Then the publisher of the weekly Alamance News, a crusader for open government, writes editorials that scorch politicians for withholding records or closing meetings to the public.

The same thing goes for the local school board, the county commissioners and any other government officials Boney suspects of hiding things from the public.

Boney's sunshine fights have taken him to the state Supreme Court, where he won a ruling that the government can't sue people for requesting information. This year and last, he also won the N.C. Press Association's top award for promoting the public's freedom to get information.

Some readers praise him. Several government officials scorn him. One accuses him of having an obsession with secrecy -- to Boney, a badge of honor.

"Government works better when things are done openly," Boney, 51, says in an interview at his storefront newspaper office in Graham. "And the people are better served. If you don't have a newspaper or concerned citizens checking in on government -- gracious, what might they be doing?"

The former legislative aide to Republican U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, who returned home to buy and run his parents' newspaper, says Helms didn't teach him how to scrap. His tough, tall daddy did.

Tom Boney Sr., who ran the community newspaper for decades and put his young son to work there, never backed down or spared any wrongdoers exposure, not even himself.

When country club members called to demand that the newspaper not report on their drunken-driving arrests, the elder Boney wrote down their information in detail -- then published it.

And when Tom Sr. was charged with scalping ACC basketball tournament tickets in the 1980s, his newspaper printed it, even though the charge was later dropped.

Candid snapshots

Tom Jr., an imposing 6-foot-4, does the same. He says he has reported every speeding ticket he and his sons have received.

"We provide a weekly snapshot of the community," he says. "Sometimes that snapshot is not all pretty, and people want to blame the newspaper."

Most people expect weekly papers to feature soft, fluffy, "rah-rah hometown" news, Boney says. Instead, he and his five reporters cover courts, analyze trends, conduct investigations and report in detail on the actions of county, town and school officials.

Boney publishes every birth, death, marriage, divorce, gun permit, bankruptcy, building permit and significant property sale in Alamance County, on the Triangle's western edge.

He goes further than many big-city newspapers in printing the names of juvenile defendants and alleged rape victims.

Boney says that the first year he edited the paper after buying it from his parents, he published a story about the drunken-driving wreck of a member of a family that owned a local car dealership. The dealer canceled his advertising in the newspaper.

Boney's response? Instead of begging for the dealer's business back, he published an editorial about it headlined, "No favoritism for the rich and famous."

"Trouble-making newspapering runs in the family," he says. "People will call and say, 'I want mine left out.' The answer is always no. If you call us and ask us to leave it out, we'll go get it."

The thing Boney likes most to go get is public records.

Every few years, he publishes the salary of each government employee in the county.

Boney once refused to leave a courtroom being closed for a hearing on a juvenile offender, he and his attorneys say. Boney told the judge he would have to arrest him to get him out. The judge and the lawyers in the case backed down.

"Tom is an absolute bulldog," says his press attorney, Hugh Stevens of Raleigh, who also represents The News & Observer. "He goes the extra mile to hold public officials accountable. If every editor in North Carolina fought as hard for the public's right to know as Tom does, we'd know a heck of a lot more. He is a man of great principle."

Stickler for the law

Boney carries copies of the state's public-records and open-meetings laws in his shirt pocket and recites key sections from memory. He keeps up with court rulings and new statutes and quotes the state constitution.

At an open-government conference last week in Raleigh, Boney lectured the audience and fellow panelists on the ways public officials skirt the laws.

"I've often accused him of practicing law without a license," Stevens quips. "Tom is the kind of client who picks your draft brief apart -- and then when you win, he sends you roses."

Boney takes the allegation as a compliment. "Senator Helms taught me that the senator who doesn't know the rules is only half a senator," he says. "I think the same is true of journalists."

Boney's newspaper is in Graham, the county seat, but his biggest fights have been with politicians in neighboring Burlington, a bigger city. Some of the people he writes about aren't fond of him.

At a meeting last month of Alamance County's commissioners, Chairman Larry Sharpe said Boney is obsessed with secrecy.

"We abide by the law, but sometimes I think that's not good enough for Tom," Sharpe, a Burlington banker, said in an interview. "Tom feels like any sort of meeting should be open to the public. He seems to carry it to the extreme sometimes."

Equal-zeal harasser

From a dingy press room behind Boney's cluttered, windowless office, The Alamance News distributes about 7,000 copies each Thursday. Boney sells ads for it by day, writes stinging editorials by night, and often attends government gatherings to demand access to records or meetings.

His latest objective is to get local governments in Alamance and Orange counties to stop dispatching delegations to hammer out closed-door compromises on growth policies, garbage management and boundary disputes.

Boney, a staunch conservative and proud Republican, is an equal-opportunity agitator. Every Alamance commissioner is a Republican; every Orange commissioner is a Democrat. Boney harangues them all with equal zeal.

"Secrecy is a bad thing when it's done by Republicans, it's bad when it's done by Democrats, and it's bad when it's done by nonpartisan boards," he says. "People need to know what their representatives are doing."

Some of Boney's readers praise the watchdog's persistence.

"A lot of us appreciate the fact that he pushes for the public's right to know what's going on," says Willie Mae Currin, 83, of Graham, a former school counselor and a News subscriber for 50 years. "When great decisions are being made that affect the public, he's going to stand up for the people. I admire him."

Few of Boney's fans are as vocal as Currin. But he thinks many more support his efforts.

"While I would love them to say, 'Thanks Tom, I love the paper, I love what you're doing, I loved your editorial on this or that,' most people aren't going to do that," he says. "But they keep putting two quarters in the rack, or renewing their subscriptions. I take comfort from that."

Sunshine/Open Government

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