Privaris fingerprint-technology initiative and attempts to connect those questions to certain regional officials.” The story said the paper reached Watson by phone but that he “would neither confirm nor deny that he was an investor, or silent partner, in Privaris” and that he positioned the controversy as a “running conflict” with CJ.