In which the Hot Dog Man trumps the Roadshow
By Jock Lauterer
I went up to Oxford the other day to do some teaching, but instead come back the enlightened student.
My intended target, the unsinkable Al Carson, editor of the Oxford Public Ledger, needs no schooling in journalism — or life lived large, for that matter.
So I turned off the Powerpoint and started listening.
community paper in Granville County.
Jock Lauterer photo
In March 2007 at only 57, Al suffered a stroke that would have killed a lesser soul. Although still paralyzed on his right side, Al is back in the editor’s chair, aided by a loving wife, a supportive work environment at the Ledger, a loyal community, a red scooter and two faithful side-kicks on the news side at the paper.
But it is Al’s relentless sense of humor that struck me from the get-go. (First of all, picture a latter-day lumberjack with a graying beard, mustache and mischievous flashlight blue eyes.)
“People say how courageous if was for me to come back to work,” Al harrumphs with his trademark sly grin. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Like the storyteller that he is, Al lets the line just hang there for second longer…
Then, “My wife, Betsy, said, ‘You’re not staying here in this house! Now get out of that bed!’” He laughs, and then adds seriously, “She been really instrumental in my life.”
After the stroke, Al spent two months in the hospital and then three months in outpatient care. Meanwhile, third-generation owners of the Ledger, Charles and Ronnie Critcher, held Al’s job until he felt able to return.
“I’m very fortunate to have come here,” he vows. “They’ve been really good to me.”
A DURHAM HERALD-SUN REFUGEE
How Al came to the Ledger in the first place is a story. The Rocky Mount native majored in geography at ECU and then “sorta just fell into” stringing for the local paper, finally in 1973 finding his way to the Durham Herald-Sun, where for 32 years he covered sports, food and features until the infamous “Black Monday,” Jan. 3, 2005, when the new owner, Paxton Media Group, “kicked me out” along with a host of folks who’d spent the better part of their careers in Durham.
“When you cut all your people (in the newsroom) who know anything about Durham…” Al shakes his head in wonder, “It’s really BIZARRE!”
He knocked around for a while, looked at a couple of offers, but then picked Oxford due to its proximity to his wife’s teaching job. Starting as a staff writer, he was promoted to editor after nine months when the former editor moved on.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF EDITOR
Since the stroke, Al has had to make many adaptations, like learning how to type left-handed while using his right pointer finger occasionally for shift-function commands, getting around town on the scooter, and walking slowly but determinedly around the office using a cane. But even his disability gets the joke treatment.
“I tell ‘em I do the 100 in 10 flat…(I don’t tell ‘em that’s 10 minutes!”)
No, Al can’t get out and cover breaking local news like he used to, “But I tell people, ‘If you’ve got a 12-pound cabbage, bring it to the (paper) office and I’ll take a picture of it!’”
Oxford folks have rallied around their stricken editor. “The community was tremendous in their support of me,” Al exclaims. “People who didn’t know me except through the paper…”
“Now a deputy sheriff brings ME the police report! This community — we couldn’t have this paper without them. When people call up and ask: ‘Can you cover such and such?’ I have to tell them, ‘No, but if you take a picture and bring in a write-up, we’ll run it.’ That’s what it’s all about at this point.”
So he concentrates on what he can do. Which is considerable by any measure. “I’m the editor…” he explains wryly, “… the editorial page editor, the food editor, the features editor — and if you can think of any other editors, I’m them too!”
Like many a community newspaper editor, Al’s job isn’t over when the paper comes off the Ledger’s 1972 King press. Not only did used to help insert sections of the twice-weekly 6,500-circulation Ledger — but Al still gets out there on his scooter and delivers papers. “It’s a good way to meet people and get to know your community,” he explains.
TAKE THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
Al has put his college degree in geography to good use. He’s come up with concept that I like to call Carson’s Theory of Geographic Determinalism.” And it goes something like this: Granville County is bisected roughly west to east by the Tar River, leading Al to postulate: “All the sane people (in the county) live north of the Tar, yeah! And all the crazy people live south of the Tar.”
Carson’s reasoned explanation for the southern Granville affliction: “They’re too close to Raleigh, yessir!”
Makes sense to me.
HIS REAL CLAIM TO FAME
The self-proclaimed “Hot Dog Man,” Al is arguably the Tar Heel state’s leading authority on that humble but beloved Southern delicacy.
