Lawyers for Raleigh-Durham International Airport have struck out after three attempts to have a federal judge consider new evidence they say would justify the airport’s long-standing ban on newspaper coin vending racks.

Now they’re getting ready for oral arguments Oct. 27 in Richmond, Va., where they will appeal a November 2008 ruling by U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle that the ban violates newspapers’ First Amendment right to distribute the news.

The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments from lawyers for the airport and for The News & Observer and three other newspaper companies that want to sell papers from coin boxes in the RDU passenger terminals.

Boyle refused in April and again last month to consider new evidence offered by RDU to bolster its argument that airport travelers have ample opportunity to buy newspapers from newsstands and bookstores. The Fourth Circuit rejected a similar request Thursday.

Airport officials contend that newspaper boxes would cause visual clutter, ... [MORE]

Cronkite, and the print and television news business.

Cox Enterprises will sell its three daily newspapers and 10 weeklies in eastern North Carolina to a company controlled by John Kent Cooke, a former owner of the Washington Redskins.

The deal includes The Daily Reflector in Greenville, Rocky Mount Telegram and The Daily Advance in Elizabeth City. It also includes weeklies in Snow Hill, Williamston, Windsor and elsewhere.

Cox, the Atlanta-based media conglomerate that owns cable-TV, radio and other holdings, announced last year it planned to sell its papers in North Carolina amid a sharp decline in revenue across the media industry.

Cooke's eldest son John Kent Cooke Jr., will move to the Greenville area to become president of Cooke Communications North Carolina and publisher of The Daily Reflector.

Cooke Communications expects to keep "virtually all employees" at the North Carolina papers.

Cooke previously was a part owner of the Washington Redskins football team, The Los Angeles Daily News and the Chrysler Building in New York.

A colleague's recent note led me to try to find the rules for using dashes.

John McIntyre, director of the Baltimore Sun's copy desk, has a few things to say about Wikipedia in a recent blog post. But he also has something to say about editing:

"My whole professional effort for nearly three decades has been to make sure that the published texts at the newspapers for which I have worked are, as far as human fallibility and the pressures of time will allow, factually accurate, grammatical and clear. To do this requires knowledgeable, trained editors."

Amen, Brother John. 

Given the interest in yesterday's inauguration of President Barack Obama, most newspapers of any size printed special sections for folks to keep for posterity.

We at the News & Observer did one; please go grab a couple for the grandkids.

And when you do, click on the youtube link below to learn, courtesy of Duke University's libraries, how best to preserve the paper.

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

I know. It's downright picky to comment on word choice in a comic strip. Nevertheless, Sunday's "Rhymes With Orange" prompts this short post.