SETH EFFRON: When Frank Daniels made me an offer I couldn't refuse

It was late spring/early summer of 1988. The “short” session of the General Assembly was winding down, key issues and the budget were up in the air. I was the Capitol correspondent for the Greensboro News & Record and needed some information to round out a news article.

In those days the lieutenant governor was the power in the state Senate. Then Lt. Gov. Bob Jordan, also the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor had been hard to reach. But I knew he’d be at a high-dollar fundraising hosted at the home of the president and publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer.

I was greeted at the front door. I told Daniels who I was and that I wanted to talk to the lieutenant governor. Polite, but brusk, he asked me to wait at the door. After a rather extended period, Daniels returned. Jordan was otherwise occupied and wouldn’t be available, he told me.

Several years later I learned – directly from Daniels – that he’d gone and called the News & Observer newsroom to tell them I was at his home. “Seth Effron’s showed up and you need to get a reporter over here,” he told the newsroom.

Frank Daniels never shied away from what he saw as his civic obligations – including direct participation in political campaigns – as well as making sure the newspaper he ran was aggressive in covering the news.

I was fortunate, five years later, to get to know Daniels as a businessman, eager to keep his company ahead of the game as technology was opening new avenues for gathering information and distributing the news.

The News & Record, a newspaper I love, had started to lose some of its affection for state government and political coverage as my own was increasing. In 1993 I’d quit my newspaper job to become a journalism entrepreneur – launching a fax-to-subscriber service called “The Insider.” The high-hopes and energy I had for the effort was not matched by any financial backing. But I was determined.

A call came one day from Frank Daniels III, his son and the innovative executive editor of the newspaper. Could I meet with him and his father to tell them more about “The Insider.”

We met. I explained the idea of a daily publication intensively focused on North Carolina government and politics, with information compiled in a useful and easy to access manner not available anywhere else. It would be distributed by fax (it was 1993, after all) but looking to exploit newly emerging technologies including email and now passe electronic bulletin boards (the World Wide Web was still a closely held experiment).

The two Daniels were intrigued. They were both looking to maintain the News & Observer franchise on state political and government coverage as well as a vehicle to explore new technology. “Don’t lose your money on this,” Frank Jr. said. “Lose ours.”

Seldom had I heard wiser advice. Frank not only embraced my vision, he made sure I had the freedom and support to pursue it. In a year The Insider broke even and in two, it was profitable and became a must-read for those who needed to be in-the-know about North Carolina government and politics. Support included providing the resources so The Inisder was first to offer online live broadcast of legislative sessions and provide an online searchable database of every bill filed in the General Assembly – well before the Legislature put its database online. The Insider is now in its 29th year.

More significantly, the vision to embrace emerging technologies led the company to become one of the early leaders in online news. I was offered the opportunity to work with a group of creative and innovative journalists, programmers and designers in developing “Nando Media” – the News & Observer’s online division that created award-winning national and global news and sports information services that were the foundation for how much of online news is presented today.

But for me and many more, he enshrined an ethic that encouraged creativity and embraced those who looked to exploit it.

I was offered the opportunity of a lifetime when I most needed it. Thanks to Frank Daniels, my life has been better for it.