Arkansas Publisher Weekly: January 12, 2023

Guest Column:

Kevin’s To-Do List

for 2023: Tips to get a good start to the new year

retires Arkansas Press Association Publisher Weekly

By Wesley Brown

Mark Keith holds the first issue of the Little River Journal, January 2021

Herald were shut down.

Having no newspaper experience or background, Keith founded the Hope-Prescott News with partner Wendell Hoover after a former GateHouse Media executive told him that the 89-yearold Hope Star was being shuttered because “the economics were not there.”

“I told him, ‘I am going to make you eat your words.’ I may not be very good, but I am going to be local. Since then, we have never looked back,” said Keith, recalling that fateful conversation.

Hope-Prescott News is a 3,200-circulation weekly newspaper that employs five part-time employees besides Keith and Hoover. Headquartered in Hope, the weekly is distributed in Hempstead and Nevada cities with limited deliveries in Howard, Little River, Miller and Lafayette counties.

Keith said the success of the Hope-Prescott News led him to use the same business model to form the team that now operates the Little River Journal in the state’s southernmost county abutting Oklahoma and Texas.

Founded at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first edition of Little River Journal rolled off the press on Jan. 14, 2021, as the lone newspaper in the county. Besides Keith, the other founders are Dale Gathright, who serves as editor, and Terry Snead, who oversees advertising for the eight-page weekly.

Gathright said the common thread all three men share is their background in rural radio. A longtime radio manager, Keith still hosts a radio talk show three times a week in Magnolia in Columbia County.

“I think if print is going to survive it has to be free, and that has not been a problem because I came from radio, where we didn’t have any kind of subsidy, so we have had to make our own way,” said Keith.

And although many people continue to advise him that rural newspapers are a dying medium, the Hempstead County resident said the closure of smalltown dailies and weeklies in

Continued on Page 2

Journal thriving in southwest Arkansas; celebrates two years

Arkansas and across the U.S. has left a “community service” void that can only be filled by local entrepreneurs, not outsiders and investment bankers.

In highlighting the continuing need for print newspapers in rural areas, Keith added that many online news publications force readers “to do things that they don’t want to do.” For example, he said, many Little River Journal readers and advertisers cannot create virtual newsfeeds because they do not have the same broadband access and speeds as online readers in urban areas.

“There are some people who are rushing to put everything online, but in our part of the world, there are still a lot of people who are not online and don’t want to be online,” said the 59-year-old newspaperman. “I think the rural newspaper industry has been written off prematurely. There is still a component of people who want to hold a newspaper in their hands.

“And I don’t think that is going away tomorrow. In ten years, I don’t know,” Keith continued. “But I think the newspaper industry needs to look at a totally different model. I look around and see people are losing business and penetration with a certain audience because they insist that everything should be online.”

Gathright agrees. He points back to the successful launch of the Little River Journal two years ago, saying it continues to fill the gap left by the closure of the long-time Little River News in Ashdown as its owners retired.

“There was a void there. There were a couple of attempts to do a paper following the Little River News, which had been there over 100 years,” said Gathright. “And all the principals involved in this – the owner (Keith), the salesman (Snead), and me (the editor) – we are all radio guys, and we brought with us a different style of writing and (managing).”

Like Keith, Gathright said another key to the Little River Journal’s success is that all three founders are connected to the local community and do not approach running the newspaper like a traditional rural daily or weekly. For instance, while Gathright writes and edits the stories in the Little River County newspaper each week, he also runs a small grocery store nearby Saratoga. That unincorporated community is partly located in both Howard and Hempstead counties, and

only miles away from the Little River County line.

The Little River Journal was launched during the pandemic, and Gathright said it has provided essential news to the local community during the health crisis. Today, he said, the rural weekly remains viable because it benefits from certain tools that have caused the demise of other smaller newspapers, such as the internet and social media.

“One of the things that is now kind of unique to us is that we don’t have a central office. I am working in a falling down country store where I can do my radio and newspaper thing,” Gathright said jokingly.

The former Nashville, Ark., radio host said while some larger newspapers are dependent on having staff to find, write and edit stories, he works remotely and can find local, state and national news from a myriad of online sources. He also scrolls local Facebook pages to find interesting community tidbits that range from obituaries and school events to job announcements and business grand openings. He said that the rural newspaper also doesn’t need a full or part-time photographer because everyone in the county has a camera on their phone.

As the newspaper’s ad guy, Snead is a part-time teacher in Ashdown who is well-known in the community as a former advertising salesman for a now-defunct radio station. Layout for the Little River Journal and the Hope-Prescott News is done by Dewayne Holloway of the Montgomery County News in Mount Ida, while the graphic/ad designer is Greg Wolf of Clarksville. Keith distributes both papers on Wednesday and Thursday of each week.

Both Gathright and Keith said while the rural startup newspaper has been profitable, there is still room to grow. Occasionally, they said, the Ashdown-based weekly has had to ramp up to 10 pages to handle all the ads and news content. That page count could become permanent as more advertisers come aboard.

