Southern News, Southern Politics

336 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 15 halftones, notes, bibl., index

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-8524-3
Published: March 2025

Hardcover Available March 2025, but pre-order your copy today!

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Hardcover $35.00

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Newspapers are a tough business, and no one knows that better than Rob Christensen, who was chief political reporter at North Carolina's capital newspaper, the News and Observer, for decades. Here he tells the story of the N&O and how it helped shape modern North Carolina in complicated ways. It's also the story of a family dynasty: four generations of the Daniels family owned and ran the N&O. They not only helped elect governors but also played an influential role in national American politics—family members served as political lieutenants to William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

Christensen takes readers from the N&O's early days at the turn of the twentieth century as the militant voice of white supremacy to its denunciation by segregationist Jesse Helms for "selling out the South" in the 1960s and finally to its current dwindling fortunes. By telling the story of one important regional newspaper, Christensen shows how influence and messaging affect the politics of a state and a region for generations.

About the Author

Rob Christensen wrote about North Carolina politics for forty-five years for the News and Observer. He is also the author of several books, most recently The Rise and Fall of the Branchhead Boys: North Carolina's Scott Family and the Era of Progressive Politics.
For more information about Rob Christensen, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"Over the past fifty years no one has written more authoritatively about North Carolina politics than Rob Christensen. That sureness of historical and political touch has culminated in a superb study of the News and Observer and the Daniels family. Southern News, Southern Politics is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of race and politics that have shaped liberalism in North Carolina from the 1890s to Donald Trump."

—Tony Badger, Emeritus Paul Mellon Professor of American History, Cambridge University

"Christensen has offered us a lively and engaging book that chronicles the newspaper's evolution and impact in a detailed and thoughtful way."

—Sid Bedingfield, author of Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935–1965

"From the Jim Crow era of newsprint to the Black Lives Matter era, Christensen offers readers a detailed, and often inside, look at the history of one of the South's most venerable media institutions—the Raleigh News and Observer." —Lee A. Craig, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Economics at North Carolina State University and author of Josephus Daniels: His Life and Times

"No living human knows as much about North Carolina politics, history, and journalism as Rob Christensen. I have loved all his books, but none so much as Southern News, Southern Politics. At long last, Christensen has turned his focus even closer to home—to the News and Observer and the Daniels family. The result is a story as complex, inspiring, surprising, horrifying, and paradoxical as North Carolina itself. It's impossible to understand who we were, and who we are, without it."

—Gene R. Nichol, Boyd C. Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Faces of Poverty in North Carolina

"In this important work, Christensen brings a storyteller's tongue and a historian's eye to address an enduring riddle of North Carolina in the twentieth century: how a benighted white supremacist fostered a newspaper that became the recognized beacon of progressivism in the Jim Crow South." —Ted Vaden, the News and Observer's only public editor

"Ambition and politics, family dynamics, and the grand sweep of history collide and align in Rob Christensen's epic tale of the North Carolina newspaper dynasty that shaped state and US politics for decades. A smart page-turner." —J. Peder Zane, former book editor of the News and Observer