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Courageous editor continued to fight

 

In just a few weeks, the 2012 Pulitzer Prizes will be announced. In 1953, the prize for public service highlighted North Carolina and the heroism of two small-town journalists.
 
It was awarded to W. Horace Carter of the Tabor City Tribune and Willard Cole of The (Whiteville) News Reporter  "for their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities."
 
Carter became well known throughout the state and the journalism field, but Cole, who died in 1965, faded somewhat from memory. On Christmas Day 1961, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his legs and left arm and affected his memory.
 
"First they thought they would just let me go ahead and kick the bucket," Cole recalled. But after an operation and three months rest he was back at his typewriter.
 
He still moves and talks slowly and deliberately. His left arm hangs by his side with only a twitch in the fingers. But his sense of drama and self confidence are still vigorous and his memory is again sharp.
 
[...]
 
Recently, he sat in the old store which serves as his office and recalled his war with the KKK as graphically as an old soldier reliving his combat service.
 
"Some people thought I was an SOB and some thought I was a pretty smart guy.
 
"Things started to get pretty hot so I carried a gun every inch of the way. It got so I backed away from anybody who got too close.
 
[...]
 
"The only thing I was really afraid of was that three or four of them would get liquored up some night and say, 'Let's go get Cole.' But nothing ever happened."
 
During the Klan's reign of terror in Columbus County, 13 persons, most of whom were white, were taken from their homes and flogged with wide leather belts.
 
The beating, Cole said, were inspired by a contorted sense of moralism the Klansmen wished to impose on the community.
 
"Integration wasn't an issue at the time," Cole recalled. "They were after the type of person who spent his money on liquor instead of on his family.
 
"If you were that kind around here you were scared to death."
 
Informants from within the ranks of the KKK finally provided police with enough information to make mass arrests. About 80 men, charged variously with kidnapping, assault and conspiracy, were convicted. Prison terms ranged up to six years.
 
They included former policemen, businessmen, farmers and two National Guard officers all led by Thomas L. Hamilton, a portly ex-grocer from Leesville, S. C. He got four years. 
 
In the next North Carolina General Assembly a law was passed, making it illegal to wear a mask or a hood in public.
 
Cole left Whiteville in 1954 and went into public relations. In 1958 he returned to newspaper work as editor of the Lumberton Post.
 
With his left hand ... useless, he [has] rigged a typewriter for one-hand use.
 
With his left hand limp in his lap, Cole uses a relaxed hunt-and -peck style with his right hand. He can raise and lower the typeface with a foot pedal and returns the carriage by grasping the release with his good hand.
 
To hold the paper running from a long roll up and out of the way, he clips on a weighted string that runs through an eye hook on the ceiling.
Cole has grappled with adversity all his life. As a child in the North Carolina mountains he almost died of pneumonia. To earn pocket money, he gathered herbs and strung tobacco sacks for 25 cents per 1,000.
 
"I grew up in a place so poor a rabbit had to carry his lunch to get across," he said. -- The News & Observer 5/10/1964
 
Horace Carter was inducted into the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame in 1983, Cole in 1992. They were jointly honored by The News & Observer as Tar Heel of the Week in 1952. In their profile of Carter and Cole, The N&O reprinted an "anonymous" letter Cole received from nearby Nakina:
 
Every desent person is in favor of the KKK & their purpus. If the News-Reporter staff will stop acting the fool you wont have anything to worry about. But when you go & tip off everybody what can be done, then you can expect anything under the sun. So stop your yapping about the KKK. Their only out for the right things in life. We know lots of things can be done and cause the KKK to be blamed, but they aren't any use of tipping of every fool of this thing. So watch your step hereafter.
 
Sined, A frind.
 
P.S. No publistie.
 
You can read more about Horace Carter and the Klan here.

Police incident involved N&O staff

 

A recent clash with police over the handling of an Occupy Chapel Hill demonstration has reminded some of a long-ago incident involving N&O reporters and photographers. 
 
Police who were breaking up a 1978 May Day street festival near N.C. State University arrested three N&O staffers who were covering the story. The police were criticized for their use of force on some of those in custody.
 
Thirty-two persons were arrested after police broke up the annual affair on Park Avenue near N.C. State University. At least three persons were taken to hospitals.
 
[...]
 
"If this had been a riot, they (police) would have been acting appropriately, but it was not a riot," said Pam Minor, 24, of Oxford, who was visiting Raleigh to attend the party.
 
Another resident, however, was critical of the crowd's behavior. "I saw a bunch of kids tonight who missed the riots of the Sixties and thought they'd catch up," Susan Musick, a resident of Park Avenue told a reporter at the scene Saturday night.
 
[...]
 
[Jackson] Hill of The N&O said he was arrested shortly after he arrived a the disturbance at about 11:15 p.m. He had been on his way to cover a fire but was instructed by an editor to head to Park Avenue.
 
Hill said he was told by a policeman to "clear the area." The officer later said he had meant that Hill should be "off the street," Hill said.
 
