The Pride of Pine Hill
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What was the political climate in North Carolina's 1996 governor race?
This is journalist Barry Yeoman.
And then he was being challenged by Robin Hayes, who was a Republican who was most famous for a sex education bill when he was in the state legislature that required the state to adopt a curriculum that, among other things, suggested that kids wash their genital regions after having sex.
Who were the key players in the 1996 North Carolina governor race?
Robin Hayes also suggested that people could use Lysol to prevent STDs, leading some people to refer to him as Lysol Man. His mother had contributed a million dollars to his gubernatorial campaign and an additional $500,000 to the Republican National Committee, telling a reporter that she made the donation because, quote, "...my son is very anxious to continue the things he started in the legislature." At the time, Barry Yeoman was working for an alt weekly based in Durham, North Carolina, called the Independent Weekly. The newspaper was covering the governor's race closely. In 1996, Barry's editor was Bob Moser. Bob had started out as the calendar and arts editor. He was only 32 when he became the editor-in-chief.
And we were having a staff meeting, figuring out how would we cover... the elections in a way that other newspapers didn't. And Bob said, I'm going to walk out of the room and you all figure it out. And I'm not coming back until you have an idea.
So what were some of the ideas?
There may have been more ideas, but I only remember one because it's the one we chose, which was if we had two candidates who we were not crazy about, that we would make up one of our own.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
How did The Independent Weekly innovate its election coverage?
So when you went back to Bob Moser and said, okay, you wanted us to come up with something, here's what we came up with. We're going to create our own candidate. What did he say?
He was both excited and nervous. He was excited because it was bolder than what we normally do. And it would be fun. And he was nervous because it wasn't what we normally did. And we were striving every week for credibility. As an alternative weekly, we had one strike against us automatically, which was that we were viewed as biased. This was the end of the golden era of alt-weeklies, alternative weeklies, which were weekly newspapers that very intentionally tried to zig left as the rest of the media zig right. We were always looking for the way that we can fill the gap in the mainstream press and
The first alt-weekly in America is generally considered to be The Village Voice, which was first published in New York City in October of 1955. New York Times book critic Dwight Garner wrote, quote, For many oddballs and lefties and malcontents out in America's hinterlands, finding their first copy of The Voice was more than eye-opening. Here was a dispatch from another, better planet. There was nothing else like it. Dan Wolf, the editor and co-founder, said, The Village Voice was originally conceived as a living, breathing attempt to demolish the notion that one needs to be a professional to accomplish something in a field as purportedly technical as journalism. The Village Voice didn't take itself too seriously.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What was the political climate in North Carolina's 1996 governor race?
1:42–2:08
2
Who were the key players in the 1996 North Carolina governor race?
2:08–3:42
3
How did The Independent Weekly innovate its election coverage?
3:42–6:36
4
Who was Jolene Strickland and what did she represent?
6:36–8:38
5
How did the creation of Jolene Strickland unfold?
8:38–14:47
6
Why was Jolene Strickland's campaign significant?
14:47–40:57