| Type | Weekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Internet[1] |
| Owner | Hammer Publishing |
| Publisher | William Hammer |
| Editor | John Hammer |
| Founded | 1991 |
| Headquarters | 216 West Market Street Greensboro, NC 27401 United States |
| Official website | www.rhinotimes.com |
The Rhinoceros Times is a free weekly conservative news and opinion newspaper published in Greensboro, North Carolina, founded in 1991. A Charlotte, North Carolina print edition was founded in 2002 and discontinued in 2008.[1]
Contents |
The Rhino is owned by brothers John and William Hammer and is edited by John Hammer.
The newspaper features editorial columns by noted science fiction and fantasy author Orson Scott Card and local investigative reporting by New York Times best-selling author Jerry Bledsoe.
The back page of the paper features a regular commentary article by editor John Hammer, Under the Hammer.[2] In the feature, Hammer is highly critical of President Barack Obama, referring almost exclusively to him as either "Barack Hussein Obama" or by his last name.[3][2] Hammer also promotes conspiratorial and fringe theories that Obama is a "secret Muslim" and was not born in the United States.[2][3]
Syndicated features include comics, such as Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine. Also featured are the New York Times crossword puzzle and a Sudoku puzzle.
The newspaper published two of the controversial Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons in February, 2006.[4]
In July 2009, the paper won a $25,000 judgement for punitive damages and the against an Arkansas-based Ku Klux Klan group and its leader Thomas Robb.[5] The case was filed in 2006 when the paper alleged the Klan inserted its fliers into Times newspapers which then went to customers.[5] The Klan counter-sued for defamation, but lost.[5] In addition to punitive damages, the paper reportedly received the nation's first permanent injunction against the KKK,[5] barring them from using the paper to distribute their literature in the future.
In June 2011, a controversy was created when The Rhino Times published a cartoon by Geof Brooks that featured two African American men in orange prison jumpsuits, in the front yards of what appears to be two suburban homes.[6] The first character states, "Geez! Dey builds a brand new jail wit' three squares [square meals] an' cable...", and the second character concludes, "And dey puts us on house arrest so's dey can pays for it!"[7]
Editor John Hammer apologized in the next edition of the paper, claiming that the cartoonist had intended the prisoners to be caucasian;[8][9] in his apology, Hammer did not address why the cartoon had been colorized as it was, nor the failure of the editors to catch the mistake. The Greensboro News & Record reported that Hammer called Guilford County Commissioners Chairman Melvin "Skip" Alston to apologize for the cartoon.[6] Alston commented that he felt the cartoonist "might have had some racial intent."[6]