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Glenda Arnett honored by APA for 52 years of service
Guest Column:
Traditional network stations don’t usually report their lower viewership By Peter Wagner
Ar k ansas
ARKANSAS
Publisher Weekly
PRESS ASSOCIATION
Vol. 14 | No. 44 | Thursday, October 31, 2019
Serving Press and State Since 1873
Rockwell’s publishing business continues to evolve, grow Five decades of growth and evolution for Corning Publishing Company boils down to three questions Steve Rockwell asks with every business decision:
to employ its commercial printing press in production of the Clay County Courier, which, along with the Pocahontas StarHerald, is owned by the Rockwell family.
“What are we doing?”
With newsprint costs dramatically increasing in early 2018 in the face of a tariff standoff with Canadian paper mills, Rockwell said it was financially better and it made more sense to shift the newspaper from newsprint to commercial printing paper.
“Why are we doing it this way?” “How can we do it better?”
“We were able to print on commercial paper and we could buy the paper cheaper than newsprint,” Rockwell said. Subscribers adapted quickly to the change. The transition to printing the newspaper on a four-color press earned rave reviews.
Steve Rockwell
The venerable Clay County printing business found what it believes is a way to “do it better” early last year when it opted
“We can’t get them to turn back,” he said. “It’s like watching black-and-white TV or color TV. Once you watch color you don’t want to go back. It’s been well-received and it’s been an interesting project.” Corning Publishing operates a Goss
Sunday 2000 high-speed press line, which produces products at a speed of 50,000 signatures per hour. It’s a significant advancement from JV Rockwell’s first printing operation in Corning, founded in 1966. Thelma Rockwell, JV’s widow, continues serving the company as president. Steve Rockwell is vice president. Initially, the business served local customers, making business cards and printing labels on envelopes on a small sheet-fed offset press. Now, Corning Publishing is an 80,000-square-foot facility that prints magazines and other publications in a 14-state region. Steve Rockwell said the company was also an innovator and early adopter of Apple products and Adobe software. As one of the first certified Apple Value Added Resellers in the 1980s, Corning Publishing sold some of the first Macintosh computers to Arkansas Press Association newspapers and even provided Apple computers and training for APA headquarters. For many years, the company was an Adobe Continued on Page 2
One ArkLaMiss conference grant still available for use A $200 grant remains available to an Arkansas Press Association member to help defray registration and hotel costs for next week’s ArkLaMiss Circulation, Marketing and Audience Development Conference in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
The Arkansas Newspaper Foundation provides grants to up to four APA members, with preference going to firsttime conference attendees. Only one grant is awarded per media organization. Three grants are already accounted for, but one grant is still available. To apply for the
grant, or for more information, email APA’s Terri Cobb at terri@arkansaspress.org or call (501) 374-1500. The conference will be held at the Ameristar Hotel and Casino on Thursday, Nov. 7, and Friday, Nov. 8. The annual event helps newspaper publishers and circulation and marketing professionals learn ways to grow readership and revenue at their newspapers. Gwen Vargo, director of reader revenue for the American Press Institute, is the
featured speaker for the conference. Vargo will give two presentations, one on how to understand readers and another offering ideas for how to get customers to subscribe to newspapers. Dennis Dunn, vice president of operations for the Anniston Star in Anniston, Alabama, will moderate the popular Hot Ideas Exchange, an annual event at the conference. To reserve a hotel room, call Ameristar at (601) 638-1000. To register for the conference, visit arklamissconference. wordpress.com.