It seems that North Raleigh News is not “new” but is available only in the North Raleigh edition and somehow snaked its way into a downtown edition of the paper today, inspiring the following commentary.
There’s a relatively new section in the print version of The News and Observer. One might think it would be about downtown considering the amount of growth there. It could highlight all the new shops, restaurants, and condos being built, collected into a full section, once a week. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The new section of the News and Observer is entitled North Raleigh News and comes out once a week, Friday. Along with Auto Friday and the What’s Up entertainment section, North Raleigh News attempts to become another specialized section of the Friday paper. Let’s take a peak into today’s issue and see what’s going on up in North Raleigh.
The largest headline on the front page of the newly added Section N is “Park is a nuisance, many say”. The article starts with the statement, “Drugs. Sex. Graffiti. Poisoned dogs. Mutilated deer. Dead body. It’s the stuff of television cop shows. Regulars at Cedar Hills Park say it’s life.“ It continues by stating that the park is frequented by disc golf players and various vagrants, but doesn’t seem to propose any solutions developed by the community. There is even a list of all the “Calls for Raleigh Police Service” in the areas surrounding the park between August 1 and November 4, including the nail-biting statistic of how many times callers hung up when they called 911.
Have you been wondering what the North Raleigh Local Crime Report has been like in the past week? Well, North Raleigh News has it. Looks like there was a crime spree involving two criminals as the main headline and there are two attached paragraphs for Armed Robberies and Burglaries, each with a couple of instances in the past week. According to the chart at the top of page 7N, Larceny was the most frequent crime over the past week in Districts 21, 22 and 23, which stretch from the airport to the Neuse River (all above 440).
There’s the article about a local battle of the bands entitled “Hot Dog! It’s the Battle of the Bands” with the highlight of the day being an appearance by the Weinermobile and “an, um, interesting Britney Spears video.“ Recent restaurant Inspections in the area have their own column as well. The Mens Club seems to have left crab legs in colder than code water to thaw and therefore they received a 94 (A).
This new section lacks dense substance and reads like a small town paper. Raleigh is not a small town. North Raleigh isn’t even its own town, or maybe it wants to be (see Midtown in Atlanta). Oh wait, this area is also starting to call itself Midtown anyways, so to keep up with the times the section should be called “Midtown News.“
Why does North Raleigh have its own section in the print version of The News and Observer? Why not Downtown Raleigh? Shouldn’t downtown be the center of life and news for any city. Doesn’t the phrase Central Business District mean much to Raleigh? The development battle between North Raleigh and Downtown Raleigh is evident by this new section in the N&O. Priority is given to a suburb and its “happenings” rather than the most urban and most historical area of the city. The Soleil Center will be the tallest building and possibly the most aesthetically striking tower in Raleigh, but will not be in downtown, it will be in North Raleigh. There is a struggle between these two areas at the moment and with The News and Observer’s decision to publish this section, it shows where the priorities are in this city. They are not in sustaining downtown, but in publishing photos of plants that look like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. For the good of the city’s future, downtown needs this attention, not a suburb.
North Raleigh News has a web presence, which seems to be sufficient enough without devoting an entire section to it in print. Maybe North Raleigh News should be its own publication, separate from the main N&O, similar to The Raleigh Downtowner. A possible headline on the front page of the N&O announcing the section’s departure from the print edition could state in bold letters “Section N is a nuisance, many say.“
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