Al’s recipe for the perfect dog goes like this: “First of all, it’s not a health food. A hot dog has gotta have grease. Then you gotta have a steamed bun with the mustard on the BOTTOM. That sorta waterproofs the bun. Then you put in your hot dog, next the onions (a hot dog without onions is just not worth eating) then the chili next so the grease goes DOWN, and finally you put the homemade slaw on top…and it’s incredible!”
Warming to his subject, Al continues, “Now, here’s how you know if you’ve got a good hot dog. You know how they wrap ‘em in that wax paper and put ‘em in a brown paper bag? Well, when you carry that bag out to the car and put it in on the car seat, by the time you get back, if you don’t have grease on your car seat, then you don’t have a good hot dog! And that’s a fact!”
The Hot Dog Man of Granville County has done his research. According the Al, the best hot dogs around can be found at: Jones Drug Store and Buy-Rite Grocery and Grill in Oxford, Bill’s in “Little” Washington, Dick’s in Wilson, Booney’s in Rocky Mount, Shorty’s in Wake Forest, Warren’s in Greenville and Paschall’s Grill in Durham.
Reading Al’s column, “From the back burner,” I’m delighted to learn that this week he ended ”an 18-month cheeseburger drought” and “broke bad,” doing a 180 from the life-saving vegetarian diet his wife has him on.
Al rhapsodized: “I had a double cheeseburger my way, with mustard, chili, onion, slaw and dill pickles. It was nirvana never known by any fast food chain. Every bite was a sloppy, juicy heavenly mouthful of flavor with real, cooked-to-order, fresh, hand-patted hamburger.”
If your mouth ain’t watering by now, you are just plain weird.
And I know the Hot Dog (Cheeseburger) Man of Granville County would agree.
–30–
2 commentsTwo-newspaper towns are widespread in N.C.
During this summer while the Carrboro Commons staff members have either graduated or completed J-459 (Community Journalism), this space follows the statewide ramblings of Carrboro Commons advisor Jock Lauterer who, for the last eight summers, has led community journalism workshops at small papers “from Murphy to Manteo.” So far this summer he has visited with the folks at the Shelby Star, the Gaston Gazette, the News of Orange County, the Lake Norman Times, the State Port Pilot in Southport. Herewith is his latest blog from the mountain community of Waynesville where the Smoky Mountain News, a feisty upstart weekly, has made a name for itself with hard-hitting investigative reporting.
by Jock Lauterer
So the two-newspaper town is a thing of the past, right?
Wrong.
Not only do all eight N.C. major metro papers have cross-town print competition of some form, but more surprising is what I’ve found out there in the Tar Heel state’s smaller towns on those “blue highways.”
Jock Lauterer photo
According to this year’s NCPA guide and my own research, no fewer than 29 communities are dual-newspaper towns, and in many cases we’re talking about indy weeklies slugging it out in places one might suppose too small to support even one paper, let alone two.
(For a N.C. dual-newspaper town list, see the end of this story.)
This observation, gleaned over eight years of summer Roadshows on the backroads of North Carolina, gives heart to this old newspaper hound. While the major metro newspaper industry may be in the “Big Chill,” our community papers appear robust.
All this came into focus today when I visited with owner/editor Scott McLeod of the Smoky Mountain News, a free 16k weekly located right around the corner in Waynesville from another excellent indy tri-weekly, the Waynesville Mountaineer.
So how do they do it? The 9-year-old Smoky Mountain News (SMN) has carved its own niche with the aim of being “the regional newspaper west of Buncombe,” Scott explains. And their claim to fame? Investigative reporting!
You read that right.
Scott’s SMN has won NCPA weekly press awards five years running for investigative reporting. And in fact, that’s Scott’s successful formula: instead of trying to be just another typical small-town mountain weekly, the SMN prides itself on issue-oriented, in-depth, long-form, thought-provoking pieces relevant to the region — a four county area west of Asheville.
Thus the SMN is able to successfully compete with at least four incumbent, more traditional community papers in Haywood, Jackson, Swain and Macon counties. It is this very branding and positioning that sets the SMN apart from the Highlander of Highlands, the Cashiers Crossroads Chronicle, the Sylva Herald and Ruralite, the Smoky Mountain Times of Bryson City and the Mountaineer in Waynesville.
