Recently, the Durham Herald-Sun paid tribute to the huge ceramic letters atop the CCB building downtown, letters which will soon be removed by new owner SunTrust. For many people, those letters atop the grand art deco building downtown are a symbol of Durham, and their impending loss symbolizes a diminishing of local character.
With the sale of the Herald-Sun to the Paxton Media Group, Durham has lost another piece of its identity. Almost immediately after the sale became final on Monday, Jan. 3, Paxton terminated nearly one-quarter of the newspaper’s staff. Many of the top officers weren’t allowed to say so much as goodbye to the people they led for many years. Staffers expected changes and job cuts, but not the draconian changes that came down with all the subtlety of Bruce Campbell’s chainsaw in The Evil Dead.
This week, the Indy takes a closer look at what we have come to call the Herald-Stun. Fiona Morgan reports on business side of the deal, former Herald-Sun columnist Jim Wise gives the farewell Paxton didn’t want him to have, City Council member Eugene Brown laments the future of Durham journalism and the Mac Guy lends us his memoirs. The passing of the Herald-Sun into the hands of a corporation that cares more about the bottom line than practicing good journalism isn’t good news for anyone in Durham. A local voice has become just another face in the crowd. And Durham is poorer for it.
Paxton may have overpaid for Herald-Sun
Was $125 million too much?
By Fiona Morgan
Greed and speed
City Council member worries for Durham’s future
By Eugene Brown
That little business at the newspaper
A former Herald-Sun columnist says thanks, farewell–and I’ll still be aorund
By Jim Wise
‘Your job must really suck’
What it feels like to be young, hard-working–and escorted to the door
By Alex Howard
