Local news is a tough business these days, with journalists routinely laid off (including some this month at the company that owns The (Raleigh) News & Observer) and small-town newspapers closing up shop.
But North Carolina’s journalism scene does have success stories, including two locally owned media companies that are seeing growth.
David Woronoff owns The Pilot, a thriving newspaper in Southern Pines, and magazines including Business North Carolina and Walter. Kyle Villemain started The Assembly in 2021, and it’s since grown to a staff of 43 people producing in-depth stories on all things North Carolina.
Both companies are adding to the state’s political news coverage (each has a politics newsletter for paid subscribers), and they’re expanding into underserved areas of the state.
Woronoff recently launched a new magazine called EastBound, covering communities east of Interstate 95, and Villemain has added a newsroom in Greensboro and a newsletter covering Cary and western Wake County.
Both joined this week's episode of the WUNC Politics Podcast to discuss their publications and the state of the news media in North Carolina.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What's allowed you to grow instead of shrink?
Woronoff: "So many of the problems that our industry faces are self-imposed, and you could lay it at the feet of private equity ownership of news organizations, where the ownership is disengaged from the local community. Ours is locally and independently owned, and I believe that is the key to our success."
Villemain: "I also think that people respond when you put a really good product out there, when you put good reporting out there, whether it just really speaks to what they see in their community, if it speaks to what they see in their business, if it makes them feel more informed and more curious about the state — and it's just really good. People have a good eye for quality, and I think the news business has oftentimes not put out as high quality of a product as they think they are, and people respond by not engaging."
I've been tracking the increase in news deserts and some of the more rural pockets of the state. I'm curious to what extent your organizations' models may be able to be replicated in other places.
Woronoff: "As much as I'd like to say, 'oh yes, you could just pick ours up and drop it in Roanoke Rapids, or Laurinburg or Rockingham,' it's not that simple. We are blessed with a wonderfully vibrant local business community, and I think you have to have that. If you have a lot of corporately owned retail enterprises, it's a much harder sales environment."
Villemain: "I think there's at least a dozen markets across the state that can build substantial reporting teams on the ground. There's a lot of space for more growth from us, from others across North Carolina. I don't have a solution for every county, but there are a lot of mid-sized metros across North Carolina that don't have many full-time reporters, and that's a darn good place for entrepreneurs and existing outlets to start by saying, 'how do we build a three, four or five-person team that can give this county or city a thing that they don't have right now?'"
Both of you have added newsletters in recent years focused on state politics. Where have you seen unmet needs in political coverage that you've been able to fill?
Villemain: "There's tons of gaps in political coverage, and there are great politics reporters out there, but there aren't enough of them, and there aren't enough doing deep backstories on complicated questions. We're not here to do the 'what happened today?' story — there are folks out there doing that. We are here to do the 'why did that happen and what's coming next?'"
Woronoff: "We are the outlet that's going to tell you what happened today or yesterday or tomorrow. We're not doing the long-form journalism. ... We pride ourselves at the North Carolina Tribune of providing fair and impartial and objective coverage of the goings-on in state government."
