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The Charlotte Observer’s 2 top editors depart in leadership shake-up; parent company McClatchy dodges questions on who’s in charge
The top two editors of The Charlotte Observer are leaving the publication. (Screenshot of Observer website)
by Tony Mecia
The Charlotte Observer’s two top editors are leaving the paper as part of a leadership shake-up engineered by its parent company, McClatchy.
According to sources familiar with the company’s operations, executive editor Rana Cash and managing editor Taylor Batten are departing as the company moves to consolidate leadership at its North Carolina outlets. Besides The Charlotte Observer, California-based McClatchy owns The (Raleigh) News & Observer and The (Durham) Herald-Sun.
It’s unclear who is leading The Charlotte Observer. Last year, McClatchy hired a new editor with a background in digital media transformation to lead the Raleigh and Durham papers, which in recent years have started working more closely with Charlotte. In other parts of the country, a single editor runs multiple McClatchy-owned publications in the same state as a way of streamlining management.
The publication has not announced the leadership change to the public. A McClatchy spokeswoman did not respond to The Ledger’s request for information on Wednesday. Cash and Batten didn’t reply to emails and social media direct messages on Wednesday.
QCity Metro first reported the departures on Thursday morning, citing “Observer insiders.” The publication reported that Cash is resigning effective May 1 and that Batten’s position was eliminated.
It quoted the Charlotte Area Association of Black Journalists, which issued a statement expressing “deep disappointment” over Cash’s “displacement.”
The Charlotte Observer was once Charlotte’s dominant media institution, but like other papers, it struggled to adapt to the internet era. Its newsroom staff of fewer than 40 is down more than 80% from its peak 20 years ago, and many of the business-side functions are no longer run out of Charlotte.
Career journalists Rana Cash (left) and Taylor Batten are leaving The Charlotte Observer. (Photos from Observer website)
Cash was hired as The Observer’s leader in 2021 and came from the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News after a career in sports journalism at a variety of publications. She was The Observer’s first Black editor since the paper’s founding 135 years earlier.
Batten joined the paper in 1995 and later became an editor and editorial page editor. His father, Jim Batten, served as The Observer’s executive editor in the 1970s and later became chairman of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, the paper’s previous owner.
Under Cash and Batten’s leadership, The Observer was named a finalist in 2025 for a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest honor, for its coverage of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina.
Tony Mecia, The Ledger’s executive editor, worked as a reporter and editor at The Charlotte Observer from 1998 to 2009. Reach him at [email protected]