Last Updated: October 01, 1996
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New Media Editor, News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
Birthday: February 16, 1952
Hometown: High Point, N.C.
Married: To Donna LeFebvre, lawyer and political science lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Children: Sons Laughlin, 17, and Cameron, 6
Inspiration: Elvis Presley (the '50s one) and, in quite a different way of course, Richard Nixon (every one of 'em).
Walter Mitty fantasy: Tina Brown offers me Joseph Mitchell's old job at the New Yorker, and everything that went with it. But James Brown wants me please please please to take Maceo Parker's spot in his band. Since I haven't gotten 'round to learning the saxophone yet, I'm equally qualified for either job. I say yes to both.
Bad habits: Bringing work home, staying up late.
Pet peeves: Hype, cliche and stereotype - how they can sound so clever in a reporter's head today but look so dumb in print tomorrow.
Luxury defined: Enough time and coffee to read the morning paper.
My best story: Walter Davis, misunderstood tycoon.
My newspaper's greatest strength: Continually challenging itself to look hard and look anew at our community and North Carolina - and at how we serve them. This kind of drive can be seen both in Nando.net's Internet innovations and in the award-winning work our staff produced last year on the political, economic, social, environmental and health issues surrounding an overlooked and unattractive subject like hog farming and hog manure.
Most admired editor: Bob Brooks, former News & Observer managing editor.
Favorite publication: New Yorker.
Most admired writers: Reynolds Price, Wallace Fowlie, Robert Caro, Neil Sheehan, Jean Toomer, Graham Greene.
Best part of the job: The whole basic thing: Finding it out, figuring it out and making a story out of it, on deadline.
Worst part of the job: The demands it makes on our families.
Favorite vacation spot: Scotland (Edinburgh and the Isle of Skye in August).
Favorite TV program: "The Sandbaggers."
Books at bedside: "Postcards" by E. Annie Proulx; "Riding the Rap" by Elmore Leonard.
Car in the driveway: A Taurus wagon and a faded Accord. 
