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Arkansas Press Association
Publisher Weekly
By Rick Kennedy
Vol.18 | No. 26 | Thursday, June 29, 2023 | Serving Press and State Since 1873
Investigative reporter and columnist to receive Golden 50 Service Award after career spent covering the disenfranchised the Coast Guard and was honorably discharged in 1972.
Few Arkansas journalists have experienced a career as dynamic and impactful as Mike Masterson.
Masterson’s first newspaper job was with the Newport Daily Independent, owned by Orville and Betty Richolson. Even in his earliest days in the industry, a pattern was established as he won a National Headliner Award for local reporting as well as recognition from the Robert F. Kennedy Awards for writing about problems facing the disadvantaged.
That career often involved critical (and even dangerous) work, providing a voice for the underdog and the unrepresented or uncovering information that resulted in the freeing of persons imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. That type of investigative work, unfortunately, has often been rare, at least partly because only a limited number of journalists possess the professional drive and, in essence, courage to make it happen.
A fateful meeting occurred for Masterson in 1973, when he had lunch with Walter E. Hussman, Jr. at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs. They were both 26 at the time. Hussman offered him a position at the Sentinel-Record, first as a special writer and then, within months, as editor of the newspaper. He would remain in Hot Springs for seven years, but the Masterson-Hussman connection importantly would be renewed several more times in the future.
Masterson’s lifetime record of service in newspapers appropriately will be honored with the Golden 50 Service Award at the Arkansas Press Freedom Gala on Oct. 12 in Little Rock. A native of Harrison and a current resident, Masterson entered the University of Central Arkansas after studying for two years at the University of New Mexico under Western newspaperman and novelist Tony Hillerman and enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard.
“I recall telling my staff of 12, all older than me, the paper had been sleeping for far too long and we were committing to begin telling the truth fairly and objectively regardless of whose doorstep it crossed,” Masterson said. “And they responded in a big way.
“That’s where my life changed Mike Masterson forever after meeting journalism professor J. Dean Duncan, who had been a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal,” Masterson said. “He would become my beloved mentor and inspiration for what’s become my career.”
“We covered everything from a local hospital turning away indigent mothers in labor, to a downtown bar making book illegally, to the sheriff taking prisoners out of jail and escorting them to their homes on weekends without the judge knowing, to a former sheriff taking bribes to allow illegal cockfighting on a county farm during his tenure, to a local circuit judge who was a slumlord, to freeing an innocent Black masoner from jail, to a 20page special section detailing children of poverty in the land of opportunity.” See Masterson Page 2
While at UCA, Masterson became the editor of the student newspaper, The Echo, and was elected summer student Senate President. He and his first wife, Kathleen, lived in student housing and welcomed their son, Brandon, during that period. Masterson graduated in 1971 with a bachelor of arts in journalism. He also spent four years of summer active duty and monthly meetings in Arkansas Publisher Weekly
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June 29, 2023