Arkansas Publisher Weekly: September 7, 2023

By Kevin Slimp

Love of journalism electrifies Roedel as ANF board member

During his fascinating and rewarding career in the corporate world, Rob Roedel always has carried with him a love of newspapers and journalism.

Now in his 22nd year with the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas, currently as director of corporate communications, Roedel has found a perfect niche in helping promote journalism in his native state by serving as a member of the Arkansas Newspaper Foundation board of directors.

Roedel has been attending Arkansas Press Association conventions for about 25 years and has developed many friends in the industry.

“I am a big proponent of the journalism profession and will do anything I can to help the Arkansas Press Association and its member newspapers,” Roedel said. “I considered it to be a great honor when I was asked to serve on the foundation board.”

For him it’s a bonus that the person he describes as “one of my best friends in the world, Steve Eddington,” also is now a board member.

Roedel noted that two of his early mentors, professors Dr. Gil Fowler and Dr. Joel Gambill, helped form his love of journalism as a student at Arkansas State University. “They felt sorry for me and let me get my degree in journalism,” he said with a laugh.

Roedel’s early career, after graduating from ASU, involved working as a reporter at the Times-Dispatch in Walnut Ridge under publishers James Bland and his son,

John Bland, and later at the Times-Herald in Forrest City under publisher Bonner McCollum.

“I fell in love with community journalism,” Roedel said of his early newspaper days.

In effect, he did it all at his Walnut Ridge stop, including reporting, handling inserts, doing darkroom work and making bulk newspaper deliveries. At Forrest City, he worked in the newsroom under editor Kersh Hall, but also sold some advertising under the direction of Jim Wirski.

So, it is with a genuine love for the industry that Roedel is serving on the foundation board.

Founded in 1982, the ANF provides paid newspaper internships to students of Arkansas colleges and universities and continuing education grants. It also supports the educational efforts of the Arkansas Press Association.

Funds are raised through a variety of efforts, with the current principal event being the Press Freedom Gala. The second annual Gala is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 12, at Chenal Country Club in Little Rock.

“The newspaper industry in Arkansas is fortunate to have a person of Rob Roedel’s talent and experience serving

Roedel prepares for a television stand-up following severe weather

Roedel

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on the ANF board,” said Arkansas Press Association executive director Ashley Kemp Wimberley. “He has been a longtime friend of Arkansas newspapers and we were thrilled when he accepted the invitation to serve with a group which is working hard to encourage and support young journalists in our state.”

Roedel is a solid supporter of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, one of the strongest laws in the nation designed to guarantee the public’s right to know the business of state and local boards and commissions. He cited the influence of the late Brenda Blagg and other FOIA advocates in forming his commitment to a free press and public access to records.

He is concerned with the trend for many communities to be either unserved or underserved when it comes to solid and consistent reporting of governmental activities.

“Without that watchful eye of the press, problems develop, and it is not good for our communities,” he said. “Some public bodies just don’t understand what the press is all about. I would encourage them to closely read the FOIA. It is important for them to understand it’s not your money, it’s the taxpayers’ money.”

Belief in city councils and school boards operating in an open manner comes naturally to Roedel. “It’s because that’s the way I was raised and the way I was taught,” he said, referring on the latter point to his guidance from Dr. Fowler and Dr. Gambill. Roedel has extensive personal experience in dealing with such issues, as he currently is serving in his 14th year on the Bryant City Council. He jokes that, with his background, he is considered “the utility guy and the media guy” for the council. After serving for a time in his early years as the public relations director for the Forrest City School District, Roedel accepted a position in marketing and communications for Arkansas Systems in Little Rock. The company developed the first ATM network in Russia and worked with what is essentially the federal reserve bank in China. The company at that time had business operations in 83 different countries.

Roedel remembers one humorous incident when the company hosted a group of bankers from Russia at an event in Little Rock.

At one banquet the idea was to introduce them to local foods and, of course, that meant catfish, hush puppies and all the trimmings. The translator hired by the company placed cards by each food, describing them in Russian.

