Subscriber drops suit against The N&O

The subscriber who sued The News & Observer last month after it cut its staff has dropped his lawsuit.

Keith Hempstead, a Durham lawyer, said today that his point had been made after stories of his complaint traveled around the Web. He was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Harper's Magazine, National Public Radio and The New Yorker.

He said he filed the suit to get The N&O to stop cutting staff and reducing news coverage.

"By getting rid of staff, you're producing an inferior product that is dooming the newspaper industry into obsolescence," he said today in an interview.

"Attempts to fill the news hole with syndicated columnists, wire stories and cheap filler instead of writing from local staff makes the paper like any other news source. It doesn't have a distinctive voice, and readers can go anywhere else to get their news fix."

Hempstead, 42, filed the suit last month in Wake Superior Court. He said he had renewed his subscription in May just before the paper announced June 16 that it was laying off 70 staff members and trimming its news space.

The paper, he says, is now not worth what he signed up for, and therefore the cuts breached the paper's contract with him.

Hempstead said he could have canceled his subscription but sued instead to get the newspaper industry's attention. He had asked for unspecified damages but said he wasn't in it for the money.

"If I didn't bring this up, those people arguing about (the cuts) may not have been given a voice," he said. "They may not have heard that most of the news generated is from newspapers, even though they go to the Web for it."

As for those who said his lawsuit was frivolous, Hempstead said: "By arguing there's nothing to such a complaint, then they are accepting of a future of mediocre news."

Hempstead, a former reporter, said he is working on an opinion piece about the newspaper industry for The N&O.

N&O Publisher Orage Quarles III said: "I'm just glad it's over, and we can move forward."