Email is a dangerously insensitive means of delivering bad news. So when my colleague and co-founder of WRAL TechWire told me via email that Randall Gregg was dead I shook and muttered “No.”

Randall, also known as Randy, will be buried Saturday after dying in a motorcycle accident.

He was only 44 years old.

I am proud to say he was a friend, a colleague, sometimes a competitor – and a good editor who taught me a lot.

Here’s my favorite Randall story:

One year he shows up at the Raleigh Spy Conference, which I covered for Raleigh Metro Magazine. Randall kicked my butt, cranking out a host of stories over three days that I simply couldn’t match.

Yes, Randall had a blend of skills that others imitate but couldn’t match:

  • He was Road Runner FASSSST but accurate
  • He wrote with CONTEXT as well as nuance
  • He could be incredibly PROLIFIC without sacrificing quality or ripping off the ideas of others and not attributing them
  • He had a KNACK for scoops – the mother lode for reporters
  • He could ask TOUGH QUESTIONS without being abrasvie
  • He wasn’t INTIMIDATED by the powerful
  • And his stories were ENTERTAINING as well as informative

Yep, he was good.

  • Some Personal Thoughts

Yes, the Triangle’s technology community owes the success it enjoys today to not only entrepreneurs and visionary business leaders. But some credit also is due a handful of journalists who faithfully, heartily and with a lot of sweat reported on what happened here from before the “dot com” boom to bust to today’s resurgence.

Among them was Randall. And he will be missed by me for many reasons.

Allan graciously gave WRAL TechWire permission to reprint a tribute he wrote about Randall{[/a}} for The TechJournal. Randall and brother Eric launched The Triangle Tech Journal as a print publication as the “dot com” boom exploded.

Early on, Randall and Eric gave me a chance to write for them: Four articles a month.

The two helped open doors for me in a community that I had first joined as an entrepreneur when helping to launch Capitol Broadcasting’s Internet Service Provider Interpath in 1993. I wrote for other publications, such as The Spectator and Triangle Business Journal, but writing for the Greggs was great fun. Given as much space as I wanted to write and choices of topics then edited with an encouraging, gentle but knowing set of hands, Randall helped me a great deal. 

He also was a friend.

Even when I left to launch Local Tech Wire as a competitor in the fall of 2001, Randall remained a friend.

  • Quite a Journalistic Band … 

But back to my point about journalists and the Triangle tech community’s success.

With a then-big reporting staff at The News & Observer as well as The Business Journal, The Triangle Tech Journal, Tech Wire and other online publications, Triangle tech startups, investors and emerging tech firms such as Red Hat received in-depth (and very competitive) coverage. The reporters and editors helped RTP raise its profile.

Internet best-selling author and N&O columnist Paul Gilster tops the list. Allan Maurer, a wordsmith and aggressive reporter, too. And WRAL’s Tom Lawrence, who was among the first TV journalists to make the Internet understandable for viewers. Reporters Cal Chang Yocum of Tech Wire and Christina Dyrness of The N&O played second fiddle to no one.

The landscape is far different today but as I told an angel investor over lunch this week:

“If you are an entrepreneur and can’t get publicity about what you are doing in this town then you are doing something seriously wrong.”

Randall helped create a journalistic environment that helped little companies become giants, bigger companies become legends (Randall loved to cover SAS and Jim Goodnight), and also the legends and big companies that went bust.

  • A Busy Entrepreneur, Too

Over the years since 2002, Randall founded and participated in a variety of other adventures. He also continued to report, photograph and write about a region he loved. His heart was that of a journalist even as he started several businesses.

“We never saw him without a camera and he published four books of his photographs,” Allan noted in his tribute.

Randall’s other brother, Crash, who runs the Raleigh Downtowner website and newspaper, added: 

“He volunteered as an embedded journalist accompanying the Air Force in Haiti right after the earthquake, covered Hurricane Irene in Pamlico as it happened and wrote thousand of articles in his pursuit to tell the untold story. He was proud to have met four American Presidents, was interviewed on CNN and other national news shows numerous times and published four photography books of his travels and adventures.”

As Allan noted, Randall is survived by his mother and father, Grace and Stewart Gregg of the Greensboro area, and his brothers. “He leaves behind a legacy of journalistic and philanthropic accomplishments and a large group of friends and family around the globe who will miss him dearly,” Allan wrote.

A funeral service will be held on Saturday at 11 am at First Baptist Church of Summerfield, located at 2300 Scalesville Rd, Summerfield, NC 27358. In lieu of flowers, a contributing fund has been set up in Randall’s name at www.crowdrise.com/randallgregg

Next week, Eric will be putting on the Southeast Venture Conference in Atlanta – the biggest VC show in the region. Randall played a role in getting it launched.

If there is a moment of silence and recognition for Randall, he deserves it.

Dang it, Randall, I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you all this before you died. 

Here’s a tip of the Skinny’s WRAL cap to you. You deserve it – and much more.