Excellence

Continued from page 4

Medium Weeklies

Scott Loftus, Editor and Publisher Carroll County News, Berryville

award in 2017, But our commitment remains the same. We want to provide our readers with the best newspaper we are capable of providing.

We were awarded first place for General Excellence among medium-circulation weekly newspapers for the fourth consecutive year. The newspaper has taken first place for General Excellence six times in the past seven years.

Ownership partners David Bell, Steve Johnson and I are very proud to receive the General Excellence award again this year. We’re also very humbled to be recognized among an outstanding group of weekly newspapers in Arkansas. We don’t do what we do to win awards, but we’re proud of our consistent success and we believe it’s one way that we can measure our performance in carrying out our ultimate mission, which is to provide the people of Carroll County with the information they need and deserve about what’s happening in their communities.

In addition to the overall honor, we also received 24 individual honors, including six individual first-place awards.

Our staff is much smaller now than it was when we won our first general excellence

That commitment goes beyond the newsroom staff. We would not be successful without everyone pulling in the same direction. Reporter Rick Harvey, freelance photographer Charlie Chappell, office manager Melody Strodtman, circulation manager and advertising coordinator Rhonda Worrall and driver Mary Kay Abbott are all vitally important to what we do.

Smaller Weeklies

Andrew Bagley, Co-Owner and Publisher Helena World

A few whirlwind days later, we had saved The World and reopened as a weekly on September 18, 2019. Empowered by Chuck to take some risks and implement a vision to reinvigorate the paper, I made the decision that Gatehouse’s worst mistake was cutting the content and expecting an increase in profits. We invested in producing high-quality local content. We expanded the number of pages. Sports and features were brought back in addition to more aggressive coverage of local government and crime as well.

Fast forward to today. We just received the General Excellence award for best small weekly newspaper for the second year in a row. I am so proud of the work of our staff and our writers. Everyone has worked so hard and that recognition represents a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I attribute that success to our decisions to put high quality local content in the paper and to get as much of it as possible.

In the first week of September of 2019, Gatehouse Media announced the pending closure of the Helena World and began composition of one of the oldest newspapers in Arkansas whose rich history stretched back to 1871. Unable to imagine the void such a closure would create, Chuck Davis, my business partner, and I met at his apartment overlooking historic Cherry Street and decided to try to buy the paper.

We aren’t perfect. Stories still occasionally get by us. But circulation is more than double what it was when we took over from Gatehouse. Advertisers are coming back. Our publication was described by one local public official as “setting the agenda for what the community talks about.” That’s why we have been able to rise from the ashes to win two General Excellence awards. We are giving readers something to look forward to and talk about every edition.