Storyline · 1923–1972
Louis Graves founded the Chapel Hill Weekly in 1923 and edited it until he sold it in 1954. The paper moved into a former car dealership on West Franklin Street in 1963, Graves died in 1965, and Jeff MacNelly drew cartoons for it as a student. In 1972 publisher Orville Campbell replaced it with the Chapel Hill Newspaper, published five days a week.
Louis Graves published the first issue of the Chapel Hill Weekly on March 1, 1923, and owned and edited it until 1954, when he sold it to the Chapel Hill Publishing Company, staying on as contributing editor through 1960. In 1963 the paper moved into the former Harris-Connors Chevrolet agency on West Franklin Street. Graves died in Chapel Hill in January 1965 at 81; his column Chapel Hill Chaff had been widely quoted. In 1968 UNC student Jeff MacNelly began drawing editorial cartoons for the Weekly under editor Jim Shumaker, then left school to work for it full time. On September 5, 1972 publisher Orville Campbell replaced the Weekly, by then published twice a week for about 15 years, with the Chapel Hill Newspaper, an afternoon paper out Tuesday through Friday and on Sunday mornings.
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.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often 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.
The Chapel Hill Historical Society's index to the Chapel Hill Weekly newspaper, the first volume covering March 1923 through February 1928, with entries for the names and events the paper reported. Published in 1992 with errata tipped in.
Index to the newspaper column Roland Giduz wrote for the Chapel Hill Weekly and the Chapel Hill Newspaper, printed on paper in June 1996 from his own card file by the North Carolina Collection. One unpaged volume.
Arthur Ruhl's 1927 New York Herald Tribune piece about the Chapel Hill Weekly and its editor Louis Graves, 1883 to 1965.
Louis Graves (1883-1965) and Mildred Moses Graves left roughly 7,700 items in eleven linear feet, a single 1814 document and then a run from 1876 to 1992, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4010. Graves edited the Chapel Hill Weekly, and topics include North Carolina newspapers and their editors alongside family photographs, travel diaries and the social life of the Graves and Moses families.
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.
Posed 1914 photograph of Louis Graves and Julia Graves, from the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Four photographs of Louis Graves, founding editor of the Chapel Hill Weekly, dated 1910 to 1914: a newspaper portrait, a copy of his World War I identification card, an outdoor candid, and Graves reading his own paper. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Louis Graves, founding editor of the Chapel Hill Weekly, is the subject of newspaper clippings and a report in this undated folder from box 4 of the Individuals and Families series, CHHS.001 Vertical File Collection.
Louis Graves and Ernest Graves posed with other young men from the area, possibly students, in an undated photograph from the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
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 Weekly, 1923–1972.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/chapel-hill-weekly-storyline-1923/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
