I moved to North Carolina in 1993 because of what ultimately was an ill-advised relationship. I got a new newspaper job, moved on to one of the first dedicated news sites on the Internet, and left in 1996 for Chicago.
In many ways, my years in Raleigh were awkward, but I appreciated many of the old school journalists there. One was Mike Yopp, who I learned passed away recently. He taught me a lot about newspapering in North Carolina, and gracefully endured my California transplant ignorance of the South.
When I edited a Sunday section and suggested running a wire story about Alabama in it, he frowned and shook his head. “No, that’s the DEEP South,” he said with a hint of disdain about the topic. “We don’t cover that.”
It’s people like Mike who made Raleigh memorable, and I’m grateful for that.