Raleigh and Charlotte's news link

The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer got closer last month. Did you notice?

The longtime rivals for Tar Heel newspaper dominance became kissing cousins on June 27 upon the formal acquisition of Knight-Ridder Inc., The Observer's parent, by The McClatchy Co., owner of The N&O. That purchase created a newspaper chain of 32 daily papers, second largest in the United States. But nowhere does it have a greater impact than in North Carolina, the only state where the new chain owns the two largest newspapers.

Most readers don't care about such inside journalism, I'm sure. But the change already is having visible effects on your N&O in at least two ways: The paper is running more North Carolina stories from The Charlotte Observer. And it's using more world and national reporting from McClatchy's Washington Bureau, created by the combination of the Knight-Ridder and McClatchy bureaus.

Is this good or bad? Let's take a look separately at the impacts from Charlotte and Washington.

Since July 1, N&O and Observer editors have been meeting and conferring by phone and e-mail on a regular basis to figure out how to milk synergies out of their newfound kinship. (Also participating are editors from five papers in South Carolina now under the McClatchy umbrella.)

There is noticeable change already. The number of stories in The N&O with Charlotte Observer credit lines has increased from one in June, before merger, to nine in July and 38 through Aug. 15. Topics have ranged from efforts to buy Chimney Rock for a state park to a South Carolina preacher bitten by a rattlesnake.

The biggest impact has been in sports. This month, The N&O has picked up from The Observer 14 stories about the Carolina Panthers and eight about NASCAR.

A couple of Observer stories have gone to The N&O's front page -- the arrest of a 65-year-old woman in a quadruple murder in Iredell County and the shoplifting sentencing of Claude Allen, former aide to Jesse Helms and President Bush. There also have been good stories from The Observer relating to the Jim Black lobbying scandal.

I think it's safe to say Triangle readers have benefited from the Observer coverage. Especially in sports, the Charlotte paper fills gaps in The N&O's reporting capability. Most of the 38 stories this month were coverage that N&O readers would not have gotten, or they replaced coverage from The Associated Press that would have had less depth.

Any downsides? Well, some of the Observer fare I wouldn't consider the most compelling for Triangle readers, such as a report on boating accidents on Charlotte's Lake Norman and the relicensing of Duke Energy's Catawba River hydroelectric plants. Both ran on inside pages of The N&O. The paper has to be careful not to default to Observer stories simply because they're available.

There's also, perhaps, less a sense of "localness" to The N&O if many of its stories come from a newspaper down the road.

An area to watch is the future relationship of the two papers' separate state government staffs in Raleigh. Editors at both papers promise their traditional competition will continue, but details haven't been worked out. "Our Raleigh reporters are still competitive with their Raleigh reporters," said John Drescher, The N&O's managing editor. "We are still in discussions with them about how some things will play out."

Cheryl Carpenter, The Observer's managing editor, said the competition could cause conflict: "There will be moments when we both want the same story and we'll be stepping on each other's toes," she said. But the competition, she said, will be good for readers.