“We have found there is interest in our newspaper on the border towns of the counties and communities that we serve,” said Keith, noting that some readers want copies of both the Little River Journal and the Hope-Prescott News

“I am not going to be rich, but I am making a good living,” he said. “And I am happy that I am serving my community.”

Arkansas Times Senior Editor Brantley retires

Max Brantley, senior editor of the Arkansas Times in Little Rock, announced his retirement, effective that day, on Sunday via his Arkansas Blog. January 8 marked the 50th anniversary of his Arkansas journalism career.

Brantley started at the Arkansas Gazette as a reporter on the City Desk in 1973. He joined the Arkansas Times as its first editor in 1991, as it transitioned from a monthly magazine into a weekly newspaper. The Times returned to a monthly magazine format in 2019, but continues daily news reporting online at arktimes. com.

Brantley launched Arkansas’s first online political blog, the Arkansas Blog, in 2004. The blog has since grown to be “widely read and indispensable,” according to Arkansas Business.

“I’ve long said that, through the heavy opinion and bluster, and our ups and downs, [Brantley] was by far the best I ever saw in news instincts and rapid conversion to fact-gathering,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Columnist John Brummett tweeted in response to the announcement.

Brantley said Lindsey Millar, who has been editor of Arkansas Times since 2011, and his team will take over the daily blogging duties, although he may continue to “make occasional contributions.”

Maggie Haberman speaking engagement shifts to virtual

The planned event featuring journalist Maggie Haberman, hosted by the Political Animals Club of Central Arkansas and the Central Arkansas Library System, has shifted to a virtual format and will now take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 19, via Zoom.

Haberman will talk about her new book, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” CALS Executive Director Nate Coulter will serve as moderator.

The speaking engagement was originally scheduled as an in-person event last November then rescheduled for Jan. 11,

but was ultimately canceled.

Admission for the virtual event is free. Registration is at https://bit.ly/3irtDMW

Haberman has worked for The New York Times as a political campaign correspondent since 2015. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018, and has twice been a member of a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, first in 2021 and then again in 2022.

Before joining The New York Times, Haberman worked as a political reporter at Politico. She has also worked at The New York Post and The New York Daily News.

“ “

A good reader or viewer is a person who is alert about her newspaper or news channel. A good reader or viewer will never waste her hard-earned money in watching or reading just anything. She is serious. She will have to think if the news she is consuming is journalism or sycophancy.

—Ravish Kumar

changes to info@arkansaspress.org to

updated online and included in the Arkansas Publisher Weekly.

Max Brantley

Maggie Haberman

APW Communications Contest early deadline Jan.

The early entry deadline for the 2023 Communications Contest sponsored by Arkansas Press Women is Wednesday, Jan. 18.

The contest has a category for almost every communications professional, with numerous sub-categories for writing and editing in print and online, plus categories for photography, graphics and design, web and social media, podcasts, public relations campaigns and materials, advertising, radio, television and more.

The professional contest also includes a collegiate section, with categories for

writing, reporting, photography and design for student publications, plus categories for radio and television, podcasting, public relations tactics and faculty advisers.

For more information and to enter visit nfpwcontest.secure-platform.com/a/ organizations/AR/home. If you have questions please email Arkansas Professional Contest Director Debbie Miller at dmiller13@nwacc.edu.

Arkansas Press Women is an association of professional communicators in journalism, public information, business, education and government and is affiliated

with the National Federation of Press Women. Organized in 1950 as Arkansas Newspaper Women and incorporated in 1975, APW is open to communications professionals of any gender.

Journalism entries sought for Scripps Howard Awards

The 70th Scripps Howard Awards, one of the nation’s most prestigious journalism competitions, is accepting entries through Feb. 5 for journalism and storytelling produced in 2022.

With a focus on high-impact and investigative reporting, the awards honor the best in American journalism from newspapers and other print publications, online media outlets, independent producers and broadcast and audio-visual news outlets.

The Scripps Howard Awards are presented by the Scripps Howard Fund and offer $170,000 in prize money in 15 categories, including Breaking News, Business/Financial Reporting, Environmental Reporting, Distinguished Service to the First Amendment, Narrative Human-Interest Storytelling, Innovation, Local/Regional Investigative Reporting, Opinion Writing and others.

Finalists will be announced in September. Winners will be announced in October during a special program airing on Scripps News, the national broadcast news network owned by The E.W. Scripps Company.

Submit your entries at https://shawards.submittable.com/submit. For more information, visit https:// scripps.com/fund/journalism/scripps-howard-awards/

The Arkansas Newspaper Connection is a weekly publicaton distributed by APA connecting freelance and independent writers, editors, photographers and designers with Arkansas newspapers in need. The publication also lists available job openings and other opportunities at Arkansas newspapers and associate member organizations.

USPS to eliminate most sacks for Periodicals as

The United States Postal Service announced on Jan. 5 that sacks will no longer be accepted for Periodicals, Marketing Mail or other classes. But some exceptions will be made, according to the National Newspaper Association.

