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Daniels Family and the Raleigh News & Observer, 1945-1995, Oral History Series

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Daniels Family and the Raleigh News & Observer, 1945-1995, Oral History Series Transcript of Ferrel Guillory Interview, 10-23-07 p. 1 of 34 The Raleigh News & Observer, 1945-1995, Oral History Series Transcript: Ferrel Guillory Interview Interviewee: Ferrel Guillory Date: October 23, 2007 Location: Chapel Hill, NC Interviewer: Joseph Mosnier Interview length: 1 hour 35 mins Transcribed by/date: Madeleine Baran, October 30, 2008, Minneapolis, MN Edited by/date: Dana Di Maio, November 2008, Chapel Hill, NC JOSEPH MOSNIER: This is Tuesday, the twenty-third of October 2007. My name is Joe Mosnier of the Southern Oral History Program. I’m on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in the Journalism School with Mr. Ferrel Guillory. And we are here to do a second interview following up on the first session we had last Friday on the long history of The News & Observer, particularly since the early ‘70s, when Ferrel joined. Ferrel, thanks very much for sitting down. I appreciate it. FERREL GUILLORY: Thanks for having me. JM: Let me pick up today with--. One of the points--of course we were touching on many things--one of the points where we left off in the chronology last time was in relation to your move to D.C. in January of ’77 to reopen the D.C. bureau. I wanted to open today by asking you to talk about your experience up there and how that went. FG: Yeah, I joined The News & Observer, as we said last time, in September, the week of Labor Day of 1972. My title was Chief Capitol Correspondent. My responsibilities were as the lead reporter on statewide campaigns and as the lead reporter in covering the legislature, and my beat included the governor’s office and secretary of state and a few related Raleigh-based Interview number R-0409 from the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. Transcript of Ferrel Guillory Interview, 10-23-07 p. 2 of 34 government entities. Therefore, I covered the governor’s race and the United States Senate race of 1972. I covered extensively the Senate race of 1974 [in North Carolina] when Robert Morgan won the Senate seat after Sam Ervin retired. And then I covered the governor’s race and related races in 1976. At some point during that period, I don’t recall exactly when, Claude Sitton talked to me about going to Washington. The News & Observer had a Washington bureau during the ‘60s, as we talked about, with Roy Parker. I do not know before then. There may have been a Washington presence before Roy, but I’m not aware of it. So anyway, Claude talked to me about doing that on the condition that it would not be a long-term appointment, that I would return in a couple years and join the editorial page staff. So that sounded logical to me. It gave me an opportunity to get a taste of Washington without full-time commitment. It gave me a way to come back to The News & Observer in at least a semi-management role of being the editorial page editor, but also writing and sustaining the column that I had developed. So I went to Washington right about the time of the Jimmy Carter inaugural. I remember being there in a huge ice storm and we could hardly move in, but we did--had two young children at the time. We found a little rental house in northwest Washington on a nice little pleasant street. It was an altogether satisfactory assignment. It’s a difficult assignment because the bureaucracy is difficult to penetrate, particularly for reporters on mid-size newspapers. I was often tempted to call up some folks and say, “I’m from The New York Times.” Just lie. [Laughter] JM: [Laughter] FG: Just to get them on the phone, but then I never did. I was tempted, but I never succumbed. And so reporters as I was--and there are a lot of them in Washington, fairly young, working for these mid-size newspapers, hoping to get a break or something of that nature--tend Interview number R-0409 from the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. Transcript of Ferrel Guillory Interview, 10-23-07 p. 3 of 34 to gravitate toward Congress because it’s open. Congressmen are easy to find. So I was there during the first two years of the Carter administration. There were several really important stories having to do with North Carolina at the time. Senator Helms emerged as the leading opponent, I guess it’s fair to say, of the Panama Canal treaties, which was a major foreign policy goal of the Carter administration. So I do a lot of work on the Panama Canal treaties. The Carter administration adopted an anti-smoking posture, which led to conflict with tobacco farmers in 1975, 1976, ’77, ’78. Tobacco farming was a much more integral portion of the North Carolina economy than it is in the early part of the twenty-first century. There was still a federal tobacco program [which set marketing quotas and offered price-support loans; this program was ended under terms of the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004]. So I did a considerable amount of reporting on that. And then there was also the dispute that we talked about over the desegregation of the University system. So there were some ongoing stories. There were other stories. Congressman Richardson Preyer at the time was appointed to the commission that re- investigated the Kennedy assassination. Now, I was no expert on that, but I dipped into that story from time to time. And there were some other political and other day-to-day kind of stories involved in being in Washington. So I did that from roughly January of 1997 and I came down to Raleigh in the late summer of 1998. I came back a little--. JM: 1978. FG: 1978, pardon me, time flies. JM: [Laughter] FG: 1978. I was due to come back in early ’79. Claude called me up in the middle of the summer and said, “We may need you back earlier than anticipated.” And I said, “What’s going on?” And he said, “Well, Tom Inman, who was the editorial page editor at the time, and at the Interview number R-0409 from the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. Transcript of Ferrel Guillory Interview, 10-23-07 p. 4 of 34 time was married to a Daniels--they divorced. That made Tom’s position as editorial page editor a little less stable than it had been. And so, I can’t--. Tom departed earlier than anticipated and I came back earlier than anticipated. I joined the editorial page staff in the fall of ’78 and then was named editorial page editor early 1979. JM: Tell me a little bit about--one or two more questions about D.C. and then we’ll pick up on the editorial page work. Did Roy Parker [or] anybody sort of hand off a set of contacts to you, or did you have to largely sort of go your--. No, you’re shaking your head no. FG: No, well Roy had already gone to the campaign, the Bowles campaign. So Roy immediately became one of my sources and that’s how I got to know him. A splendid guy, and we’ve remained friends and acquaintances in the years since. He went on to be editor of The Fayetteville Times and had a distinguished--re-entered journalism and had a distinguished career afterwards. No, when I got here, it was just go do it. Of course, there was Bob Brooks and some others there who had institutional memory. JM: Sorry for--. When I was asking about if Roy Parker sort of handed off contacts, I wonder if he sort of hooked you up with any folks in D.C., given his earlier service up there. FG: Oh no. No, not that either. JM: Okay. So it’s sort of as if you had to just find your way once you got to town. FG: It was just kind of go, just go find an office. JM: Show your press badge and start talking to people. FG: Yeah, and go get your credentials and go find a house. No, there was no staff. There was no assistant. It was just go do it. Live by your wits. JM: Did you go back and forth to Raleigh much at all or no? Interview number R-0409 from the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. Transcript of Ferrel Guillory Interview, 10-23-07 p. 5 of 34 FG: No, no. Well, a little. There was the Senate race in 1978, as you remember. It was the first re-election [of Jesse Helms] and he ran against John Ingram. Ingram became the Democratic nominee. I did come back from time to time to join in the coverage of that campaign, particularly the run-off campaign. So there was some there, but by then The News & Observer had hired Al May to be the Capitol correspondent and then Rob Christensen joined the state staff at the time. I think Rob joined it some time in that period. And then--so there was talent and capacity for covering state politics and government, and I was an add-on by coming back.
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