By: Lesley Messer A small daily newspaper in North Carolina is currently under investigation by its corporate parent after allegations surfaced that reporters made up quotes in interviews featured on the front page.
At issue is an item called "Two Cents Worth" that appears daily in The Reidsville Review. In the feature, interview subjects respond to a question and their answers are published alongside their names and photographs.
In May, the item allegedly featured people who do not live in Reidsville and did not respond as reported.
?We ran an apology in this morning's paper to our readers,? said Ray Kozakewicz, manager of corporate communications for Media General Inc., the paper's parent company. "We've launched an investigation. We're looking at everything."
One of the people quoted in ?Two Cents Worth? was Emma Burgin, a senior at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a resident of nearby Greensboro.
According to the Associated Press, Burgin said she had never been interviewed by the Review and had never been to Reidsville.
?I honestly never heard of the Reidsville paper before,? she told the AP. Burgin is currently a reporting intern with the Knight Ridder/Tribune news service in Washington.
Burgin did say, however, that two of her former coworkers at the Daily Tar Heel, the UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper, had apologized to her for using her name and photo in the "Two Cents Worth" feature. Her photo was reportedly taken from a popular social networking Web site, thefacebook.com. Burgin declined to name the co-workers in question.
Reidsville Review editor Jeff Sykes declined to comment to E&P Thursday morning.
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