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America’s Newspapers launches public notice campaign APA Legislative Review
Arkansas Press Association
Publisher Weekly Vol. 16 | No. 15 | Thursday, April 15, 2021 | Serving Press and State Since 1873
Gwen Moritz to move on, not out, at Arkansas Business Gwen Moritz is tired of the weekly deadline grind, yet like so many of her colleagues, she’s not grown tired of Arkansas Business. Moritz, the editor of Arkansas Business for the last 21 years, plans to step away as editor of the weekly publication this year, but she will remain in some capacity at Arkansas Business Publishing Group. There, she is part of a stable, long-term workforce she credits for Arkansas Business’s growth and success. Moritz oversees a veteran team of reporters with rare longevity in the newspaper industry. It’s those reporters who, under her leadership, have produced a quality product consistently, she said. Over the last four years, the number of paid subscribers to Arkansas Business’s printed publication have steadily grown, and the publication now has more readership than ever. “What separates Arkansas Business from pretty much any other place is the investment in experience and retention of reporters in our newsroom,” Moritz said in a telephone interview. “We have not treated this as a training ground, where people would leave and go someplace else. We have tried to make this a stable newsroom where people get familiar with their beats and gain institutional knowledge.” The newsroom will retain Moritz’s vast institutional knowledge even as she departs the editor’s desk, a decision she made so that she could have a little more flexibility with her time. For the last two decades, it’s been difficult to take even short amounts of time off because of the pressures associated with producing a
Gwen Moritz
weekly newspaper. Now, Moritz said she and her husband Rob, an instructor at the University of Central Arkansas, can take extra 3-day weekends and spend more time at their lake house in Fairfield Bay. “I’m ready to not have everything in my life revolve around that weekly deadline
anymore,” she said. “With the weekly news cycle and production cycle we have, either I take a full week off or it’s not even worth taking a day off.” Moritz plans to step down as editor sometime in the second half of this year. It’s still unsettled where she’ll land, though she has several opportunities to contribute to a company that produces multiple Continued on Page 2