Hard Times at The Times-News

"Unless somebody gets killed, it's not going to be in the paper," Lee said. "And it's not some big cover-up, they just don't have the means to do it. And that's, in a nutshell, what's happening now. Nothing's getting into the paper because there's no manpower to report it."

That is exactly what is happening at the Burlington Times-News, Lee's former place of work. He spent two stints as an editor there- one as managing editor from 1981 to 1986 and then as executive editor from 2001 to 2007.

In Lee's time, the paper was never thriving. Freedom Communications– the media conglomerate it operated under until 2012– didn't seem to do business in glamorous places. Burlington is a former mill town, and both times he worked there its newspaper did not have much money. They made do with what they had.

He said when he first joined the staff, the newspaper was scrappy and feisty. The pay was low, turnover was high and the newsroom was always at least three staffers short. Through dogged reporting, however, they accomplished great things. Namely, getting the shady court system to clean up its act.

Things were different the second time around. The internet was getting more popular, and Craigslist dried up classified ad revenue at papers across the country. Suddenly, Lee had to fight with publishers to fill empty roles. The reporters were stretched thin, and it became increasingly difficult to cover a broad array of local stories with the same level of depth and follow-up as before.

Nonetheless, when the paper came up against what he described as increasingly mean-spirited local politicians, the reporters applied pressure. At the time, the county commissioners refused to fund repairs to the two high schools in town even though one was so dilapidated, they had to put buckets in the halls when it rained. In their view, the public schools already had enough money. They put it up for referendum and let the taxpayers decide.

“My paper went on a crusade to get that referendum passed. And it passed by a huge margin, but through no help at all from those conservative, public education-hating politicians," Lee said. "I don't have any clue why they thought public education is such a sin, but they did.”

In his time there and in the years since, reporters and editors at the Burlington Times-News have used limited resources to cover the community and monitor local institutions to the best of their abilities. But in a 10-year span, the newspaper has been owned by five different media conglomerates. With each change in ownership came cuts in personnel and content.

There were 20 to 25 reporters on staff both times Lee worked there. Today, there is one.

After Lee Barnes left the executive editor position in 2007, his role was filled by Madison Taylor. Madison previously worked at the Times-News until 1992, when he left to become the editor at the Jacksonville Daily News in Jacksonville, North Carolina. It was there that he met his wife, crime reporter Roselee Papandrea-Taylor. Their relationship was steeped in a love of journalism– when they married in 1997, their coworkers made them mock newspaper wedding invitations on a newsroom computer. 

Roselee started at the Times-News in a novel position– mobile reporter. She was handed a backpack, laptop, video recorder and digital camera and assigned to breaking news. Back in Jacksonville, she had time to gather materials and write for the next day’s print edition. But here, she was expected to write three stories each day and immediately post them to the website.

“I was like, I'm going to scoop myself. People are going to know what I'm covering, and then by the time my story comes out [in print] the next day, it's gonna be old news. But that's kind of what we had to do,” she said.

Under the leadership of Madison, the reporters worked hard to publish quality work while adjusting to a rapidly changing industry. Strong local coverage was a priority, and he made it his goal to feature each Burlington resident in a story or photo at least once in their lifetime.

“Despite what was going on corporate-wise, and some of the directives that were coming down from above, he really believed in telling stories and true community journalism. And so he really pushed for that,” Roselee said. “I think if we had a different leader, maybe it would have been different.”

Circumstances at the paper got worse as the years passed. Roselee and Madison saw two changes in ownership during their time there. In 2012, Freedom Communications went bankrupt and sold its North Carolina and Florida papers to Halifax Media. Their salaries and benefits were cut, and it became harder to get in touch with upper-level management.

Staff members began getting cut as well, and those who remained saw their workloads increase. When the night crime reporter was laid off, Roselee became the full-time crime reporter and went from writing three stories a day to five.

In January 2015, GateHouse Media’s purchase of Halifax Media went through. When Roselee learned of this second purchase in the months prior, she knew the writing was on the wall. She had dreamed of a journalism career since college and did not want it to end. But she and her husband were aboard the same sinking ship, it seemed at least one of them should find a way out. When the vice president of communications at the nearby Elon University recruited her for an assistant director position, she took it. By that point, there were 13 people on staff, compared to 28 when she started.

Madison stayed behind, and later reported on his blog that “nearly every financial quarter, new rounds of cuts were announced. Corporate decisions whittled the staff to a nub, and coverage suffered. While top-level executives received large bonuses, the ability of newspapers to serve their communities withered and died.”