Outrageous comments Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell made to News & Observer reporter Kristin Collins are catching up to him now. Sunday’s feature, “Tolerance wears thin,” quoted Bizzell referring to Latino immigrants as “drunk Mexicans” who “rape, rob and murder,” “are trashy” and “[breed] like rabbits.” Now, the ACLU is investigating. The civil rights group […]
Fiona Morgan
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Unfair legacy? Duke study looks at alumni kids
Duke sociologists recently published a study of affirmative actionnot the race-based kind, the old-fashioned kind. “A Social Portrait of Legacies at an Elite University” (PDF) found that Duke’s legacy students have lower SAT scores, lower freshman-year grades, and pursue less challenging coursework compared to students with college-educated parents who are not Duke alumni. Sociology professor […]
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Johnston County sheriff: “Mexicans are trashy”
In an excellent front-page feature in Sunday’s N&O, reporter Kristin Collins rides along with Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell, famous for his crackdowns on the county’s Latino newcomers. He saw people dancing in the grass between two trailers, a gaggle of children playing nearby. “All they do is work and make love, I think,” he […]
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Deer hunters to take over Duke Forest this fall
Starting Monday, Sept. 15, hikers will find a keep-out sign at the entrance to their favorite Duke Forest trails. The university will close public access to the 7,000-acre forest Mondays through Thursdays until Dec. 30 while it allows hunters to use bows and guns to thin its population of white-tailed deer. Let’s hope those guys […]
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Tone-deaf McClatchy exec invites wrath of blog commenters
Howard Weaver, vice president for news at The McClatchy Company, tried to go for a punchy lead in his blog post about how the press should handle the many stories swirling around the Republican vice presidential nominee. “I believe I’d fire any reporter who wasted a chance to question Gov. Sarah Palin by asking a […]
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More buyouts at The N&O
Grab your parachute while you can. The News & Observer today announced it would offer buyouts to 320 employees — roughly 40 percent of its workers — including every full timer in the newsroom. More cuts to the paper itself are also on the horizon. Today’s announcement confirms a report in the Indy last week […]
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WRAL beating N&O online
WUNC radio reporter Dave DeWitt has a good media story today on how the local newspaper squandered its head start on the Web. WRAL is beating The News & Observer as the area’s leading online news site — in fact, DeWitt reports, “The Triangle is one of the very few places in the country where […]
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Will NC become a swing state?
North Carolina not only has the potential to turn blue this year, it could become a permanent swing state, thanks to the influx of new residents who are far more likely to identify as independents and vote Democratic. That’s the conclusion of a new report by Public Policy Polling, a Raleigh firm. (A PDF version […]
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Triangle organizing key to Obama’s N.C. push
Just after 2 p.m. the day after Sen. Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president, people were streaming into the campaign’s downtown Durham office at 112 W. Main St. Inside, they met volunteer organizer Beth Silberman, who sat behind a desk and used her laptop computer to find the contact information of the field […]
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Morrisville proposes to approve developments without council review
Morrisville’s Board of Commissioners (as of Monday, renamed Town Council) is considering a proposal to give the town’s planning director the authority to approve development proposals for a long list of projects — from single-family subdivisions to office and commercial buildings under 40,000 square feet — so long as they conform to current zoning regulations […]