Sack handling has been targeted as a high-cost area in mail processing for more than a decade, but mailers continue to use some sacks because of ease of transport, or because flats trays have been unavailable.

USPS is now changing its operation to eliminate sack handling inside its mail processing plants. It has assured mailers that sufficient Mail Transport Equipment will be available to serve as appropriate containers.

However, for Periodicals and Marketing Mail, sacks can be accepted when they are carrier route containers, 5-digit scheme containers or 5-digit carrier route containers. For mail entered at Delivery Units, no container is needed, as bundles can be entered directly.

To mitigate the impact on larger mailers, it was announced that the 100-pound weight minimum for pallets destined for mixed ADC destinations will be eliminated so mailers can put bundles on pallets for these sparsely-distributed destinations.

To read the announcement, visit: https://bit.ly/3CDzyFr

Little River Journal applies for APA membership

The Little River Journal, a weekly newspaper covering Ashdown and Little River County, has applied for full membership to the Arkansas Press Association. The APA Constitution and Bylaws require three notifications of the application to APA membership. This is the second of three notifications.

The Little River Journal is owned and published by Mark Keith. It was first printed in January 2021 and publishes on Thursdays. The newspaper, having now been published weekly for more than two years, is eligible for full APA membership.

Any APA member who objects to the Little River Journal’s membership in APA may provide a written letter of objection to APA Executive Director Ashley Kemp Wimberley, 411 S. Victory St., Little Rock AR 72201 or email info@arkansaspress. org

Guest Column:

Kevin’s To-Do List for 2023: Tips to get a good start to the new year

By Kevin Slimp

There’s no better time than the first of the year to take steps to improve your newspaper. I visit several newspapers each month, both online and in-person, offering advice on ways to increase readership and ad revenue. It’s becoming more common for me to work with everyone from the publisher to the front desk person when I visit a newspaper.

As we begin 2023, here are some steps I often recommend when visiting with community papers:

Advertising Reps:

Create a master chart to track your calls to customers. Be sure to include columns for “in-person,” “phone,” “text,” and “email” calls. Look over your calls with your ad manager or publisher at the end of each week. I’ve found this is a straightforward method for increasing the number of calls, guaranteeing an increase in ad revenue. It is also an excellent reminder to make more in-person calls rather than relying too much on email or other contact methods

Designers:

Keep abreast of Pantone’s list of popular colors. The list changes each year, and using the right color is a good way to increase the effectiveness of an ad. Also, keep an eye on popular font styles. Especially in ad design, these change about as often as clothing styles.

Editors:

Make it a habit to meet with reporters and designers to discuss ways to improve the content and design of your newspaper. Do you want to increase readership? The quickest way I know of is to improve the content and look of your newspaper.

Front Desk:

I don’t know why it surprises me that most newspapers I visit still have friendly faces welcoming folks into the building. I guess my surprise comes from the disappearance of helpers in department stores and other businesses. More often than not, the front desk staff is in charge of calls for classifieds and contacting customers with expired subscriptions. I used to wonder how I would fill an hour with the front desk staff at a newspaper, but it never fails that we spend more time than scheduled to discuss the layout of the classifieds, methods for increasing classified ad sales, retaining subscribers, and more. As we enter a new year, I suggest not overlooking the folks who take calls for classifieds and ensuring that your methods are as efficient as possible to increase classified sales and retain subscribers.

Press Staff:

Most newspapers don’t have presses anymore, but I visit many papers that have presses. When I was younger, I noticed the folks who run presses were often wary when I showed up. I soon learned the words, “What can I do to make your job better?” led to conversations that improved the printing quality of their papers. Don’t overlook the press staff if you have a press at your paper. Take time to ask what you can do to make their work go more smoothly and improve the paper’s quality.

Publishers:

The most successful papers I’ve worked with in 2022 – and there have been a lot of them – have publishers that are

“hands-on” in the daily operation of the newspaper. Years ago, a young editor called me panicked when she had been offered the publisher’s position at a nearby daily paper. “What does a publisher do?” she asked. “It’s simple,” I replied. “Either nothing…or everything.” Successful papers have publishers who are involved in the paper and the community.

Reporters:

Seasoned reporters know that the “hook” makes or breaks a story. Those first few words invite the reader into the story or tell them to look elsewhere. Be sure to hook your readers with the first paragraph of every story. It might seem like nothing happened in the school board meeting that excites the reader. If there’s not, skip the story and write something that will interest your readers.

Newspaper staffs come in all sizes. Some newspapers I visit have staff persons who oversee technology, accounting, and other areas. Other papers might have just three or four persons on staff. No matter the size of your team, my best advice is to involve everyone in finding ways to improve every aspect of your newspaper. Although I appreciate the work, you don’t always have to bring in an “expert” to make significant improvements to your paper.

Kevin Slimp is former director of The University of Tennessee Newspaper Institute and founder of NewspaperAcademy.com. Contact him at kevin@kevinslimp.com.