Roedel and others noticed the Russian guests were scrupulously avoiding the

Services, one of the great success stories of Arkansas business. The company grew from 8,000 to 32,000 employees during his five years with the firm. AIS was an industry leader in the field of financial technology services.

It was during his time with the firm that Roedel, serving as communications manager, became friends with Eddington, another member of the corporate team.

“I was on the road about four nights a week and, with a young family, I eventually decided I needed to make a change,” Roedel said.

He answered a newspaper ad and began his career at the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas. “I was then able to be home with my young family at that important time in my life,” Roedel said. As an example, he recalled the time his three-year-old son climbed up into bed with Roedel and his wife and said, “I’ve now got two of these.”

“I’ve been here now for 22 years, and I have loved every minute of it,” Roedel said. “This is a not-for-profit, and I get to help people in my work.”

Working with 17 distribution cooperatives across the state, Roedel said the goal is “to ensure that we are doing the best we can to make sure everyone has good power” in their homes and businesses.

His position as director of corporate communications is to work with the individual distribution cooperatives on their public relations and communication projects and to serve as the statewide spokesman on behalf of all the coops.

hush puppies. The translator eventually described to one of the younger guests exactly what hush puppies are, and he started eating some with great relish. The other Russians were looking on in horror. Eventually, it was discovered that “fried dog” was the literal translation applied on the hush puppies food card. After some clarification, the group decided the “fried cornbread” was quite tasty. Roedel assumes there are bankers to this day enjoying hush puppies in Russia.

Roedel’s next stop was Alltel Information

Roedel said energy generation and transmission is a complex business that faces many challenges in the marketplace. Various government regulations affecting the industry create some hurdles for management, he added.

Regulations concerning fossil fuel-based plants often place cooperatives in a bind as leaders project energy needs into the future.

“We are not opposed to solar and wind, but we can’t always depend on them to meet our immediate needs,” Roedel said. “We are doing our best to find solutions,

See Roedel page 4

Roedel with friend and fellow ANF board member Steve Eddington in 2018.

A Greater Voic e

AMPLIFYING THE POWER OF THE PRESS.

Bank OZK proudly supports the Arkansas Press Association (APA) and its vital mission to nurture Arkansas newspapers with the knowledge and resources they need to grow and thrive. As one of the state's most esteemed professional associations for 150 years, the APA has been a powerful voice for freedom of the press. By connecting our communities through authentic and impactful content, we can unlock even greater possibilities.

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michelle.rossow@ozk.com | (501) 471-8475

Roedel

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but it would be less than honest to say it isn’t a challenge for us.”

As an example, he said the coal plants near Newport and Redfield were built (during an oil embargo) to a large degree because of government opposition to natural gas solutions. Now, it is just the opposite, he noted, with regulations tending to limit coalbased generation.

Roedel said natural gas sources are a challenge because of the wild fluctuations based on supply and demand pricing at any given time. But natural gas remains the major available source to meet cooperatives’ energy needs going forward.

The cooperatives are committed to developing and using every available source to meet the needs of members, including coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, solar and biomass. “We are open to any and all sources of power,” Roedel said.

Arkansas’ electric cooperatives have 600,000 members and operate in 74 of the state’s 75 counties.

Members receive Arkansas Living magazine each month. “I inherited supervision of the magazine not too long ago,” Roedel said.

It has the largest circulation of any magazine in the state, with 420,000 copies printed. Each edition contains 44 pages and features a zoned edition for each distribution cooperative.

“We can totally relate to challenges newspapers face,” Roedel said, when looking at the cost of printing and delivering a product of that magnitude.

In addition to the magazine, Roedel said local media, including both newspapers and radio, are important vehicles for sharing information to cooperative members across the state. This is especially true in times of natural disaster, often leading to loss of power in affected areas.

“There are segments of our membership that do not do social media,” Roedel said. “We always try to involve local media in our communications. That is a vital part of what we do.”

Roedel also is proud of the Washington, D.C., Youth Tour, sponsored each year by the cooperatives for high school juniors. It involves a week-long visit to the nation’s capital, with many of the young people making a trip of that nature for the first time.

“I have always liked to watch the kids and their faces,” Roedel said of the numerous times he has served as a guide. He remembers one emotional experience when a female student was crying when standing before the Vietnam Wall.

