CL media writer Shannon Reichley reported last Friday that The Leader, Charlotte’s 30-year-old weekly community paper, had closed up shop and filed for bankruptcy. The paper had been getting noticeably thinner of late, but the news nonetheless came as a shock. The Leader was founded by the late Stan Kaplan and his wife Sis Kaplan, both deeply involved in community affairs and the Democratic Party, and had gone through several incarnations over the years, always exhibiting an independent, at times ornery, bent.
The paper’s reporting style varied through the years and hit a peak under former editor Tucker Mitchell, who is now editor of the Huntersville Herald. During Mitchell’s tenure, The Leader became the area’s premier source for political news with its detailed reporting and analyses of city council and county commission actions. The paper was also the place to go for news of the school system during its recent turbulent years, a niche that had once belonged exclusively to the Charlotte Observer.
The daily paper’s coverage of The Leader’s demise, published Saturday, August 31, raised some local eyebrows for its clueless reporting and condescension. Reporter Ellison Clary described The Leader as a newspaper of “opinion columns and social news,” as if its most recent, belt-tightening persona was the sum total of the paper’s history in the community. Nothing like the big guy in town kicking a small competitor when they’re down. But the height of both cluelessness and condescension was reached by one of the daily’s bygone gentry, former editorial writer Jack Claiborne (now an assistant to the chancellor at UNC Charlotte) who was quoted as saying, “The Leader misjudged the culture of Charlotte. . .It had an in-your-face attitude.”
Now, we suppose that’s correct if your view of the culture of Charlotte comes from overexposure to the city’s fading Old Guard, or if your view of the city came to a halt, say, during the Reagan administration. We hope that Mr. Claiborne, if he sees this, will note that he’s reading a Charlotte newspaper with an in-your-face attitude that’s doing very well, thank you; perhaps it’s he, as well as those he left behind at the daily, who misjudge the city’s culture; things do, after all, change with time.
One of the things we had hoped wouldn’t change was being able to pick up a copy of The Leader each week. No matter the rivalry and in-fighting that comes with competition, it’s always a sad occasion for people in the press (except, apparently, at the Observer) when a long-standing publication closes its doors. We regret The Leader’s passing and wish Sis Kaplan all the best.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2002.
