A real editor for Durham

Two years ago this time the locally owned Durham Herald Sun was one of the most respected community newspapers in the South, if not the nation.

It was then purchased by the privately held Paducah, Kentucky based Paxton Media Group which immediately dismissed dozens of dedicated, talented H-S journalists and other staffers.

Paxton sent Bob Ashley (Duke ’70) to Durham to run the newspaper. “Just wait until you see what I’ll do with the paper,” Ashley told the community.

Today, anyone in Durham with at least a room temperature IQ can see what
Ashley’s done with a once fine newspaper: TRAIN WRECK!

So much for bad news.

Now the good news.

James Robert (Bob) Wilson has agreed to start posting here.

If you know Bob Wilson, I’ll bet you’re smiling already unless you’re someone who says:

“No, really, it’s all just because Mike believes in her. I’ll even tell the Feds that.”

Bob Wilson’s one of North Carolina’s most respected journalists. From 1991 until Paxton/Ashley took over, Bob was the H-S’s editorial pages editor. Like so many others, Bob was let go.

But Bob was just a few months shy of retirement; and he and his wife Betty had been savers. So they now enjoy a nice retirement here in Durham and down on North Carolina’s coast.

For the last two years, I’ve been nudging Bob to “go public.” But he’s been reluctant to get back into the tangled web of “doings in Durham.” Who can blame him?

But with the collapse of the H-S as a serious newspaper, and the silence of Duke and Durham’s leaders in the face of DA Nifong’s travesties, Bob’s no longer willing to remain silent.

He and I haven’t worked out how often he’ll post at JinC or how we’ll distinguish his posts from mine but…

[Please, John, stop talking. You and Bob can work all that out later. What we want now is to hear from Bob.]

OK, folks, sorry to hold things up.

Here’s Bob:
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John said, “Just start right in.” I’ll do that and hope you stay with me.

The Durham Herald-Sun, where I served as editor of the editorial pages, is trashing the canons of responsible journalism.

Under editor Bob Ashley, The Herald Sun has become not only a shill for District Attorney Mike Nifong, but also a harsh voice for the Red Guards’-style “justice” preached by Duke University’s faculty Group of 88.

The Herald-Sun has conveniently disregarded, even disparaged, the bedrock principles and rights of English and American common law, including the principle that any one of us accused by the state is innocent until proved guilty.

In The Herald-Sun's twisted interpretation of the legal principles and individual rights most Americans still hold dear, three young men – David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann -- indicted following a sham investigation, must now prove their innocence in court.

How did The Herald Sun get such important principles and rights so wrong?

Under America’s laws those three young men don't have to prove anything. The burden of proof is on the prosecution.

But the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that the players committed rape during a team party in March is of no consequence to Nifong, Ashley and their enablers.

Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann are being persecuted -- I use that word deliberately -- not for anything they've done, but for who they are.

That’s a chilling turn of events, one that should concern every resident of Durham and anyone else who cares about justice.

What’s being done to those three young men is so chilling and so perverted that I’ll no longer be a silent witness to Mike Nifong's malicious, possibly criminal, disregard of justice and The Herald-Sun's cheerleading for him.

I appreciate you’re reading what I’ve said. I look forward to reading your comments.

Bob Wilson
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Welcome back, Bob.