Durham Herald-Sun

The pace of the race in NC Senate District 22 picked up steam over the weekend, when during a routine search for campaign finance disclosures, we discovered that our opponent had failed to file organizational paperwork with the State Board of Elections.

When I called Kerry Sutton on Friday to let her know of the online find, Kerry, a defense attorney who is steady and meticulous with details said, "we need to get all the facts before we release any of this."

I was ready to go ahead and tell everyone, traditional media included, just because the "The Committee to Elect Mike Woodard" documents were not on the State Board of Elections website.

The Herald-Sun cuts deep, shifts work to Kentucky:

According to sources at The Herald-Sun, seven jobs in the company’s newsroom were cut July 28, leaving fewer than 20 people in the editorial department. The Herald-Sun managers told employees that production duties—page design and copy editing—will be shuffled to the staff of the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, also owned by The Herald-Sun’s parent company, Paxton Media Group.

I'm assuming this is bad. I don't know for sure, because their paywall has kept me from reading a lot of their stuff. I wonder if the two are related?

In response to an apparent uptick in abusive comments, the Durham Herald-Sun has decided to suspend the comment feature on its stories:

Users who would prefer to discuss ideas or content of the news are being drowned out by a few participants who lob insults at their fellow users. The discourse in our comments section is devolving and it's time to pull the plug.

Silencing all readers for the behavior of a few is never a good idea, but to do so in the critical part of an election season makes it even worse. When news outlets cover ads and publish campaign statements, very often the only fact-checking is done by the readers themselves. Shutting that off will leave many important questions unasked.