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JIM MORRILL
The longtime Observer reporter on retirement, the altered states of politics and journalism, and how he’s weathered a devastating personal loss BY GREG LACOUR | PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICK HOVIS
LAST YEAR, nearly four decades after The Charlotte Observer had hired him as a reporter in its Rock Hill, South Carolina, bureau—and after 11 national conventions, 10 Presidential elections, and too many campaigns and interviews to even try to count—Jim Morrill decided that, at 70, it was time to retire. Morrill had been the paper’s primary political reporter since 1987, chronicling the Tar Heel State’s emergence as one of the most
JUNE 2021 // CHARLOTTE
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