"Southern News, Southern Politics" by Rob Christensen

Rob Christensen’s new book, Southern News, Southern Politics (University of North Carolina Press), is more than the history of the newspaper, the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., described at one point by a politician as “pretty damn fearless.” It’s a profile of the Daniels family, starting with Josephus Daniels in 1895, whose family’s ownership of the paper spanned most of the 20th century.

The book chronicles the involvement of members of the Daniels family with U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, all of whom found support from the paper and its owners.

Josephus Daniels was a white supremacist who used the paper in its early days to spread hate. “Blacks were routinely portrayed as sexual predators, feeding white paranoia,” noted Christensen. 

“Even in situations where a white woman was merely in the presence of a black man, the News & Observer found cause for alarm,” wrote journalist David Zucchino. But Daniels found other subjects to write about. He also went after the almighty railroads and opposed the American Tobacco Co’s cornering the market on cigarette production.

All the while, Daniels became increasingly involved in Democratic Party politics—not just in Raleigh but across the state and around the country. His first political hero was William Jennings Bryan. Daniels was at Bryan’s side during three presidential elections (all of which Bryan lost).

While Josephus Daniels never changed his mind on matters of race, the ardent segregationist was a progressive and a liberal on a broad range of issues from education to women’s rights, said Christensen. “In his time, he fought against the Klu Klux Klan and McCarthyism,” the author said.

Daniels helped Woodrow Wilson’s organize a national presidential campaign in 1912. As a result Daniels, 51, was named Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson Administration, where his chief deputy was FDR, then 31. They made the proverbial odd couple, noted Christensen. 

“The handsome, aristocratic FDR frequented the exclusive clubs clad in English-tailored suits…(while) Daniels, short, dumpy, and allergic to exercise—called the pre-polio FDR, who was six feet two, athletic, and well spoken, “as handsome a figure of an attractive young man as I have ever seen,” wrote Christensen, adding that Daniels probably saved Roosevelt’s political career by covering up an affair he had while serving in the office of the Navy.

When Daniels was named ambassador to Mexico after FDR was elected president in 1932, Jonathan Daniels, his son, took over as the paper’s editor. “He had different ideas on race than his father did,” said Christensen. “(Jonathan) gave more voice for racial issues at a time when Blacks had little voice,” he said.

Jonathan Daniels also played a role in Harry Truman’s surprising 1948 presidential election. Considered the underdog as Truman was getting his from both the left (Henry Wallace) and the right (Strom Thurmond) in his own party and up against a polished GOP candidate, Thomas Dewey, Truman pulled off the upset. Jonathan Daniels was one of his speechwriters. 

The News & Observer, meanwhile, continued to develop as a watchdog publication—not just in Raleigh but across North Carolina. During the 1990s, the paper hired its first Black executives and invited the first African American to join its board of directors. 

Christensen also documents the decline of the newspaper industry, something he bore witness to as a longtime News & Observer staffer who retired in 2018.

As the paper’s former book editor J. Peder Zane noted about Southern News, Southern Politics: ”Ambition and politics, family dynamics, and the grand sweep of history collide and align in Rob Christensen’s epic tale of the North Carolina Newspaper dynasty.”