Charlotte Observer biz reporter joins editorial board

Charlotte Observer business editor John Arwood and editorial page editor Taylor Batten sent out the following announcement on Monday:

We’re very pleased to announce that Eric Frazier is the newest member of the Observer’s editorial board.

The paper’s newest associate editor brings considerable strengths as a writer and thinker, with skills honed over more than two decades as a journalist in the Carolinas. He first joined the Observer in 1992 in the Rock Hill bureau. In his time here, he has covered virtually every beat in the room — city hall, the courts, family issues, education, business and more — and also took a turn as an editor in metro.

What drives Eric, he will tell you, is the desire to make a difference. His 2005 work with Pam Kelley on problems with North Carolina’s group homes for mentally ill children prompted then-Gov. Mike Easley to order the inspection of 1,000 group homes. Later he spent a year reporting a heart-rending story about two boys, both from fractured families, who faced sharply different futures after high school. That narrative won the Thomas Wolfe Award for the best newspaper story in the state.

Eric’s deep roots in South Carolina allow him to bring a keen sense of geography and history to the editorial board. He grew up in an isolated part of the S.C. Lowcountry called Pyne — on land that was part of a rice plantation where his ancestors worked as slaves. He wrote about connecting with this history in an unforgettable 2010 piece, “My night in a slave cabin.” That experience, he wrote, taught him that “history lives and breathes through us, snapping the present into sharper focus.”

Eric will do great things on the editorial board. Please congratulate him on his new role. He starts Nov. 17.

If you’re interested in working in Business news, please see John Arwood this week.