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Newspaper marks eight decades of reporting local news
By Lynn Hotaling
One of downtown Sylva’s oldest businesses reached a milestone this week.
The Sylva Herald and Ruralite, which began in 1926 as The Ruralite, last week completed eight decades of continuous publication. During the paper’s early years it moved around quite a bit, but The Herald has occupied its current building for the past 56 years.
Sylva Herald President Steve Gray, left, and his father, Publisher Jim Gray, show off the first camera ever purchased by the newspaper, a Graflex Crown Graphic that produced 4-inch by 5-inch negatives. It was bought in 1954, nine years after Jim Gray’s father, J.A. Gray, and his partner, J.M. Bird bought The Sylva Herald from Curtis Russ and Marion Bridges of Waynesville. – Herald photo by Nick Breedlove
The Sylva Herald has focused on Jackson County’s news – and only Jackson County news – for the past 80 years. The decision was made early on to limit the paper’s coverage area in order to do the best job of reporting local news, and that policy remains in place.
The Herald’s current paid circulation is 7,200, with many more readers now accessing the newspaper’s Web site, www.thesylvaherald.com. Current figures indicate the newspaper receives from 5,000 to 7,000 online visitors each day, with that number spiking each Thursday when a new edition is posted.
Started by E.E. Brown, grandfather of current Herald Sports Editor Carey Phillips, The Ruralite’s first issue was dated April 27, 1926. It had 12 pages and 19 advertisements. Front-page headlines included “Sylva Supply (located for almost a century in Main Street’s C.J. Harris building, where Jackson’s General Store is now) moves grocery department.”
J.A. Gray, father of current Sylva Herald Publisher Jim Gray, bought out his partner, J.M. Bird in 1950. The newspaper that became The Sylva Herald in 1943 was begun as The Ruralite in 1926 by E.E. Brown, grandfather of current Sports Editor Carey Phillips. J.A. Gray is standing behind the newspaper’s first printing press, a four-page flatbed that was assembled by a teen-aged Jim Gray and a printer from Bryson City, Peddy Angel. The press was initially set up in the old Lyric Theater (more recently Merriweather’s and now Main Street Sports Bar & Grill) before being moved to the present Herald building.
It cost $1.50 a year to subscribe to The Ruralite; partial subscriptions were priced at 75 cents for six months and 50 cents for four months. The paper’s first subscriber was Joe Mallonee – “We wish to thank Mr. Mallonee for one dollar and fifty cents,” Brown wrote in The Ruralite’s inaugural issue.
First located in the basement of what is now known as the Hooper Building, The Ruralite was later moved to the Farmers Federation Building. Around 1934 the newspaper moved to the McGuire Building (now part of The Sylva Herald; it’s the building that houses the papers administrative offices and printing sales divisions), and from there it went to the basement of SunTrust Bank (old First Union). After E.E. Brown died in 1932, his widow, Attie Brown, published the paper until 1943, when she sold it to Curtis Russ and Marion Bridges of Waynesville, who changed the newspaper’s name to The Sylva Herald and Ruralite. J.A. Gray, father of current Herald Publisher Jim Gray, and a partner, J.M. Bird, bought the paper in 1945; Gray bought Bird out in 1950 and became sole publisher, a post he held until his 1963 death. His widow, Eliza Gray, took over as publisher and continued in that position until her 1985 death when the title passed to her son, Jim Gray, who remains Herald publisher.
Jim Gray, who started hand-setting metal type when he was 6 years old, retired from the newspaper’s day-to-day operations in 2003, and his son Steve Gray, is The Herald’s current president and CEO.
The Grays operated their newspaper out of the old Lyric Theater (the former Merriweather’s and present Main Street Sports Bar & Grill) until 1950, when it moved into its present location. Jim Gray purchased the adjacent McGuire Building in 1997, and the Herald operation expanded that same year to fill both structures.
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Checking out The Sylva Herald’s Cox-o-type press, which was purchased in May 1967, are, front to back, Al Cunningham, Sam Beck and Harold Norman. The Cox-o-type, an eight-page flatbed that printed papers from rolls of newsprint rather than single sheets, was the last press used to print the newspaper in Sylva. The Herald made the switch from metal type (hot type) to offset in 1974 and has been printed at The Mountain Press in Franklin since that time. The final front page printed in the newspaper’s Sylva pressroom is on display in The Herald’s lobby. Norman, a 39-year veteran, still works for The Herald. Beck, who later ran Western Carolina University’s print shop was an employee at that time; Cunningham was present only to help install and adjust the printing press.
J.A. Gray and J.M. Bird operated the Bryson City Times before purchasing the Sylva paper; The Herald’s first press, a four-page flatbed, was assembled in place by Jim Gray and printer Peddy Angel, according to Jim Gray.
By the time Jim Gray returned from military service in 1953, his father had moved operations down the street to the paper’s current location, and Jim Gray began selling advertising and taking photographs for The Herald. Eliza Gray opened a bookstore in a corner of the building, but her enterprise soon turned into a card shop, according to Jim Gray.