“The most important thing we do,” Scott says, “is the choices we make of which stories we do.”
No commentsGene Roberts never got too big for his britches
by Jock Lauterer
Director
Carolina Community Media Project
Everyone needs a hero. Gene Roberts is mine.
Arguably the most decorated living Tar Heel journalist, the 75-year-old Roberts started small before becoming a national figure.
But even when he reached the top, he never turned into what my mama used to call “Mr. Big Britches,” — never forgetting or denigrating his humble Eastern North Carolina journalism origins; and that’s one of the many reasons why I honor him so.
Jock Lauterer photo
To my great delight, I’m not the only one. The North Carolina Press Association named Roberts its 2008 “North Carolinian of the Year” at their annual summer convention in Asheville on Friday.
Introducing Roberts, NCPA President Tim Dearman, publisher of the Statesville Record and Landmark, saluted Roberts as “a native son of North Carolina who never forgot the lessons he learned here.”
Roberts, a Pulitzer-Prize winning former managing editor of the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer (17 Pulitzers from the latter) and co-author of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Race Beat,” got his start at a small community daily,the Goldsboro News-Argus in Wayne County, where he was the farm reporter.
There, the UNC-CH grad made a name for himself with the well-read feature titled “Rambling Through Rural Wayne,” which contained, in Roberts’ own words, “family reunions, recipes for sage sausage, sweet potatoes who looked like Gen. Charles de Gaulle…so the world could be exploding, but the Rambling in Rural Wayne had to come out.”
Let me share two emblematic Roberts stories that he allowed me to print in the third edition of my textbook and field guide, “Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local” (UNC Press, 2006.)
2 commentsAccording to the next governor…
by Jock Lauterer
Director
Carolina Community Media Project
Here at the annual summer convention of the North Carolina Press Association in Asheville, the assembled members of the Fourth Estate are hearing this morning from gubernatorial candidates Pat McCrory and Bev Perdue.
As Tabor-Loris Tribune editor Deuce Niven said, “One of ‘em will be the next governor!”
Jock Lauterer photo
Charlotte Observer Editor Rick Thames introduced the seven-time Charlotte mayor by saying, “I should know better than most that there is a long list of things that Charlotteans don’t agree on. But it’s clear that they do agree on this: Pat McCrory is the right choice
for Charlotte.”
(Thames later stressed to me that this intro was in no way an endorsement by the Observer for McCrory.)
In his opening remarks, McCrory stressed open access to the public and press.”I believe this is an interview with the public,” he said. “People do prefer positive campaigns.”
“Here is what I’ve heard people saying: The current culture of state government is unacceptable.” He called the Easley administration, “inaccessible,” citing secret meetings and corruption and what he called “a culture of arrogance among the power elite…We need to change this culture.”
“There ought to be outrage among the leaders, because there is outrage among the people.”
He also expressed concern about the growth of gangs, saying, “The criminal justice system has been broken for a long time.”
Speaking of the economy, he said, “People are worried about their jobs and the economy. Gas prices are putting a strain on everybody…The family budget is busted because of $4 a gallon gas.”
“The state should take the lead on a comprehensive energy plan, and the governor should be at the head of that.”
He called his plan the McCrory Energy Initiative. He castigated both Democrats and Republicans for not taking action, and said it is time for the two parties to unite behind a common cause.
Conservation comes first, he said, followed by mass transit, including buses and light rail. He urged an expansion of rural bus service. He also called for the incorporation of a 50-year land-use policy— including mass transit corridors, HOV lanes, using “brown fields” as park-and-ride sites. And he said he plans to implement stay-at-home employment options for state workers. He also said he’d implement tax incentives for green practices and building.
3 commentsGreater than good: The State Port Pilot
By Jock Lauterer
Jock Lauterer photo
Director, the Carolina Community Media Project
June 24, 2008
In a day and age when we hear so much doom and gloom about the newspaper industry, it’s a pure pleasure for this old newsie to hit the road each summer to lead workshops at quality, thriving community newspapers.
Maybe you’ve been reading about the buyouts, layoffs and shrinking news hole at McClatchy-owned papers and could use a dose of optimism.
To do that, you might want to take to the “blue highways,” where all-local community papers, including small dailies but especially independently owned weeklies, are holding their own, and then some.
