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Last Sunday afternoon, I started getting messages about the apparent death of Dr. Tim Markley, former superintendent of New Hanover County Schools. Several sources were telling me he had passed away during the Tour de Blueberry, a charity bike ride that's part of Burgaw’s beloved annual Blueberry Festival.
Sunday evening, WECT ran a short story that someone had died after experiencing an unspecified medical emergency during the bike ride, noting that EMS crews had been unable to review the unnamed victim.
By Monday, I’d tracked down an online obituary (although the site was loaded with malware) and a few online social media posts from family members, providing reasonably reliable confirmation that Markley had been the one who died during the bike race. A few more people had reached out, pushing WHQR to publish an article or run an obituary.
I declined, but I did post something on my personal Facebook page, confirming I was aware of it. I wrote that I didn’t have anything productive to add, and that his death was, for me, the “sad end to a sad story.” That’s because, from the moment I met Markley in his office in the district’s central administration building, most of what I knew about him was stained with scandal. It seemed indecorous to say anything more at the time – a week later, I still partially feel that way.
Within a few hours of posting, I’d gotten dozens of reactions. Some people, even those who’d been critics of Markley, shared their thoughts, prayers, and condolences for the family. Some were surprised, having not heard Markley’s name in many years. Others had never heard of him – and when they asked who he was, some of the responses started getting fairly negative. Some of the comments became so angry and aggressive that I eventually deleted the post. I’m not telling people what to think, or how to remember Markley, but the goal of my post had been to let people know that I was aware but if his passing wasn’t planning a story – and that had been overshadowed.
The next day, a few sources continued to push me to consider a story. I told several people, with all due respect, that I imagined WECT would have a piece out very soon that would say everything I thought there was to say – and by Tuesday afternoon, WECT had confirmed Markley’s death.
The article was short and to the point, with no byline:
Dr. Tim Markley, former New Hanover County Schools (NHCS) Superintendent, died during a charity bike ride at the annual NC Blueberry Festival in Burgaw, according to an online obituary.
Markley reportedly had a medical issue during the ride on June 21, and EMS crews were not able to revive him.
While Markley worked for NHCS for about a decade, he resigned in 2020 amid a school sex scandal that embroiled the district.
There will be a celebration of life at 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 28, at Kure Beach First Baptist Church.
The comment section quickly became a combat zone, far worse than the comments on the Facebook post I’d deleted the night before: over 300 comments and nearly 80 shares (which had their own comments). Some were upset that WECT had mentioned the circumstances of Markley’s resignation, some were mad that the mention had been so oblique, and still others were concerned that there was no reference to the victims of the scandal. In my personal opinion, the piece was responsibly brief, and expounding on it would have exacerbated the discord, not quelled it.
With respect to those angry comments, as someone who covered Markley as superintendent – and then defendant in several civil suits – for many contentious years, I can empathize with all of those points of view. But the chaotic churning of emotional responses to the story on social media underscored for me why I hadn’t thought it beneficial for WHQR to run its own piece.
So, with a little distance from the story, I want to unpack my reasoning.
In general, WHQR doesn’t publish obituaries – by which I mean the type of third-party notices you’ll find online and in some papers. I don’t have anything against them, but they’re already out there for people who want to find them, and I don’t think we’d be adding anything by taking the time to republish them. It’s part of our broader philosophy: we understand that news is an ecosystem, where people get information from a lot of different sources. If there’s misinformation or incomplete reporting out there, we’ll often do a piece – but we try not to duplicate reporting just because.
I will say, while we don’t run general obituaries, we have written pieces about prominent members of our community, including founding WHQR general manager Michael Titterton and Tony Rivenbark, a pillar of Wilmington’s theater community and a familiar voice to WHQR listeners. In these cases, WHQR had a personal relationship with these people – and our listeners and readers expected us to share our unique perspective on them. In other words, we had something to add to the conversation about their passing and the celebration of their legacies that other outlets might not have.
We’ve also written about public officials when they’ve passed away, including the tragic death of County Commissioner Deb Hays, because they were important community figures but also because their passing had direct political consequences (like appointing new officials). That is to say, it wasn’t news just because a recognizable person had passed, but because it had implications for WHQR’s local government reporting.
In the case of Dr. Markley, who had not been a public figure for many years, I didn't see a news hook in his death – as cold as that might sound, that calculus is part of editorial judgment. Given our limited bandwidth and resources, we can’t write about every passing, and we have to decide which deaths warrant reporting. That’s a tough call, and there will often be passionate disagreement about our choices, but I hope we can at least be transparent about the process.
For Markley, we considered that perhaps his passing will play some role in the ongoing civil suits against the district, one result of the “scandal.” I could be wrong, but I suspect that, after years and years of depositions and affidavits, the court record will stand as it is. Otherwise, his death won’t impact policy or administration; it plays no role in the many ongoing debates and problems in our public schools.
What’s more, and more to the point, in the wake of Markley’s death, I had nothing unique to celebrate, nothing positive about his personal or professional life to add to the conversation. He certainly had successes in his career, but it's not what my reporting was about. I never got to know him as a man, a husband, and a father with a family, someone with hobbies and passions – although he was no doubt all those things.
I totally understand those who wanted to hear more elegiac things about Tim Markley, the person, not the public figure. But I’m not the right person to write a eulogy, nor is it my job. For those who wanted a blistering rebuke of an obituary, including the advocates and families of the victims of that elided scandal, I understand that, too, even if I didn't personally feel like the announcement of his death was the appropriate occasion for a full accounting of the allegations against him.
In the end, everything I’ve written about him remains online. It’s not pretty, but that part was – and is – my job. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d suggest two long pieces: one about the victims of child sexual abuse in New Hanover County Schools, and another about the systemic issues in the district.)
I’m aware that, by explaining why I didn’t write about Markley’s death earlier this week, I am, of course, writing about it, and spending more time and energy than a short article would have required. However, given the questions and comments about the decision not to run a story, it seemed worthwhile to explore the situation, which we'll likely face again in the future, as sensitively as possible.
Sometimes, in this business, we must speak ill of the dead – but only when we feel we can fairly speak for the dead, too.
