About the SHR
Area of interest
Our specific area of interest is the region of North Carolina’s southwestern mountains that includes Jackson, Macon, Swain, Graham Clay and Cherokee Counties, the Qualla Boundary and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
These mountains are part of the southern Appalachian mountain chain and the Blue Ridge.
Our Mission
The Southern Highland Reader seeks to serve its readership by elevating understanding of the region it serves – the people, the places, and the challenges that face them both.
News
It’s our goal to provide context, background and perspective for news stories from across the southern mountains. We do this through a mix of our own writing and by comparing and contrasting the work of other journalists, who will be credited and linked.
Navigational Notes
At it’s foundation, this site is a blog–a sequential stream of journal entries. We’ve added supplemental pages to highlight “feature” entries, set in a loose newspaper format.
Comments
Our “letters to the editor” are moderated. They are posted at our discretion. If they are coarsely worded but still make a point, we might edit them and include them. If they include more than one link, they might not make it through our spam filters. Personal attacks might be edited and included, but more than likely not.
