Arkansas Publisher Weekly: May 13, 2021

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Judge relents at last minute on banning courtroom access

Guest Column: Into the Issues

By Al Cross

Arkansas Press Association

Publisher Weekly Vol. 16 | No. 19 | Thursday, May 13, 2021 | Serving Press and State Since 1873

Brenda Blagg named to inaugural Hall of Fame class Brenda Blagg is a journalist, columnist, author, mentor, an Arkansas Press Association Golden 50 recipient and a two-time APA Freedom of Information Award winner. Now, the longtime northwest Arkansas reporter can add “Hall of Famer” to the list.

Blagg has been selected to the inaugural class of the Great Plains Journalism Hall of Fame. She’s the only Arkansan among five journalists selected for the honor. The Great Plains Journalism Awards are presented by the Tulsa Press Club and are open to entrants from eight states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

Over the course of her five-decade journalism career, Blagg has covered local and state government and politics, the environment and even a circus. In an interview this week, she added that she’s reported on plenty of other “circuses” too.

“I’ve been fortunate,” Blagg said. “I tell everyone that I’ve covered everything from the circus to the Legislature and it’s not all that different. I’ve just covered a little bit of everything.”

Blagg spent most of her career in northwest Arkansas, first at the Springdale Morning News, which became the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas and later merged with the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Though she’s left full-time reporting, she continues to write a weekly column, “Between the Lines,” which is published in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and other newspapers across the state.

She was nominated to the Great Plains Journalism Hall of Fame by Rusty Turner, Northwest Arkansas DemocratGazette editor and current APA president. Turner said there aren’t many Arkansas journalists who have had the “wideranging and lasting impact” of Blagg.

Brenda Blagg

“She’s had a remarkable career in journalism and made a huge impact on our state,” Turner said. “She broke a lot of ground for women in our business. She’s pursued a career in hard news at a time when it was almost exclusively a man’s domain. … Her advocacy on behalf of transparency Continued on Page 2

Brenda Blagg named to inaugural Hall of Fame class Continued from Page 1

and open government over the years has helped keep Arkansas’ sunshine law one of the strongest in the country. She’s helped train dozens of young reporters in the importance of community journalism and holding public institutions accountable.”

from the journalism school, she said.

After college, she was a features writer at the Arkansas Democrat for a short time, then spent a stint at the Associated Press in Virginia before heading back to

Her coverage of the Arkansas residents who participated in the New Hampshire campaigning – the “Arkansas Travelers” – led to her authoring a book, Political Magic: The Travels, Trials and Triumphs of the Clintons’ Arkansas Travelers.

Blagg, who was a student journalist at the University of Arkansas when the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act was enacted in 1967, has been one of the leading proponents of accountability and transparency throughout her career. When she started covering local governments at the Morning News in the early 1970s, she said she made sure every prospective elected official knew the importance of FOIA. When she interviewed political candidates, she “was always there with a little stack of FOIA books making sure they walked away with one.”

She said her professors at UA instilled in her the importance of the state’s transparency laws.

“My professors impressed upon me just what a difference this law was going to make for citizens because they were going to have access to things they’ve never had access to in the past,” Blagg said. “I knew from that moment on it was something we needed to protect and make sure we held on to.”

Blagg was editor of the Traveler, the UA student newspaper, at the time the FOIA was enacted. She didn’t enter college with plans to be a journalist, but later became convinced it was a good fit by an advisor

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

Paper-wad shooting contest in Traveler office. Brenda Blagg, Ann Pride, Gerald Jordan and Bill Wright of Texas. her hometown of Newport to write for the Newport Daily Independent.

Blagg said she only once during her career thought about leaving journalism.

From there, she relocated to northwest Arkansas in 1971, where she remained.

“I was never going to be anything but a newspaperwoman,” she said.

She said the Springdale Morning News put an emphasis on election coverage in the 1970s, and that’s one of the main reasons she got involved in political coverage. During the 1992 presidential election, she reported on then-Gov. Bill Clinton’s campaign in New Hampshire.

Joining Blagg in the inaugural Great Plains Journalism Hall of Fame class are Susan Ellerbach of the Tulsa World, Kelly Dyer Fry from The Oklahoman, Michael Kelly of the Omaha World-Herald and Jim Langdon of Langdon Publishing in Oklahoma.

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May 13, 2021

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Times Record reporter to cover food insecurity The Times Record in Fort Smith will soon be home to a reporter whose salary is partially funded through Report for America.

The newspaper hired Catherine Nolte, a 2021 honors graduate from John Brown University in Siloam Springs, as a reporter through the Report for America program.

Nolte starts at the Times Record on June 7.

Nolte’s reporting focus will be on food insecurity.