“The young lady read a letter from a family member of a soldier who died in action,” Roedel said. “She realized that the soldier was only a few years older than her when he died and was

overwhelmed with

emotion.

“I did my best to console her and told her to just remember the experience if anyone said we don’t live in a great country,” Roedel said.

Nearly 50,000 students from rural areas and small towns from across America have participated in the program.

Roedel grew up in a rural area near Jonesboro, saying he essentially learned to read by going through the pages of Rural Arkansas, the predecessor to the current cooperative magazine.

Those early days were spent in school at Valley View, graduating in 1985 with a class of 48. The school has grown dramatically over the years, with classes now ranging from 300 to 400.

“To give you an example of how it was, back then a home run on the baseball team was when you cleared the monkey bars,” he said with a laugh.

Roedel said his family home at one time was eight miles down a gravel road (“the end of the line”), so he relates to the rural way of life enjoyed by the bulk of the cooperatives’ members.

“I kind of feel like I have come full circle,” he said. “It’s like when you put on your favorite jeans, boots and shirt. That’s exactly the way I feel when I get up each day and go to work. I feel like I am home.”

Roedel and his wife Lisa enjoy spending weekends on their houseboat on Lake Ouachita. “I like to fish and also enjoy sitting on the deck of my boat and watching college football,” Roedel. “My favorite time of the year is coming up as there won’t be as many people on the lake.”

His children include:

– Andrew, an employee at Windstream in Little Rock, and his wife, Skylar, who works for the Southwest Power Pool.

– Jake, a student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

– Chase, who works for a NASA subcontractor at Huntsville, Alabama.

– Cayla, who attends cosmetology school.

Roedel has overcome some major health issues. He had a brain tumor in 1996 and survived a stroke in 2018. “I consider every day a blessing,” he said. “My goal is to try to make somebody else’s day better every chance I get.”

In this time of recognized challenges to the newspaper industry, the Arkansas Press Association is indeed fortunate to have a friend in Rob Roedel. His love of newspapers goes way back, and he is in a unique position to translate that into positive action, especially as he assists young journalists through his dedicated service with the ANF board.

American Idol contestant

Byrd to perform at upcoming

Press Freedom Gala

APA is excited to announce that entertainment at its second annual Press Freedom Gala will be provided by “American Idol” contestant Marybeth Byrd.

A native of Amorel in Mississippi County, the 22-year-old singersongwriter fell in love with music as a child. Her grandfather on her dad’s side and grandmother on her mom’s side were both musical and recognized her talent. Byrd’s knack for singing became a tool that allowed her to overcome a childhood stutter.

At age 17, Byrd competed on the 2019 season of the NBC competition series “The Voice”, where she was mentored by artists Taylor Swift and Usher and finished in the Top 8 on John Legend’s team.

This spring she was selected to appear on Season 21 of “American Idol”, finishing in the Top 10. She was described as “one of the season’s standout country singers” by the web magazine hollywoodlife.com. During the April 23 episode, Byrd sang her original song “People Pleaser,” causing judge Lionel Richie to rave that the performance was “superstar material.”

Byrd’s music is strongly influenced by country, pop and southern gospel traditions. At the Press Freedom Gala she will be performing the National Anthem as well as an additional set.

Although Byrd graduated from Arkansas State University in 2023 with a degree in strategic communications, since her success on American Idol she now spends her time performing and making personal appearances while teaching vocal music and writing original songs. Her singles, including “People Pleaser,” are available on Spotify.

Tickets for the second annual Press Freedom Gala are available now at arkansaspress.org/gala. Gala proceeds will benefit the Arkansas Newspaper Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization.

Marybeth Byrd

Perozek

named managing editor at Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Dave Perozek, who has been a metro editor at the Northwest Arkansas DemocratGazette since 2021, was announced as the new managing editor for the newspaper and its sister publication, the River Valley DemocratGazette in Fort Smith, by Executive Editor Lisa Thompson on September 1.

A native of Massachusetts, Perozek holds a bachelor of arts degree in English from Vanderbilt University and worked as a reporter at the Niles Daily Star in Niles, Michigan and The Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria, Ohio, before becoming an editorial page editor there.

