 It had a readership of 4,250 in 2019 and its website had 30,000 visitors.Jeff Byrd purchased the paper in 1989 and sold it in 2010 to Boone Newspapers Inc. of Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Its offices are housed in the Bank of Tryon Building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.The paper doesn't carry any wire stories; as its publisher, Jeff Byrd, said in 1993, "It's all local.