Editor’s Note: As 2025 comes to a close, Asheville Watchdog staffers take you back and inside their most memorable stories and news events of the year.

Our mission at Asheville Watchdog is, of course, to inform the public. But my biggest stories of the year, the four installments of the Losing Our Soul series, were almost as much about informing me.

Before I started working for The Watchdog in July, I knew Asheville as a visitor. On infrequent trips from my home near Brevard, I’d picked up only the most basic geography: Pack Square, yes; Pritchard Park, no. My knowledge of its politics pretty much stopped with U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards and his high-profile predecessor, Madison Cawthorne. 

On stops at Asheville restaurants and breweries I’d barely noticed that I seldom saw a face that wasn’t white. Most of what I knew about Asheville’s once-thriving Black neighborhoods came from Look Homeward Angel, especially author Thomas Wolfe’s descriptions of delivering papers in Southside. (Which he didn’t call by that name or, in fact, any other name that could be published here, something we in Asheville should think about when we embrace Wolfe as a native son. The guy was a flat-out racist.)

So when I read the list of story ideas handed to me after I started at The Watchdog, one title stood out as a chance to write and learn: “Asheville’s Declining Black Population.”

As Asheville had grown in recent decades, explained the underlying paragraph, its African American population had declined slightly by number and, as a percentage, had plummeted.

It was the kind of big-but-obvious story that people like to say is hiding in plain sight, the kind that would allow me to make contacts in Asheville, immerse myself in its history, politics, housing patterns and geography.

Though I recognized the challenges of taking on this project as a white reporter, I didn’t see why that should stop me. I thought then what I thought when I pursued previous, similar subjects in Florida and Brevard and what I think now. It’s possible to write fairly and authoritatively about other groups of people if you put in the time and effort to understand their perspectives.

But that meant I had my work cut out.

I had to make contacts with Black political and religious leaders, with activists and residents – both old people who had lived through decades of inequitable policies and young people facing their consequences.

I listened to personal stories, researched the context and often had to listen again after I knew enough to make sense of what people had been trying to tell me. It’s one thing to hear a resident say their family was displaced by urban renewal. You come up with a whole new list of questions once you know this “slum clearance” resulted in the destruction of more than 1,000 homes and dozens of businesses, the loss of tens of millions of dollars of generational wealth.

Considering how dramatically urban renewal reshaped long-established city neighborhoods surrounding downtown, I came to know a foundational chapter of Ashville’s history. As one academic researcher told me, “If you don’t understand urban renewal in Asheville, then you don’t understand current Asheville.”

Exploring the debate over gentrification served as a crash course on some of the biggest political issues facing the city – sky-high housing costs and the social price paid by building an economy around drawing tourists and retirees.

Researching potential solutions to the exodus of talented young Black residents introduced me to the world of public agencies and nonprofits seeking to provide educational and economic opportunity to underserved groups.

Some of this was just catching up, learning the basics I needed to do my job. But reporting is only worthwhile when you uncover new information, which is why it’s called news.

I got to visit a great, flying-under-the-radar soul food restaurant, Sistas on Montford. I heard from Asheville City Council member Sheneika Smith a perspective I hadn’t heard or read anywhere else – that for Black natives of Asheville, it’s easy to feel like a stranger in your own hometown.

There have been many stories about urban renewal, but none, at least in the Google era, that quoted the transcript of the 1966 meeting that launched the first major renewal project in the city. It was tragic to read the words of white leaders so certain but so wrong they knew what was best for Black people, and the futile objections of residents who wanted nothing more than to keep their homes. But it was also accompanied by the thrill of discovery that reporters live for.

The wariness I encountered when I started interviewing subjects for this story proved to me that, on one major point, we already agreed. I wanted to feature a population that, judging from my ignorance at least, hadn’t been featured enough. They felt their story had never been adequately told.

I could have never broken through this barrier alone, which brings up the fact that this wasn’t my project, it was a Watchdog project. 

Four-part series was a team effort

John Boyle, a co-author of these stories, managed to fit in a remarkable amount of reporting between his regular duties as a columnist. Contacts were willing to talk because of the unmatched trust he’s built up as a journalist, who, as the tagline of his stories says, “has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 2Oth century.”

With his famous ability to (it seems) effortlessly produce effortless prose, he was able to take over the writing when I was stuck.

We both depended heavily on the research skills of The Watchdog’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and co-founder, Sally Kestin. 

Our reporting of a story all about population happened to coincide with the government shutdown’s disabling of the bedrock source of population data, the U.S. Census Bureau website.

I spent sleepless nights pondering journalistic disaster. Sally spent days mastering a vast but arcane academic database of historical census information. She was the project’s safe cracker, extracting informational gems.

Visual journalists Starr Sariego and Katie Linsky Shaw’s photographs enriched the project greatly, and Katie’s photo illustrations and her work gathering historic photos enhanced our readers’ understanding. 

Managing Editor Keith Campbell saw the outline of four stories in the formless mound of information I’d gathered and shaped them into tightly focused articles.

Which is to say I learned a ton from my colleagues while I was learning more about the city. I can now distinguish between Coxe and Asheland avenues, the East End from Southside. I’m fully aware of the location of Pritchard Park. I’ve been introduced to and interviewed Asheville City Council members and city staffers.

Meanwhile, our team produced a series about the causes and consequences of a major population shift, one with deep and lasting implications for Black and white residents. And shortly after the project’s conclusion, we held a free community event at the Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Community Center, which you can watch here.

If you haven’t read these stories, please do. I’m pretty sure you’ll learn something.

Asheville Watchdog welcomes thoughtful reader comments on this story, which has been republished on our Facebook page. Please submit your comments there.

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Dan DeWitt is The Watchdog’s deputy managing editor/senior reporter. Email: ddewitt@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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