Josephus, though his racial views softened, reflected the separatism of many Carolinians in the first half of the twentieth century. The paper itself changed. It eventually hired Claude Sitton, a Pulitzer winner notable for his civil rights reporting in his days with the _New York Times_. The _N & O_ in some ways became the _Times South_. Reporters fought racial injustices. Frank III portrayed the paper of that era as never having met a cause it didn’t like. What’s more, he said the _N & O_, although exposing politicians on the take, was too quick to editorialize for local programs that raised local tax rates. I myself favored the crusading kind of newspaper—in fact, one risk of a high-tech orientation was that it could turn a newspaper into an uncritical cheerleader for business if editors were not careful—but I could understand Daniels’ concern over government spending. At any rate some felt that the _N & O_ was losing touch with many readers, and so Frank Jr. and the others on the board of directors agreed to let Frank III serve as executive editor in the wake of Sitton’s retirement. The contrast between the old and new editors couldn’t have been more stark. Sitton was a formal man who insisted that his reporters wear suits and ties. Frank III relaxed the dress code. In place of a sign with his editorial title, he stuck up one that said simply, “Frat Man.” Old-timers groaned that this young Duke alum lacked enough journalistic experience. The man had been the newspaper’s _operations manager_. Wasn’t it apparent? For each year of experience on the State side of newspapering, you could subtract two years of experience with the Church. Even under Sitton, the reporters typed away on a modern publishing system for newspapers. But that was more or less all they did—write. Many could just as well have been pounding away on old Smith Coronas. They hadn’t any desire to learn the technology, not when there were doors to knock on, vote counts to check, political corruption to chronicle, Ku Klux Klan rallies to report, and courthouse records to search the old-fashioned way. Young Daniels set to work changing all that, and with the most surpassing of allies. The news librarians almost instantly grasped the potential of computerized databases. So did Pat Stith, the senior investigative reporter. The _N & O_ would go on to collect state records showing traffic or hunting violations, or others, and then seek out patterns. “We analyzed all the speeding tickets,” said Daniels, “and found out what percentage of tickets were given at each mile-per-hour level. It turns out that if you go 63 miles per hour in a 55-mile-per-hour zone, you have less than a 1 percent chance of getting a ticket.” Via the same quantitative techniques, the _N & O_ could evaluate the programs of local government. By the time Daniels had effected his transformation, he had squeezed dozens of personal computers into an already-crowded newsroom.