Hill, who had identified himself as an N&O photographer, moved to the sidewalk north of Flint Street and was taking pictures of police sweeps of the street when he was arrested, he said.
 
He said two officers left their formation in Park Avenue, walked up to him on the sidewalk, grabbed him by the arm and led him to a police bus where he was searched.
 
[...]
 
[David] Arneke, an N&O copy editor assigned to cover the disturbance, arrived at Park Avenue about 11 p.m. Arneke said he witnessed Hill's arrest and walked to the Velvet Cloak Motel to call The N&O.
 
Arneke said he was standing on a sidewalk on Park Avenue talking to The N&O office on a two-way radio when two officers arrested him. Arneke said that when he identified himself as a reporter, the officers said they didn't care. He was handcuffed and taken to the Wake County jail.
 
[Steve] Murray said he was called at home and asked to replace Hill, who had been arrested earlier. 
 
He said he had also been standing on the sidewalk when he was grabbed by the police and struck on the head with a nightstick.
 
[...]
 
When he attempted to take pictures on the bus, Murray said, an officer hit his camera and his hands. -- The News & observer 5/1/1978
 
Two television newsmen from WRAL-TV were slightly injured in the incident.
N&O chief photographer Steve Murray under arrest.

Best Coverage Money Can Buy?

This is a big no-no for reporters - Get Paid By the People You Cover!

A pharmaceutical company offered a free-lance reporter $250 just to show up to a press conference/presentation on Botox and two other drugs.

The ethics policy at The N&O says this: "Staffers may not accept gifts or favors from their sources, the  people regularly relied on for tips and information. It's clear we cannot be in the debt of anyone we depend on for news. This means not taking gifts of any kind and not accepting favors, such as an offer by a municipal official to void a ticket."

 

A Grammar Guide quiz: Word choice in Sunday's paper

grammar-quizicon

If you are a close and thorough reader of The N&O, you might have an advantage on the new Grammar Guide quiz. I based the quiz on Sunday's newspaper. I found five sentences that included words or terms that are sometimes confused in writing. To the credit of writers and editors, all but one of the five sentences were correct in the paper.

Words you see only in headlines

I am a copy editor, and as part of that job, I write headlines. Last week, I wrote this headline, using a word that we rarely see except in headlines

Every time a cliche rings, a copy editor gets her wings

The holiday season brings out the familiar and the banal.

At Arizona: stolen newspapers and an editor's challenge

A bizarre story out at the University of Arizona, where 10,000 copies of a recent edition of the Daily Wildcat school newspaper went missing.

Hmm. The newspaper's editors think members of Phi Kappa Psi, a fraternity stole the papers because of a police item involving a couple of frat brothers.

Here's where the fun starts: The papers were reportedly recovered in a heap out on the outskirts of town...along with some homework bearing the names of two fraternity brothers.

Whoops.

Now, the student paper is challenging the fraternity to a duel. Okay, maybe not a duel, exactly, but in this column, the paper's managing editor is clearing throwing down a challenge.

Arizona's president, by the way, is Robert Shelton, the former UNC Chapel Hill provost. Shelton condemned the theft of the papers, telling the student newspaper that it is "completely counter to the principles of freedom of expression that we embrace at the UA."

 

 

Requiem for the printed word

Yes, consensus is that the printed word is deader than dead. But before we get to the funeral and turn this whole mess over to the blogosphere, dig this sharp list of 10 songs about print journalism -- compiled by Charlotte writer Mark Kemp.

ADDENDUM (7/28/09): Three reasons music mags are dying.

We're in the book


A handsome coffee table book arrived in the mail today. It is the Poynter Institute's collection of the best front pages of newspapers published on November 5, 2008. That, of course, was the day after America's historic election of its first African-American president.

The News & Observer's page is one of 100 from around the world selected by Poynter, a St. Petersburg, Fla. nonprofit devoted to journalism education, for this book. Our sister publication, The Charlotte Observer, is also included. A team of journalists contributed to this page, but we are especially proud of news designer Jennifer Bowles, a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, has designed many News & Observer fronts and special projects.

The print newspaper has sometimes been undervalued in the age of the Internet. "Election Day, November 4, 2008, was different," cartoonist Garry Trudeau, writes in his introduction to the book. He describes an election evening of boistrous celebrations around the globe. "And then the next day, after the street parties were over, people went out and did something many of them hadn't done in years. They bought newspapers. Yes, newspapers. By the trainload, actually."

The printed paper was not for the purpose of information, Trudeau notes, rather to the people who stood in long lines, it was a tangible keepsake "that can forever evoke and refresh a deeply consequential memory."

Prior to election, we mostly saw this reaction with sports championships.

Here's to the ink-stained, bird cage fillers, fish wraps that we love.

The Poynter book is available here.

Linda Williams

Word watch: doorstep as a verb

I ran across the word "doorstepped" in a story about a British
journalist today. I didn't understand what it meant even in context. So I looked it up.

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