Storyline · 1987–1993
Ottaway Newspapers, a division of Dow Jones, bought The Chapel Hill Newspaper in 1987, and the Durham Herald Company answered with The Chapel Hill Herald. After a newspaper war and falling earnings, Ottaway put the paper up for sale in 1990 and cut its Monday edition in 1991. In 1993 it sold the paper to The News & Observer.
On November 5, 1987 Ottaway Newspapers Inc., the community newspaper division of Dow Jones & Co., bought The Chapel Hill Newspaper, begun in 1923 as The Chapel Hill Weekly, effective January 1, 1988; its publisher since 1954 kept Colonial Printing Co. The Durham Herald Company started The Chapel Hill Herald in June 1988 in answer to the purchase. In March 1989, in what its circulation manager called a newspaper war with the Herald, the Raleigh News and Observer and the Village Advocate, the paper ended its weekly shopper, The Picture, started an entertainment supplement, Cue Magazine, and began free delivery of Sunday and Wednesday papers to about 19,000 nonsubscribing homes.
Citing falling earnings in the recession, Ottaway filed contracts in early December 1990 to sell the paper, which by February 1991 sold about 5,635 copies a day against about 12,000 for the Herald. It withdrew the paper after four months without a competitive offer, and on September 20, 1991 the paper announced it would end its Monday edition and Cue, stop free Wednesday delivery and cut the equivalent of eight full-time jobs. On July 8, 1993 Ottaway announced the sale of The Chapel Hill News to The News & Observer Publishing Co. of Raleigh, effective July 30. All of its more than 40 employees were to be laid off and some rehired, and the new owner planned to publish twice a week from the office at 505 West Franklin Street.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
A gathered volume of Ralph M. Watkins's historical notes from The Chapel Hill Newspaper, pieces written between 1978 and 1987 on the town's people and past. Watkins (1895-1987) wrote them in his eighties, and the collection was issued in 2001, apparently by the Chapel Hill Historical Society. One illustrated volume on Chapel Hill and Orange County history and biography.
Chapel Hill News in its digital form, issued by the paper itself and described as an online resource with a 2017 date. It concerns Chapel Hill and Orange County newspapers, covering town government, schools, business and community events at the southern end of the county.
Seventy-five years of the Chapel Hill News gathered in a forty page illustrated anniversary issue from 1998, printed at 34 centimeters. Topics include the newspaper itself and Chapel Hill history, so the retrospective is a survey of the town's twentieth century as the paper reported it. Useful both for the paper's own history and for the town news it carried.
Ted Vaden addressed the Chapel Hill Historical Society on 5 April 1998 on the 75th anniversary of the Chapel Hill News. Cassette recording of the talk, from the Society's Audiovisual Materials Collection.
Thomas A. Bowers's history of a century of journalism and mass communication teaching at the University of North Carolina, published by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2009. It runs 282 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Robert E. Seymour's columns for the Chapel Hill News, gathered into a 192-page book by Chapel Hill Press in 2003. The short pieces offer anecdotes and reflections on Chapel Hill history, local manners and customs, and North Carolina life. Seymour (1925 to 2020) was the longtime pastor of Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church.
Anniversary booklet for the first twenty-five years of WCHL, the Chapel Hill radio station at 1360 on the AM dial, published in 1978. Topics include radio broadcasting and Chapel Hill history, with advertisements included. 20 unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits.
Anniversary booklet marking fifty years of WCHL 1360, the Chapel Hill radio station, with profiles of fifty people from Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Published in 2003, 36 pages with portraits. Contributors include Roland Giduz, Jim Heavner, Jonathan Howes, Neil Offen and Rosemary Waldorf.
Thomas A. Bowers gave this talk on the beginnings of journalism teaching at the University of North Carolina on October 15, 2009 in Wilson Library, part of the Gladys Hall Coates university history lecture series. It was printed the same year.
Richard Hunter Simpson filmed this seven minute farewell to Howell Hall in 1999. The film concerns the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, its buildings and its history, and the teaching of journalism in Chapel Hill. One videocassette, color with black and white sequences.
Centennial edition of the Daily Tar Heel, the University of North Carolina student newspaper, produced at Chapel Hill in 1993 to mark one hundred years of publication. Jen Pilla is named as centennial edition editor. Topics include the paper's history along with college student newspapers and periodicals in Chapel Hill, which makes the issue a source for the paper's own record.
An illustrated volume, with portraits, published by Village Sports in 1993 to mark forty years of WCHL, Chapel Hill's radio station at 1360 on the dial. Its writers were Jim Heavner, Roland Giduz, Jim Shumaker, Zora Rashkis, Dan Dunlop, George McCall, Lee Pace, Beth Tatum and Larry Stone.
A television news report of three minutes and fifty six seconds by Kenley Jones, broadcast on NBC Nightly News in 1975, on the spelling and grammar test journalism students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had to pass for the major. John Adams, a former dean of the journalism school, is interviewed.
Stuart Willis traces the history of the North Carolina University Magazine, the student periodical published at Chapel Hill since 1844. His article was detached from the magazine itself in 1914 and printed by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Societies, which ran it.
Holland Thompson's history of the North Carolina University Magazine at fifty years, written while he was a student of the class of 1895. It ran in the magazine for March and April 1894 and was issued separately at Chapel Hill by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.
Leaflet on the southern broadcast media history initiative of the Southern Historical and Folklife Collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, printed in 1995. The project concerned the history of broadcasting in the Southern states and the business records that document it. Five pages on one folded sheet with illustrations.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “The Chapel Hill Newspaper changes hands, 1987–1993.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/chapel-hill-newspaper-sale-storyline-1987/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