“There wasn’t much demand for books, so she put in Hallmark cards,” he said.
Jim Gray’s daughter, Ann Dennis, took over the operation, which remained The Bookstore despite its inventory of cards and stationery, from her grandmother and operated it until around the mid-1990s. The Bookstore moved from the Herald building and occupied serveral different Main Street locations. It wass located in the Ferguson Building where Advance Home Health is now at the time it closed.
The current office side of The Herald, the former McGuire Building, was once three full stories, but a portion of the third floor collapsed during a heavy snow, Jim Gray said.
The newspaper’s first camera, a Graflex that produced 4-inch x 5-inch negatives, was purchased in 1954. Even though that meant The Herald could take and develop its own photographs, pictures still had to be sent by bus to Charlotte to be converted into printing plates before they could be published in the newspaper. It was not until the late 1960s that The Herald bought a machine – a photo lathe – that enabled the paper to make its own printing plates and allowed the publication of more timely photographs, Jim Gray said.
Through the years The Herald wore out one four-page flatbed press and bought another, eventually converting to an eight-page Cox-o-type in 1967. One advantage to the new press was that it utilized large rolls of newsprint instead of single sheets. A disadvantage was that the four-page wide rolls weighed 1,500 pounds each and had to be manhandled into place.
The Cox-o-type printed The Herald’s pages until May 1974, when the newspaper converted to offset printing. At that point Jim Gray purchased an interest in The Mountain Press in Franklin, and the newspaper pages were transported to Franklin to be printed.
“Everything was moving toward photo offset printing,” said Jim Gray. “It was much faster and cleaner, and more pages could be printed with less effort.”
Another benefit was the fact that with offset, printers no longer had heavy trays of metal type to lift. The Herald’s final front page printed with metal type, which is on display in the newspaper lobby, weighs more than 100 pounds.
With the move to offset printing, The Herald’s graphics departments – for both the newspaper and the print shop – converted to phototypesetters in place of the old linotypes.
The Sylva Herald is still printed in Franklin on The Mountain Press’ eight-unit (32-page) web press (see photo on page 1C), but pages are now composed on computers and transmitted to the pressroom electronically.
When asked what he remembers most from his 50-plus years in journalism, Jim Gray recounted stories of memorable fires.
“In April 1958, back when I chased fire trucks, the alarm went off while I was sitting on the side of the bed with one shoe off,” he said. “I called to see where it was and found out it was the hospital (then located on Ridgeway Street in the building that was later the Court Hill Inn and has now been converted to apartments). I debated whether to go, figuring if I went it wouldn’t amount to anything and if I didn’t, it would burn down. I ended up going up there and there was extensive damage.”
Another fire he remembers was at the old Balsam Inn (not the Balsam Mountain Inn).
“When we started up the Bob Long Straight (Willets), you could see the glow,” he said.
It was at another fire that current Herald President Steve Gray got his first newspaper photography experience. During a fire that burned several houses in Webster in December 1968, with an Argus C-3 camera, Steve Gray shot his first picture that was published in The Herald.
“Back then Sylva had the only fire department in the county,” Jim Gray said. “I chased fire trucks from Sylva to Whittier to Balsam.”
In addition to publishing The Herald, both Jim and Steve Gray have been active in civic affairs. Jim Gray was an active Rotary Club member for five decades and also served for years on the Harris Regional (then C.J. Harris) Hospital board including several years as chairman. He has also been a member of the Jackson County Airport Authority. Steve Gray, who is currently mayor of Webster, has volunteered for 30 years with the Jackson County Rescue Squad.
Jim Gray said last week that he’s proud of the newspaper his family has built and of The Herald’s role in Jackson County’s history.
“My parents and I always believed that part of our job was serving the community, and Steve is carrying on that tradition,” Jim Gray said. “We owe our success to hard work and to the many dedicated employees who have come our way through the years – we couldn’t have made The Herald the paper it is today without the help of a great many talented people.”
Steve Gray echoed his father’s view of The Herald’s 80 years in Sylva and said he plans to continue the family tradition.
“My goal is to continue to provide a service to this community as my father and grandparents have done,” Steve Gray said. “I’ve lived in Jackson County all my life, and maintaining this newspaper’s traditional excellence is a point of pride to me.”
The Herald has also made significant contributions to regional journalism. Both the legendary John Parris, who died in 1999, and veteran Asheville Citizen-Times columnist and author Bob Terrell got their first writing jobs with the paper. Parris began writing for The Ruralite as a teenager, and Terrell did the same for The Herald. A former news editor, J.D. McRorie, has compiled a number of his former Herald columns into the book “Knowing Jackson County,” which was published in 2000 by the Jackson County Historical Society.
The newspaper itself has won numerous awards from the N.C. Press Association through the years, most notably for three historical special sections: “Centennial” published in 1989; “The Jackson County Courthouse,” published in 1995; and “Sesquicentennial,” published in 2001.
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