For starters, I wish I could pack the whole glum bunch of professional media funeral mourners into my car and take them to the State Port Pilot of Southport.
The gold standard.
That’s what I call The State Port Pilot. This profitable, innovative, growing, family-owned broadsheet weekly consistently wins annual state press awards for news and advertising by the boatloads.
It’s no accident. The Pilot is a zesty, vital, all-local, visually striking example of what a community newspaper can and should be.
A GOOD NEWSPAPER IN A GOOD COMMUNITY
Their understated motto, “A good newspaper in a good community,” could be more accurate with a couple of greats substituted for those goods.
I give long-time editor Ed Harper much of the credit for crafting this paper into a legendary winner, though Ed will tell you he simply stewards the work of his parents, the late James M. Harper Jr. and the redoubtable Margaret Harper, 91. After years of 70-80 hour work weeks and a heart attack, Ed has wisely begun taking more time for his personal life, yet he still “pilots” the ship with a sure hand.
No commentsThe challenge of covering McCity
By Jock Lauterer
Director, the Carolina Community Media Project
If you want to know how much Mooresville, N.C., has changed in a mere decade, just ask Bill Kiser, editor of the Lake Norman Times.
Jock Lauterer photo
We are having lunch at “Indigo Joe’s,” a hip new sports bar with enough wall-mounted TV sets to keep any sports junkie glassy-eyed.
“My parents’ house was sitting right here,” Bill says matter-of-factly. My bedroom was…about right over there,” he says, turning and motioning towards an adjoining room.
Surrounding our lunch spot, (AKA, Bill’s old homeplace) sprawls Mooresville, revered by NASCAR fans as “Race City, USA.” We are surrounded by malls, fast-food places, shopping centers, apartments, condos, gated communities with generic names, office parks and the sameness of the predictable franchises you see lining four-lanes of Anywhere, USA.
And what is so striking about all this growth, is how NEW it all appears.
“It is new,” Bill agrees, pointing out the window. “That used to be woods. That used to be pasture. None of this was here 10 years ago.”
A native of this burgeoning southern Iredell County region, Bill says his parents watched the economic building boom happening and waited until they got an offer they couldn’t refuse. Then his mom and dad, like many others, moved somewhere else more rural. The way southern Iredell used to be. Before the lake and before the interstate changed everything forever. “It’s hard to find a real native (of Mooresville). They’re selling and moving to Rowan County,” he says.
IT’S A LAKE THING
The “engine” as it were, that drove and continues to drive the regional building boom is Lake Norman, built only in 1961 when the dam was built on the Catawba River, forming an immense body of water that straddles the borders of Catawba, Mecklenburg, Lincoln and Iredell counties, and located equidistant between Hickory to the northwest, Statesville to the north, Salisbury to the east and Charlotte due south.
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A visit to a very cool Web-savvy newspaper
Jock Lauterer photo
by Jock Lauterer
Director, the Carolina Community Media Project
Cool.
That word kept cropping up during my Roadshow visit to the Shelby Star earlier this week.
And while “cool” may not be a word most folks associate with newspapers, but it sure applies to the Star.
For the Star is no ordinary community paper. In fact, it may be one of a kind, and an industry leader too.
Since 2006, the 15,000-circulation Freedom-owned daily in the foothills west of Charlotte has fused the print edition with the paper’s Web version, shelbystar.com in every way conceivable.
And frankly, when I visited last earlier this week, the newsroom had more of the feel, energy and go-go-get-this-up-now of a 24/7 broadcast station.
“The Shelby Star was blown up its newsroom – figuratively,” explains a release from the Southern Newspaper Publisher’s Association. “The paper’s newsroom no longer operates like a traditional newsroom and the newspaper doesn’t read like a traditional newspaper. It’s more local. Easier to read. Easier to digest (no jumps!) More interactive. And it fuses with the paper’s Web site.
“Reporters now consistently work to find every opportunity to enhance a story with online content (usually video). Staff photographers and reporters carry video cameras (usually the inexpensive and simple to use Flip) on assignments. Editors encourage the community to submit comments, photos and video. The newsroom has added an Web master and a Web-savvy managing editor (Joy Scott, the Star’s award-winning former investigative writer) and Web content increasing has fused with the print product.”
