Richard Hart

It’s hard to imagine a worse way for a company that wants to be accepted as a vital community institution to come to town. Paxton Media Group LLC signed the papers taking control of the Durham Herald-Sun around 10 a.m. Monday morning, and by 10:30 they were calling in its top executives–people who had been […]

It’s been a good year, not a great year. Last January, writers and editors here at the Independent decided to focus on the presidential election, cutting against our usual concentration on issues that are predominantly local and regional. We tried to localize the national election in as many ways as we could. We started an […]

My friends at The News & Observer have been on a roll recently. There was Andy Curliss’ story a couple of Sundays ago making clear that Gov. Mike Easley rushed the legislature into session to approve a $242 million incentive package for Dell computers when the competition, particularly from Virginia, wasn’t nearly as stiff as […]

There’s nothing like a little profanity to get a rise out of people. We knew we’d get some feedback after running “Screw you, America” by Clif Garboden, a top editor at The Boston Phoenix, in our Nov. 17 issue (indyweek.com/durham/ 2004-11-17/news.html). But it’s been fascinating to see who’s reacted and how. A carpenter in a […]

When you drive a beat-up 1963 Dodge Dart convertible, you’re used to getting a little attention. So when the man in the shiny SUV stopped in the middle of the street as I was parking and called me over, I thought I was ready to answer his questions–yeah, it has the good, old slant six; […]

We were sitting in Terminal A at RDU one morning last week. I was waiting to see my daughter’s plane take off for a family wedding. A voice behind me spoke up to a 30ish African-American man wearing desert camouflage across from us. “You headed to Iraq?” “Yup.” “We shoulda finished him the first time. […]

“It’s worse than we thought.” Those were film critic David Fellerath’s words to describe the message behind the film Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire, which the Independent is showing around the Triangle next week. Even worse has been the message of the news over the last couple of weeks: It’s […]

What’s wrong with taking money from a conservative foundation for an undergraduate studies program at a public university? Not a thing–unless that foundation has an agenda that’s antithetical to the principles of academic freedom and cultural diversity the university has vowed to uphold. As Barbara Solow reveals this week, administrators and faculty at UNC are […]

Don’t believe any of it. Don’t believe it when the polls say Bush is ahead by 12 points any more than you believe the President when he says Iraq is on the right track. Don’t believe that the issue is Dan Rather when almost everyone knows it’s W’s fixed and failed stint in the Texas […]

Like so many stories, it began with a tip. Bush administration bureaucrats had blown off the state in its attempt to solve a common-sense problem–getting backup power to emergency workers in disaster-prone areas. When we started looking into it, we discovered not only was it true, it was part of a much larger change at […]