A graduate of Benton High School, Nolte served on the youth advisory council in that city and also volunteered with local nonprofits. Her nonprofit work included helping out at a local food pantry that helped her family when her father lost his job, the Times Record reported.

INDUSTRY QUOTE “A newspaper is the center of a community, it’s one of the tent poles of the community, and that’s not going to be replaced with web sites and blogs.”

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Arkansas Publisher Weekly

“They gave more than food to us,” Nolte was quoted as saying. “They gave my parents dignity in providing for their children and showed me the impact that organizations can have for kids like me.

Food insecurity is an invisible hurt that impacts everything, from school grades to mental health and self-esteem.”

Under the partnership with Report for America, the newspaper will pay half Nolte’s salary, with Report for America paying the other half for the next two years. As a Report for America reporter, Nolte will also be provided mentoring and continuing education opportunities.

Nolte is one of 300 journalists selected to work at more than 200 news organizations across the country. Report for America places journalists in newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

Catherine Nolte

APW award winners announced Angelita Faller, news director at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, earned the Sweepstakes Award and former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette writer Tammy Keith was named Communicator of Achievement at the annual Arkansas Press Women awards.

Gazette. She was recognized as the 2021 Communicator of Achievement and as such will represent Arkansas at the National Federation of Press Women Annual Conference in June. Because of the continuing pandemic, the conference has become a virtual event.

The Arkansas Press Women presented its 2021 awards on May 8 in Little Rock.

Keith also won one first place award and two third places in the contest.

Faller won first place in four different categories; was second in four categories and earned an honorable mention in another to take the sweepstakes prize.

Sweepstakes runners-up were Mary Hightower of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture; Fred Miller, science editor for the Division of Agriculture; and Audrey Poff, publisher at Occasions Publishing Group in Jonesboro.

First-place winners in the APW contest are eligible to compete at the national level, if they are NFPW members. APW has been notified that 21 of its members have placed in the national competition.

NFPW’s awards presentation is scheduled for Friday, June 11, with the COA award being presented on Saturday evening, June 12.

Keith, of Conway, retired last year as a senior writer at the Arkansas Democrat-

For more information about the conference or to register visit https://nfpw. memberclicks.net/conference.

@ARPressAssoc

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May 13, 2021

Judge relents at last minute on banning courtroom access The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette scored a last-minute victory for transparency on May 7 after a Pulaski County Circuit Court judge backed away from his plan to block the public from attending a court hearing.

Circuit Judge Tim Fox had rejected the newspaper’s motion to intervene in a case, arguing for access to a hearing related to the award of a casino license in Pope County. However, just before the hearing was set to begin, Fox said he would open the courtroom to “the general public,” according to the newspaper’s account.

Eight people were allowed to stand in the courtroom to watch the hearing. No seating was available.

Fox’s rationale for closing the hearing to the public was because of coronavirus restrictions put in place by Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde. However, Fox also would not live-stream the hearing, and Hyde said the restrictions did not apply to a judge’s courtroom.

The newspaper filed a motion to intervene to open up public access, citing the First Amendment right to access and an Arkansas law that states “the sittings of every court shall be public, and every person may freely attend the sittings of every court.” Christoph Keller, an attorney for the Arkansas Press Association, filed the motion on behalf of

the Democrat-Gazette.

Keller asked that Fox provide access either in person or through virtual means.

Fox denied the motion shortly before the hearing started. According to the Democrat-Gazette, a reporter learned of his decision to open the courtroom to “the general public” through a text from someone attending the hearing. When the reporter arrived to cover the hearing, she was made to stand against the back wall of the courtroom gallery, which was “devoid of chairs and a wooden pew was turned backward and pushed against a wall.”

Upcoming webinars focus on sales, photography Two webinars of interest to Arkansas Press Association members are slated for the upcoming week, with one on Friday, May 14, and the other scheduled for Thursday, May 20.

The May 14 webinar with award-winning motivational speaker Ryan Dohrn will address how newspapers can respond to the 10 most common advertiser objections that prevent newspaper advertising representatives from closing deals.

Hosted by the Newspaper Academy,

this webinar will provide advertising salespeople with “the ammunition needed to begin closing more deals immediately.”

The cost of the Dohrn webinar is $59.

It begins at 11 a.m. on Friday. Register at newspaperacademy.com/websinar/ ryanobjections/ On Thursday, May 20, at 1 p.m., America’s Newspapers will host a webinar called “Using Good Old Photoshop in New Ways,” presented by Russell Viers. The webinar will teach participants to “break the old

Ryan Dohrn

Russell Viers

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

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production habits and learn new ways.

Photoshop has so many improvements that we are often surprised by how to rethink the way we work on photos.” Viers is an Adobe certified instructor.

That webinar is free to members of America’s Newspapers by entering the code “NEWSROCKS” at registration.