For instance, the day I was at the Star, a downtown fender-bender netted Chief Photographer Jeff Melton an easy news photo since it occurred just down the block from our lunch spot. But upon getting back to the newsroom, we learned that there had been two other local wrecks around the same time.
In a manner of minutes Jeff had posted on shelbystar.com a brief story accompanied by his photo and a locator map spotlighting the three wrecks. No waiting for tomorrow morning’s newspaper around here!
And it gets cooler.
Jock Lauterer photo
Meet the Star Car: what looks like souped-up SUV turns out to a reporter’s version of the Batmobile — a rolling mini-newsroom equipped with dash-mounted video camera and wireless laptop all connected to the Star Car’s Wi-Fi antennae that allows reporters and photographers to transmit stories, photos, audio and video live from the field.
How cool is that?
Very cool. In fact, according to Publisher Skip Foster, cool has become something of a marketing factor for the Star.
“People see that we’re not a sleepy little paper,” he says. “The Star Car has become a real brand identification factor. I couldn’t put a dollar figure on its worth.”
The mobile newsroom has been a real boon for covering breaking news. Since its debut last fall, the Star Car has revolutionized how staff covers hard news. Jeff cited a car-train collision, a murder-suicide, and earlier that week, tornado-chasing in the upper end of the county.
(The best tornado photo actually came from a reader who submitted a cell phone cam shot, proving that local readers appear to love their relentlessly local shelbystar.com)
“When we started posting information to shelbystar.com, customers came calling in numbers we never dreamed of,” former Publisher Jennie Lambert told SNPA. Lambert, who has since become publisher of the larger Freedom-owned Gaston Gazette, is quoted by SNPA as recalling a memorable incident two years ago right after the Star had converted to the new dual platform: “A surveillance film from an armed robbery in uptown Shelby generated 7,000 downloads within the first 36 hours. We see this response repeatedly. People are telling us that they want a combination of raw data and journalist-produced reports with more photos, audio and video clips.”
Jock Lauterer photo
The Star Car even changes how they cover local high school football. Now they can transmit video from their game of week, edit back at the newsroom and put it up later that same night.
Not only that, but the new Web presence allows the Star to get more local content out to customers. For instance, the print edition of the Star might print two photos from a Friday night football game, on the Web Jeff says he might post as many as 30 photos from the same game.
Another example: While the paper would print only the photo of the winning homecoming queen, on shelbystar.com customers can find pictures of all 12 candidates AND their escorts.
For the shelbystar.com to work, there has to be staff buy-in. And this was a major theme I witnessed. The Star’s newsroom is comprised of about 18 staffers who are a mix of locals (like chief photog Jeff Melton, a native of Shelby) and bright new kids from other places. But all are Web-savvy and video-friendly. This 20-something generation has grown up using video and digital cameras practically as toys, “so it’s not much of a stretch to get them into our multimedia world,” observes Editor Jon Jimison.
I saw this in action when I was in town. Reporter Kirsten Thomas had covered the Gardner-Webb University commencement the night before. There on today’s front page of the newspaper was her six-inch (no jump) story.
BUT, she had also shot video, which SHE had edited that same night and posted before midnight. Instead of viewing this as a burden, Kirsten, an L.A. native with a master’s in journalism, told me, “With the Internet you’ve got to take advantage of all the mediums.”
And it’s a brave new world that requires risk-taking.
Editor Jon Jimison recalls “it was kind of scary” when the Star put up a drug bust story “completely without editing.” But Jon thinks this is just a new dynamic newsfolk may have to get used to. “There’s not always going to be an editor around,” he says.
Staffers also blog on a regular basis: For instance, today the site features blogs by the editor Jimison harping about the vagaries of local driving, Copy Editor Adam Fenwick (a self-avowed “avid fan of NASCAR”) posts his photos from a recent race, night-shift copy editor High Koontz blogs about a fine day of trout fishing, photog Melton posts photos live from a local wreck and assistant sports editor Gabe Whisnant blogs live, inning by inning, from the local high school’s baseball playoffs.
Jock Lauterer photo
Doubters have only to check out the shelbystar.com Web site to see the variety of breaking local news that the Star covers. Skip Foster’s enthusiastic staff includes an editor, a managing editor, a city editor and a design editor, and the staff is comprised of (depending on how you do the counting) about five reporters, two sports guys (an editor and assistant editor), two photographers, three copy editors, and a Webmaster.