Perozek and his wife, Sara, moved to Northwest Arkansas looking for a warmer climate. He joined the Benton County Daily Record, since merged with the Northwest Arkansas DemocratGazette, as editorial page editor in 2008. He also worked as an opinion writer and education reporter before starting the metro editor role in January 2021.

“The past two and a half years I’ve spent as metro editor have been among the most challenging and rewarding of my career,” Perozek said in the announcement of his promotion. “I feel I have accumulated enough knowledge and leadership skills under the mentorship of Lisa Thompson to take the next step. I am extremely proud of the work we as journalists do here, and want to do all I can to ensure that work continues, while striving to serve our readers the best we can.”

“Dave has done just about everything in a newsroom and won numerous awards along the way,” said Thompson. “I’m excited to have him as my right-hand man.”

The Baxter Bulletin announces promotion of Looney

The Baxter Bulletin in Mountain Home has promoted Deyette Looney to the position of office manager, the newspaper announced Friday.

Looney’s duties will include working hand-in-hand with Regional Publisher Beth Chism and General Manager/Managing Editor Sonny Elliott in the day-to-day management of the advertising department and all building functions. She will also continue to staff the newspaper’s front desk.

“We’re proud to promote Deyette after years of dedicated service,” said Elliott in the statement announcing the promotion. “She has been through a lot in the last decade, keeping the newspaper functioning throughout Ganett’s merger with GateHouse Media, the sale to Phillips Media and the COVID-19 pandemic. While sometimes her work went seemingly unnoticed, she has been the backbone of The Baxter Bulletin.”

A California native, Looney joined the newspaper in 2013, working in the circulation department.

The Times Dispatch adds Imboden correspondent

The Times Dispatch in Walnut Ridge announced on August 30 the addition of Steve Jones as the newspaper’s Imboden correspondent.

“As Lawrence County’s newspaper, we are always striving to reach all four corners of the county, but due to limited staffing that can be an issue at times,” said the newspaper in an announcement on its Facebook page. “Steve Jones has accepted the role as a correspondent for The Times Dispatch, so we can better serve the Imboden area.”

Imboden sits in the northwest corner of Lawrence County. The area was previously covered by The Ozark Journal, a weekly newspaper established in 1915 but closed by its owner in 2019. Established in 1910 in the county seat, The Times Dispatch is Lawrence County’s legal newspaper of record.

Dave Perozek

New book traces the life of Missouri Ozarks journalism icon

A new book, “Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks, the Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton” by Susan Croce Kelly, is now available from the University of Arkansas Press.

Lucille Morris Upton landed her first newspaper job 100 years ago in Denver in the early 1920s, later worked in El Paso, and eventually returned home to spend half a century reporting on the Ozarks world she knew best. Having come of age just as women gained the right to vote, she took advantage of opportunities available to women in the early twentieth century, and relished every minute. During her years as a journalist, Upton rubbed shoulders with presidents, flew with aviation pioneer Wiley Post, covered the worst single killing of US police officers in the twentieth century, wrote an acclaimed book on the vigilante group known as the Bald Knobbers, charted the growth of tourism in the Ozarks and spearheaded a movement to preserve iconic sites of regional history. Following retirement from the Springfield NewsLeader, she put her experience to good use as a member of the Springfield City

Council and community activist. Told largely through Upton’s own words, this insightful biography captures the excitement of being on the front lines of newsgathering in the days when the whole world depended on newspapers to find out what was happening.

Ozarks writer, raconteur and folksinger Marideth Sisco says of the book, “Author Susan Croce Kelly grasps the importance of Lucile Morris Upton in the development of the Ozarks, charting the events of Upton’s life with an understanding of the characters involved in their historical context. This is an important and enjoyable read.”

Kelly, a former reporter at Upton’s own Springfield News-Leader, is the author of two award-winning books on the history of old US 66: “Route 66: The Highway and Its People” and “Father of Route 66, the Story of Cy Avery.” She is also managing editor of OzarksWatch Magazine for Missouri State University’s Ozarks Studies Institute.

“Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks, the Life & Times of Lucile Morris Upton” is available in local bookstores, Barnes & Noble and Amazon, or through the University of Arkansas Press at a 25 percent discount.

Connecting People and Communities

ARKANSAS

Guest Column: Fixing Problems Early

Ideas to prevent problems before they print

By Kevin Slimp

My friend, Kari, wrote to me from her newspaper in Indiana. Her message reminded me of the questions I received daily when doing I.T. work for newspaper groups a decade or two ago.

Her email went something like this: “The PDF file of this page looks perfect, but the printed version is missing letters in the subhead. We decided it’s just one of those questions to which we’ll never know the answer.”

Fortunately, my memory still works well enough that I knew what caused the misprint and where she could look to find evidence of the problem before it went to press. Kari’s issues resulted from fonts being converted to CID when the pages were exported as PDF files from Adobe InDesign.

“I would bet money,” I wrote, “that you’ll find CID fonts listed in your PDF properties in Acrobat.”

Sure enough, there they were. CID fonts don’t show up as often as they used to. Most designers now use Open Type fonts, which don’t convert to CID when exported. And most CID fonts resulted from Adobe Type1 fonts, which no longer work in the newer versions of InDesign. So when a CID font does cause a printing problem, you can bet it resulted from a TrueType font that looked good on the screen but printed incorrectly on the page.

Kari’s email caused me to think of other problems that show up on the printed page but not always on the screen in the design process.

Images

Newsprint isn’t white. If you haven’t already noticed that, just take a close look. You’ll see gray and brown spots and a tint that might best be described as “off-white.”

See Guest page 11

Top is how the subhead should look when printed on the page. At the bottom, CID issues resulted in random letters printing instead of the subhead.

Guest

Continued from page 9

Through lots of trial and error, we’ve found ways to get our photos looking better, but often don’t have the “pop” we were hoping for. There are a lot of tools in Photoshop to improve the way our pictures look on the page. Before using any of these tools, however, we must set our color settings and resolution correctly.

Once, after working for a few days at a daily newspaper with a press, I received a call from someone at US Ink asking what I had done to the press.

Thinking I had broken something, I answered, “I didn’t do anything to the press. Why are you asking?”

“Well,” he continued, “I’ve never seen a press print this well on newsprint. You must have done something.”

I explained to him that I had simply gone to each computer and correctly set the color settings. He asked what settings I used. I could imagine him frantically writing everything I said to him in his notes.

What did I do that made such a difference in the pages printed on that press? In addition to teaching the staff the best

ways to edit photos, I went to each computer and set the “dot gain” to 26 percent and the “black ink limit” to 90. After changing those settings, the correct dot gain and ink limit are saved into each image file. Those two tweaks let the press know how much black ink to drop onto the page.

The other most common issue I experience with newspaper photos is the resolution settings. On newsprint, photos will print best on most presses with a resolution of 240. Not 300. Not 200. 240 works best on most presses. If we were publishing magazines, the optimum resolution would be 300.

Fonts

Let’s face it: We have fewer font issues than just a few years ago. Software has gotten better, printing devices have gotten better, and the entire process of creating quality PDF files is much easier than it used to be. However, fonts can be very problematic.

As I approach my 800-word limit for this column, let me keep things simple by telling you how I deal with fonts. I redesign a lot of newspapers, magazines, and books. When creating a new template, I

use only two categories of fonts:

• The first is Adobe fonts. Since most publishers use Adobe products, they have access to the entire Adobe font collection. To me, this alone makes the monthly cost of the Adobe subscription worth the price. I remember when newspapers paid $10,000 or more for Adobe’s font collection.

• In addition to Adobe fonts, I often purchase one or two fonts for a new design. These are always OpenType fonts and always from reputable font vendors.

By using only these two categories of fonts, I’ve eliminated almost all problems that might occur related to fonts.

Kevin Slimp is a popular consultant, advisor and trainer in the newspaper industry. From 1997-2018, Kevin directed The Newspaper Institute of The University of Tennessee. He currently serves as CEO of Market Square Publishing and Chief Guru at NewspaperAcademy.com. Email him at kevin@kevinslimp.com