Register at https://secure.inanews.com/ np/clients/inanews/eventRegistration. jsp?event=994

May 13, 2021

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Guest Column: Into the Issues

By Al Cross The main issue facing the country and most of our communities is what it has been for more than a year: the coronavirus. We are in what is almost certainly the last chapter, immunization – but this chapter may last a lot longer than it should, and make the economic recovery slower, because so many Americans are pandemic-fatigued, ill-informed about vaccines, and reluctant to get a shot, or even resistant.

battle to preserve paid public notices in newspapers is on, and it’s more important than ever because “the legals” have become a more important source of revenue. But we have a new argument, the value of local newspapers as proven by the pandemic. And that case can be made not just in state capitals, but at the local level, especially if local officials appreciate the value of the newspaper.

Respected voices of authority, like newspapers, need to promote public health. We’ve been doing that on The Rural Blog at irjci.blogspot.com. Recently we had an item (at tinyurl.com/yab6h5nk) reporting that vaccination rates among rural adults are fairly close to urban rates, but rural seniors are falling farther behind their urban counterparts.

Editor-Publisher Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record in the Texas Panhandle did that in early April. Then she shared it with readers, who are also potential allies, and we shared it with readers of The Rural Blog at https://tinyurl. com/466tdfcn. Here’s part of what she said:

Rural seniors are the most loyal readers of community newspapers, but there are many other vaccine-hesitant or -resistant groups that need reliable information about immunization. Community papers are some of the best vehicles for that information, because they enjoy a higher level of trust than other news media.

They also have the ability to reach every household in their home counties, through sample copying that can be supported by advertising or sponsorship. Early in the pandemic, some newspapers partnered with governments to deliver coronavirus information through sample copies, and now seems like another good time for it, since so much misinformation is out there and local governments are getting billions in relief money.

The effort to overcome misinformation is a story in itself, as Alex Acquisto of the Lexington Herald-Leader showed in a long story about pastors in Harlan County, Kentucky, who “gently bat down . . . fearbased questions” about coronavirus vaccines. We excerpted it at tinyurl. com/2fwhxcwb. It’s the sort of story that could be done in just about any community, and not just about clergy; what are healthcare professionals, elected officials and civic leaders doing?

Speak up for public notice: The annual Arkansas Publisher Weekly

“Never has the importance of community newspapers been more apparent than during the last very difficult year. [They] have ensured that their readers have the facts about Covid-19: about the efforts to combat it, the decisions made by public officials and local businesses to guard against its spread, the number of cases that are occurring in their community, and the lives have been lost or changed by it. . . . The reporting has been arduous, time-consuming and often heartbreaking.

It is done at great cost to owners and publishers, at a time when newspapers are struggling from financial losses that resulted from economic slowdown and the pandemic. We are fighting for life, like many other small businesses that provide jobs and paychecks, that pay taxes to enable the good work our government officials do, and that are the heartbeat and life of their communities in so many ways.

“Taking away one more reliable source of revenue that enables us to perform that essential role may well be the death knell for many community newspapers.

Far worse, it will be a fatal blow to public transparency and accountability, and an open door to government corruption.

Public notices in community newspapers do get read. Their publication is monitored and verified by an independent source, and their content is often examined, explained and expanded upon by the 7

newspaper that publishes it.”

Jail deaths and money: Small jails already had some of the highest death rates in the nation, and the pandemic has surely made that worse. The federal government is slow to report deaths by jail size, but as of 2012, “Mortality rates were highest in jails holding a daily average of fewer than 50 people,” Katie Rose Quandt reported for The Atlantic, noting that since 2008, jail populations in rural areas have risen 27 percent.

That’s partly because some local governments have found it profitable to house state and federal prisoners, and taxpayers may appreciate that. But the Vera Institute of Justice, which favors reform of jails and bail, says jails are increasingly on the front lines of mental health, addiction and homelessness in rural communities, and they’re not very good at addressing those issues. Quandt’s story was comprehensive, and our Rural Blog item about it was about twice as long as usual, 950 words. You can read it at tinyurl.com/njb9762e.

Quick survey: Research on rural journalism and small-town newspapers is lacking.

Tony Baranowski of the Iowa Falls Times Citizen is trying to fill some of the gap with a survey of rural newspaper publishers, to wrap up his work in the NewStart program at West Virginia University. Because such research is relatively rare, it’s important that he have a broad sample. The survey has 19 questions, is easy to complete via SurveyMonkey. Tony would like to wrap it up in about two weeks. The heart of it is about revenue, so it’s designed for publishers, but in community journalism the publisher and editor roles often overlap, so editors should feel free to take a look. It’s at surveymonkey.com/r/ SXGZ7BH. Al Cross edited and managed rural newspapers before covering politics for the Louisville Courier Journal and serving as president of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is director of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

May 13, 2021