I’ll never know how close I came to not being hired by The News & Observer when I drove to Raleigh on May 14, 1971, to interview for a job.
I had done all right at The Charlotte News and I was pretty sure The N&O would offer me a job if I could just avoid a major mistake during The Interview.
So when I sat down in the managing editor’s office and we began to talk I was relaxed.
Woodrow Price, managing editor, The N&O
I shouldn’t have been because I hadn’t done my homework. I knew almost nothing about The N&O — I had heard good things but I had never read it. I was there because I wanted out of Charlotte as fast as I could go.
The Interview was going well when the phone rang and the managing editor, whose name was Woodrow Price, answered. While he was on the phone I started looking around, looking for something to say when he got off the phone, and I noticed a stuffed fish hanging on the wall behind him.
When Woodrow got off the phone I said, “Woodrow, I see you’ve got a fish on your wall. Do you like to fish?”
Woodrow, the slowest talking man I’ve ever met, replied, “Welll, yasss, and I’ve been writing a column about it in the The News & Observer for 20 years.”
The Charlotte News should not have retracted, corrected and apologized for a story I had written about the wrongful arrest of a doctor for a minor boating violation, and I was determined to prove it.
The retraction said my story had implied that the clerk of court was concealing information and may have left the impression that the clerk of court was responsible for issuance of the warrant.
“Neither implication was correct,” the retraction said.
R. Max Blackburn, the clerk of Superior Court, wasn’t talking but I had covered his office for several years and I had friends in the courthouse. I called in every green stamp I owned and, by late that afternoon, I knew what had happened — and I went to see the clerk.
Thursday afternoon, May 13
The headline on my follow-up story, published in The Charlotte News the day after the retraction, said: “Superior Court Clerk Takes Responsibility For Doctor Arrest”
The first two graphs of a story that explained exactly what had happened.
“Clerk of Superior Court R. Max Blackburn said yesterday that his office is responsible for a clerical error that led to the arrest of a Charlotte doctor.”
The story also said:
“I plan to visit the doctor personally and make my personal apology to him,” Blackburn said.
The Charlotte News did not retract the retraction of my original story, of course, and Editor Perry Morgan, who had ordered the retraction, did not apologize to me. It wouldn’t have mattered. I was done with The Charlotte News.
I called The News & Observer that Thursday afternoon and was invited to Raleigh the next day for an interview.
Friday, May 14: I drove to Raleigh, talked with the managing editor, Woodrow Price, and the executive editor, Claude Sitton, and left with a job offer.
Monday, May 17: I resigned from The Charlotte News, ending a relationship dating back more than a decade.
Postscript: Perry Morgan, editor of The News, had recruited me, mentored me, and promoted me — he liked me. He had no personal or professional reason to retract my story. But he did. And if he hadn’t I would have stayed in Charlotte and missed out on a boatload of blessings. I believe the retraction was God’s doing: If He couldn’t lead me out of Charlotte to a better life — The N&O had tried twice to recruit me — He would drive me out of Charlotte.
Consider this:
**The state government complex, a target-rich environment for an investigative reporter, was a five-minute walk from my new office. And, unlike The Charlotte News, if I could find it and prove it, The N&O would publish it.
**The N&O had three times the circulation of The Charlotte News – and paid much better. To support my family I never had to work a second job again.
When Woodrow got off the phone I said, “Woodrow, I see you’ve got a fish on your wall. Do you like to fish?”