As to measuring up to Charles Kuralt’s “relentlessly local” standard, the print edition I’m looking at today is about 80 percent local, while the Web version of the Star appears to be chocka-block 100 percent local.
From a business side, the experiment is still a work-in-progress. While the Web page views are through the roof, compared to pre-2005 figures, print circulation has remained flat, according to the publisher. Foster notes, “While print revenue is tough, we continue to make headway with online advertising.” The silver lining is that the Star’s online revenue is up 76 percent over last year.
So what are the downsides to fusing the Web and print news operations?
It takes a lot of time in the newsroom to shepherd all those reader-submitted photos and videos, explains editor Jimison.
Also, Publisher Foster says, “We used to talk about ‘feeding the beast,’ but now in this 365 — 24/7 operation, it’s worse — and it’s better. The beast has to be fed many many times a day.” Foster wonders that perhaps the sort of time-consuming, in-depth investigative reporting that the Star was once famous for, has been sacrificed at the expense of the Star’s new “this-just-in” imperative.
Maybe so, but whatever the Star is doing, they sure seem to be doing community journalism right in this new age. I left Skip Foster’s shop wishing I were 20-something again, fresh out of college and full of spit and vinegar.
Next time I visit Shelby, I’m gonna beg a ride-along with Jeff in the Star Car. Whaddaya say? Let’s go tornado-chasing!
On second thought…
The transformation of the Star was the brainchild of Jon Segal, president of Freedom’s Community Newspaper Division, according to a SNPA release about the “Innovation Project,” in which Segal picked the Star to be the company’s incubator for new ideas at the community daily level. The Star Car is a joint project between Freedom Communications, the international newspaper trade association known as IFRA, and the University of South Carolina’s “Newsplex” at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Columbia.
No commentsCarrboro CROP walks for hunger
Photos By Eve Greene
Carrboro Commons Photo Editor
Story By Morgan Siem
Carrboro Commons Writer
Scroll down for a slideshow of the photos.
About 550 walkers came with their dogs, friends and families to the Carrboro Town Commons, the start and finish line of the 22nd annual Chapel Hill-Carrboro CROP Hunger Walk on Sunday, April 13. “CROP” stands for Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty. The CROP Walk supports the Church World Service, which works in about 80 countries to feed the hungry. The Church World Service receives 75 percent of the money raised, while the community keeps 25 percent to help with local efforts to fight hunger. This year, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro CROP Walk’s goal is to raise $53,000, which will mean that the walk will have raised a total of $1 million over the course of 22 years. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro CROP Walk is organized by and supports the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service (IFC) on 110 W. Main St., Chapel Hill. Charles Williams, the administrative assistant at the IFC, took on the role of 2008 CROP Hunger Walk coordinator. So far the IFC has received $35,000 this year and expects more, since it takes about a month for the money to come in, he said. “We are on track, so we’re really excited about it.”
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As gas prices rise, Carrboro looks for alternatives
By Allison McNeill
Carrboro Commons Writer
Cyclists can travel to the heart of Carrboro by the easily accessible bike route. The bike route helps individuals avoid traffic and stop lights, and even better, a bicycle is gasoline-free.
Staff photo by Allison McNeill
With prices soaring to $3.49 for a gallon of regular gas, Carrboro residents and business owners are feeling the pinch in their wallets. The high gas prices have people thinking about their driving habits and considering alternate forms of transportation.
Ben Johnson, who has lived in Carrboro since August, said, “When I have to drive home to the mountains I try to carpool more than ever before. I’m even going to change my voter registration to Orange County so that I don’t have to drive home for that. It’s made me conscious about when and where I’m driving.”
Local business owners are also feeling the effects. David Parker, manager of Amante Gourmet Pizza, has had to deal with gas price related cost increases.
“We now have surcharges on deliveries that come to us,” he said, a sign that other businesses, as well, are trying to find ways to cope.
Although the number of pizzas they deliver has not changed, Parker does foresee some problems occurring if the prices stay at this rate.
“Some drivers don’t want to drive as much,” he said. “When a driver spends $15 to $20 on gas and only makes $15 to $20 on the night, it just isn’t worth it.”
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