WUNC Features Local Mass Media

WUNC’s Dave Dewitt featured a story about competition between local news organizations, specifically WRAL and The News & Observer. The story begins in the mid-90’s, during the height of The N&O. The News and Observer held the state’s online lead in web traffic but began to flounder when the company was sold by the Daniel’s family to the McClatchy family, when craigslist ripped apart the advantage of classified ads, and more recently when the company went 2 billion dollars in debt over the purchase of Knight Ridder, Inc. Now the N&O is growing online but the printed paper is dwindling, leaving the the online paper in fierce competition with WRAL. Dewitt jests about the history of competition between the two media outlets saying, “In the past N&O and WRAL TV competed only for the title of which company’s headquarters looked most like an East German tire factory.”

If you think of the competition for web traffic as a tug-of-war, then WRAL has the N&O digging its heels deep in the mud, doing five times the web traffic from RDU than the struggling N&O. Ironically the N&O produces more stories, but web traffic is being driven by other factors, specifically crime stories, weather, local sports, and traffic. WRAL was the first in the state to use a helicopter and the first local station in the US to broadcast in HD. WRAL also has the advantage to cross promote with televised newscasts and is on the cutting edge with delivering television signals to hand-held devices. In response, the N&O print edition will likely continue to shrink while the online edition will likely see an increase in multimedia and breaking news. One former N&O employee interviewed laments the sacrifice of “over-arching narrative” being sacrificed for speed and convenience.

Listen to the full story here.

Additionally, The Raleigh City Museum opens its related exhibit, The [R]evolution of Media: The history of newspaper, radio, and television in Raleigh, on September 5 in conjunction with Raleigh Wide Open III and the opening of the Convention Center.

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