The Charlotte-Raleigh connection

Readers noticed The Observer in The News & Observer last week. John Dendy of Durham noticed a Charlotte Observer article in Monday's paper about Charlotte's ugly treatment 50 years ago of a girl who tried to integrate a high school. (She left after four days). "Thank you, N&O, Charlotte Observer, and reporter Tommy Tomlinson, for this well-researched, well-written article," he said. Another reader said, "It was one of the best pieces of journalism I've ever read."

Robert Ferone of Raleigh noticed in Wednesday's N&O a Charlotte Observer photo of Mecklenburg County officials checking water levels and land use at a lake near Charlotte: "Are you kidding me?" he wrote. "A snapshot-quality picture of some guys around a lake in Charlotte? Who cares? Surely there must have been something of interest locally that could have been put there. This smacks of laziness and a desire to just fill the space with anything, as a cost-cutting device."

It's been more than a year since North Carolina's two largest newspapers became sisters, under the marriage of their parent companies, Knight Ridder and the McClatchy Co. Since then, the two papers have worked to take advantage of the synergies that corporate mergers are intended to produce (along with 29 other daily papers that fell under the McClatchy umbrella).

A result has been increased sharing of stories between the two papers and more coordination of coverage. Editors in Raleigh and Charlotte talk to each other every day.

So, during the Jim Black court hearings in July, you saw reporters from The N&O and The Observer teaming up for the coverage. The N&O did much of the court reporting, while Charlotte added information from Black's hometown. After the Virginia Tech shootings last spring, reporters and photographers from both papers went to Blacksburg and divvied up coverage.

You've been seeing a lot of Observer sports coverage in The N&O. Charlotte has good coverage of NASCAR and the Carolina Panthers. The Business section has been tapping The Observer for news from that banking capital. Political coverage is shared. The Observer has been picking up N&O coverage of John Edwards. On Thursday, The N&O ran an Observer story on Bill Clinton's visit to Charlotte, where he defended his wife against an attack from Edwards' wife.

The volume of Observer stories in The N&O has increased, from 40 to 50 articles per month the first half of this year to 63 in July and 86 in August. They range from news briefs to front-page stories. Last week, there was a page-one story Monday from The Observer about AT&T's new parent-friendly cell phone plan.

Rick Thames, The Observer's editor, said his paper has been running one or more N&O stories per day, on average, and he thinks Charlotte readers value them. The Observer got an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction to a series on speeding that originated in The N&O, he said: "The public service journalism of either newspaper is only magnified when both papers run it, and that's a very good thing."

I was curious what readers thought about the papers' crossbreeding. Most of those I surveyed said they don't pay attention to stories' credit lines and couldn't care less where they come from, if they're good journalism. Of those who do pay attention, here are a couple of contrasting viewpoints:

"I welcome The Charlotte Observer stories in The N&O, as long as they're relevant to the Triangle area and, selfishly, to me. I think The N&O's coverage of the state, especially the southern Piedmont and western North Carolina, has improved since McClatchy's acquisition of the Knight papers." -- Edison McIntyre, Durham