On November 21, we found multiple instances of The Local Reporter plagiarizing content from other area local publications, including The Daily Tar Heel.
We wanted to provide some updates on what’s happened over the past 10 days.
- The Local Reporter deleted eight stories from their website from author Nina Sumner as well as her author page. (Four others not attached to her biography page still remain, including a story with copy taken from unc.edu and a story set in Orange County, CA. As recently as 10:13 pm on November 29, The Local Reporter was still touting Sumner’s “Black Friday deals” reporting in their newsletter. That URL now returns a 404.)
No editor’s note or update was provided to their audience. This lack of transparency goes against the paper’s stated transparency policies, as well as the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics.
- On November 22, The Local Reporter sent an email to readers stating that they were launching a capital campaign to raise $100,000, with an “urgent target” of $30,000 by December 31.
This comes on the heels of other “urgent” asks in August 2024, April 2024, December 2023, June 2023, December 2022, and October 2022 for tens of thousands of dollars in donations. (In the past, the paper has omitted bylines, a masthead, relationships between quoted sources and editors, reprinted material directly from the CHALT website, and omitted political coverage of certain candidates that CHALT opposed in previous election cycles.)
- In the same email, The Local Reporter announced that Martha Hoelzer was now the paper’s executive director and board chair.
Typically, news organizations provide information about board member affiliations, for transparency and for helping audiences understand why they were chosen. The Local Reporter did publish a biography of Hoelzer. The most recent version notes that she “volunteers with several organizations in the community, leveraging her expertise in leadership, technology, and relationship management.”
What the biography doesn’t mention is specifics: Hoelzer, who lives in Durham, is the co-president of Friends of Bolin Creek alongside Julie McClintock, who lives in Chatham County. As we reported earlier, Friends of Bolin Creek shares both a PO Box and an IP address with CHALT, a political organization in Chapel Hill founded by McClintock which has a PAC and is influential in local election cycles. (As you may recall, all three previous board members at The Local Reporter were previously leaders in CHALT, which we have extensively reported on.)
Last year, the Daily Tar Heel reported on an candidate forum that Friends of Bolin Creek held (which may have been illegal) for specific candidates running in the 2023 election cycle. The organization has repeatedly published misinformation about Carrboro’s greenways, which we have fact-checked.
Hoelzer has been actively involved in trying to block Carrboro’s greenways from going forward. She has spoken at MPO meetings and at recent Carrboro Town Council meetings, and Friends of Bolin Creek engaged a lawyer to try to block the greenway from proceeding. In April 2024, she co-wrote an email to Justin Mercer, a state employee at the NC Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources, in an attempt to bypass the town’s decision to proceed with the creekside greenway alignment. Through public records requests, we have found that additional correspondence trying to block the greenway has been directed to Carrboro’s mayor, the Planning department, and the Town of Chapel Hill’s transportation staff.
This is a clear conflict of interest. In the past, the Local Reporter’s board has taken an active editorial role in the paper. The Local Reporter will not be able to independently engage on topics related to the greenway or land use planning.
- The Local Reporter’s board is actively engaged in editorial roles at the paper. The Local Reporter website also shows two new board members, Thomas Hicks and Gregory Morris.
Hicks and Morris are both staff writers for the paper. Typically, a non-profit newspaper board and staff writers are kept separate, so that a firewall is present between editorial and financial and strategic decision-making. Morris and Hicks will also be making decisions alongside Hoelzer and Treasurer Fred Lampe, who is also CHALT’s former treasurer and the original treasurer of CHALT’s PAC.
Morris is the chair for the Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship. Morris was Gulf Coast bureau chief and global markets editor for ChemicalWeek magazine, executive editor of Bank Investment Marketing magazine, and editor in chief and associate publisher of Today’s Refinery magazine. His biography does not mention these affiliations.
Hicks, who lives in Boone, writes about UNC sports for the paper. In addition to writing for the paper, he is an intern for the Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), which is affiliated with a national Presbyterian church. The organization has been criticized for its views on conversion therapy and gay marriage. His biography on the paper’s website omits his internship.