About a month ago, Mark Plemmons and I sat on a panel before the Rotary Club of Concord discussing the state of local journalism.
As editor of The Independent Tribune, Plemmons knew better than most how precarious that state had become. Newsrooms across the country have been asked to do more with less as layoffs, shrinking staffs and newspaper closures have become increasingly common.
On Tuesday, that national trend hit close to home.
Plemmons announced that he had been let go from The Independent Tribune, ending a newspaper career that included more than 35 years covering news and sports in Cabarrus County.
“Lee Enterprises dropped the axe on my newspaper career today at 12:05 p.m,” Plemmons wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday evening. “‘Restructuring and your position was eliminated’ is how they described it.”
By Wednesday afternoon, the post had drawn about 200 comments from readers, colleagues and community members expressing disappointment over his departure and offering their support. It had also been shared about a dozen times.
Plemmons spent a combined 27 years and 10 months with The Independent Tribune across three separate stints.
“Thank you all for your support and many kind words,” he wrote. “I don’t know what is going to happen with the paper. I hope it continues but I have serious concerns.”
He said he will continue to operate Radio Free Cabarrus and 485 Sports.
Former Independent Tribune reporter Beth McLaughlin, who worked with Plemmons at the newspaper, shared his announcement on Facebook with a message of her own.
“It looks like they are gonna take our old newspaper out back and shoot it,” she wrote. “I hate this, Mark Plemmons. You were the BEST! Thank you for all you taught me.”
I also worked alongside Plemmons for nearly two years during my time at The Independent Tribune. He was a talented reporter and editor, but he was also a mentor who helped me become a better journalist.
His departure is an enormous loss for Cabarrus County.
‘A mixture of mad, sad and not sure what to believe’
During an interview Wednesday morning, Plemmons said he wasn’t surprised to receive the phone call telling him he was no longer with the newspaper. That didn’t make it hurt any less. He said he got little sleep Tuesday night.
“It’s a mixture of mad, sad and not sure what to believe,” Plemmons told The Cabarrus Compass.
More than anything, Plemmons said he is disappointed with Lee Enterprises and what he views as the company’s lack of investment in The Independent Tribune over the years. Several other positions had been cut with the paper over the past year and a half, including its only full-time news reporter and sports reporter.
“The company over the years has chosen not to invest in us,” he said. “Lee has constantly cut.”
Lee Enterprises owns publications in more than 114 markets across 25 states, according to its website, including the Winston-Salem Journal and Greensboro News & Record in North Carolina and The Buffalo News, which serves the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which serves the St. Louis metropolitan area.
The Cabarrus Compass reached out to Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, North Carolina editor with Lee Enterprises and Plemmons’ supervisor, seeking comment on Plemmons’ departure and the future of The Independent Tribune. He had not responded as of publication.
Plemmons said he had reason for optimism earlier this year when billionaire David Hoffmann became chairman of Lee Enterprises’ board in February.
The Independent Tribune even ran a front-page story distributed across Lee Enterprises newspapers with the headline, “David Hoffmann is investing millions to preserve local newspapers.”
The story portrayed Hoffmann as a billionaire businessman and a believer in local journalism who had backed that commitment with tens of millions of dollars. His Hoffmann Family of Companies recently acquired the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, and Hoffmann has appeared on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list for five consecutive years.
“You know,” Hoffmann said in the story, “We’re running right toward some things that everybody else is running away from.”
For Plemmons, his departure has raised questions about whether that commitment will extend to newspapers such as The Independent Tribune. He said that, too often, lower-level employees seem to bear the brunt of cuts while those higher in a company remain protected.
“I hope that David Hoffmann is true about wanting local news and not just another greedy Wall Street bastard,” Plemmons said, acknowledging the bluntness of his comment and that he was speaking on the record. “It’s time for him to put up or shut up.”
Plemmons also questioned why The Independent Tribune has not received greater investment given Cabarrus County’s rapid growth and population of roughly a quarter-million people.
“The company has always treated this like we are some little podunk,” he said. “The people who make the decisions have no clue what’s here”
Nearly three decades of stories
Plemmons’ connection to the newspaper stretches back even further than the Independent Tribune itself.
The paper was formed on Sept. 29, 1996, through the merger of The Concord Tribune and Kannapolis’ The Daily Independent, though Plemmons said the newspaper’s roots can be traced to at least 1902. By the time of that merger, Plemmons had already been part of that history for more than a decade.
Like many longtime reporters, Plemmons can still vividly recall his first story for the newspaper, written in December 1983. He interviewed an older woman in Concord’s Logan Community who collected food donations to give to others.
Plemmons remembers his editor, Bill Ross, pointing out something that stuck with him: The woman was so committed to helping others that she likely didn’t have enough food for herself.
Asked which stories have stuck with him, Plemmons pointed to the extraordinary range of assignments he covered — from witnessing and reporting on a gas-chamber execution that attracted enough attention for him to be booked for an appearance on The Phil Donahue Show, which ultimately did not happen, to covering a football game played by daycare students at McGill Baptist Church, including his own son.
He also remembers a newsroom that once looked considerably different.
At its peak in the late 1990s, Plemmons recalled, The Independent Tribune employed six to eight full-time news reporters, three sports reporters, two full-time photographers, a part-time photographer and two editors.
But after all those years and all those stories, Plemmons said what he values most isn’t any particular assignment.
“It’s all the people I’ve met,” he said.
Then, tearing up as he reflected on nearly three decades with the paper, Plemmons added: “I love this newspaper.”
A loss bigger than one newsroom
Since launching The Cabarrus Compass in April 2025, I have never viewed Plemmons or The Independent Tribune as competition. I viewed him as an ally in the much larger mission of keeping Cabarrus County informed.
That perspective is personal. I grew up reading The Independent Tribune and later worked alongside Plemmons before losing my own position under similar circumstances. I know firsthand how suddenly a career in local journalism can be upended.
I also remained a reader. I especially enjoyed Plemmons’ longtime column, The Friday Five, which became a familiar part of the newspaper for many readers over the years.
Change is nothing new in the media industry, particularly in local journalism. But the changes of the past two decades have increasingly meant fewer reporters, smaller newsrooms and communities with fewer people watching their local governments, schools and institutions.
According to The State of Local News project from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, about 50 million Americans lived in counties with limited or no access to local news as of 2025. The report identified 212 counties without a single local news source and another 1,525 with only one.
Close to 3,500 newspapers have disappeared since 2005 — nearly 40% of all local U.S. newspapers — with more than 130 shutting down in the past year alone.
The losses extend to the journalists and other employees who produce and support that coverage. Since 2005, more than 270,000 newspaper jobs have disappeared, a decline of more than 75%, according to Medill.
Those statistics can sometimes feel distant or abstract.
On Tuesday, Cabarrus County received another reminder that they are neither.
Petition to move the Friday Five to the Cabarrus Compass please
I will miss Mark. I have also canceled my sub to Indy Tribune. And I agree that we should have the Friday Five on the Cabarrus Compass!