Guest Column:
The best news is local
By Phil Lamb
APA looks back on a newsworthy 2024
2024 was a big year for the Arkansas Press Association and for our member newspapers around the state. The year saw changes in legislation, the introduction of new fellowship programs, the birth of new publications and the final issue of beloved community papers. There were retirements and deaths, free workshops and FOIA battles. This week we take one last look at January-June, 2024 and all the transformations the first half of the year brought to the state’s newspaper industry. Next week we will take a final look at the last half of the year.
JANUARY
No time was wasted getting to work in January. Arkansas Citizens for Transparency sought donations to support the Arkansas Government Disclosure Act and Amendment of 2024. APA Executive Director Ashley Kemp Wimberley served on the seven-person nonpartisan drafting committee fighting to protect Arkansas’s Freedom of Information Act.
Arkansas Citizens for Transparency was a broad coalition of citizens working to protect the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act through a proposed Constitutional Amendment. Members of the drafting committee included Sen. Clarke Tucker, Chairman; Nate Bell; David Couch; Jennifer Waymack Standerfer; Robert Steinbuch; John E. Tull, III and Ashley Kemp Wimberley.
There were also some notable changes to several newsrooms in January. The Searcy
Daily Citizen became the White County Citizen, a return to a name the newspaper previously held when moving from Des Arc to Searcy in 1889. The name change came as the newspaper switched from daily publication to a weekly format.
“We can continue to highlight this community and provide you with accurate and objective information,” said Editor Steve Watts in his January 4 column. “It’s in our blood, it’s in our history and it’s in our new (old) name.”
Longtime Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Writer and Editor Celia Storey retired after 45 years with the newspaper. Starting in 1978, she stayed on through the transition when the Arkansas Democrat bought the Arkansas Gazette and merged into one newspaper. During her tenure, she facilitated the Little Rock Air Force Base newspaper, created Kid Club in the comics pages, created the Signing On column which covered the broadcasting beat as well as the Aerobics column in the Sports section among many other accomplishments.
Arkansas Press Women named Angelita Faller its new president at the beginning of the year, electing her at their December 30, 2023 membership meeting.
Faller is news director at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s in digital storytelling from Ball State University. Her experience includes newspaper reporting and photogrphy in her home state of Illinois and communications roles at Ohio University and Grambling State University.
LeadAR, a program designed to help Arkansans better understand issues and opportunities facing the state and improve their ability to make an impact, hosted a panel discussion at the APA headquarters. The discussion focused on the state of the media industry and its challenges and opportunities.
Serving on the panel were Alex Kienlen, Producer I, Assignment and Web at KARK and KLRT; Mitch Bettis, Owner and President, Arkansas Business Publishing Group; Michele Towne, Owner/ Publisher, Inviting Arkansas; and Neal Gladner, Executive Director of the Arkansas Broadcasters Association. Ashley Kemp Wimberley served as moderator.
The Madison County Record and its general manager Shannon Hahn garnered national attention with its coverage of sexual assaults being covered up on the Huntsville Junior High boys’ basketball team. The staff’s fearless reporting earned them the 2021 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Over the last few years, the Record has earned other honors including:
– The Tom and Pat Gish Award for Courage, Tenacity and Integrity in Rural Journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.
– APA’s I.F. Stone Award, which recognizes extraordinary investigative reporting of governmental wrongdoing.
– Finalist for the Freedom of Information Act Award by the 2021 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards.
– Semi-Finalist for the Goldsmith Prize, awarded by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Hahn said the guidance of Publisher Ellen Kreth has been invaluable in tackling difficult stories and finding ways to uncover needed information.
WEHCO Media, Inc. Chairman and CEO
Walter E. Hussman Jr. created four new journalism awards totaling $100,000. The Center for Integrity in News Reporting Awards, worth $25,000 each, are available through The Center for Integrity in News Reporting at the University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill. They are to be
MARCH
March kicked off with Newspapers in Education Week and the Arkansas State University student newspaper, The Herald, won big at the Southeast Journalism Conference at Troy University in Alabama. It was the second consecutive year for The Herald to win at the annual conference.
The winners in the Best of the South
awarded annually to print, broadcast, cable television and digital media outlets for news reporting.
“The Pulitzer Prizes are $15,000 each, so hopefully just the monetary amount will attract interest,” Hussman said. “We think it’s important to reward people who do exemplary work in what has traditionally been regarded as the most respected news reporting in America.”
The PRESS Act was unanimously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, marking a significant victory for protectors of the First Amendment, before the Act made its way to the Senate.
A new faith-based quarterly newspaper was launched to serve the communities of Montgomery County and the Glenwood area of Pike County. The Threshing Floor of the Ouachitas was started by the
Montgomery County News and is available as an insert or as a standalone publication. The free newspaper was planned with a printing schedule of January, April, July and October. Montgomery County News Editor Dewayne Holloway is also the pastor at Community Baptist Church in Okay, Arkansas.
The Marshall Mountain Wave returned to its historic location, 100 Nome St. The building was home to the Marshall Republican, a predecessor to the Marshall Mountain Wave founded in 1890.
The APA public notice website (arkansaspublicnotices.com) transitioned to a new platform with the Illinois Press Association giving the website a fresh new look with better functionality. Amid the transition, APA hosted training sessions to help members learn how to upload public notices to the new site.
categories were:
– Opinion Editor Elijah Templeton, First Place Best Opinion Writer
– Former Herald Editor-in-chief Rebecca Robinson, Second Place Best Page Designer
– Editor-in-chief Rachel Rudd, Third Place Best News Writer and Fifth Place Best
Photographer
– In the on-site competitions Herald Sports Editor Anna Cox won Second Place Page Design and Templeton won First Place Opinion Writing.
On March 16, the Arkansas Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists
Hahn outside the Nieman Foundation for Journalists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2024
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MARCH (CONTINUED)
hosted a free legal literacy workshop at APA headquarters.
The workshop featured Arkansas Times’ Debrah Hale-Shelton and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s John Lynch who shared their experiences and insights on how legal documents can be used effectively in reporting.
The Helena World became the latest flashpoint for press freedom with a FOIA win in court during national Sunshine Week.
While FOIA legislation continues to be attacked regularly in the state, the Act is used by local newspapers to obtain information from public bodies. The Helena World staff met opposition when trying to obtain documents from Helena-West Helena School District regarding a student fight on campus.
Editor and Publisher Andrew Bagley sued the district and was eventually provided the requested security footage by the district. Part of the settlement, the district also paid the newspaper’s legal fees.
The Courier in Russellville Editor Travis Simpson published his debut novel,
The first ever Meredith Oakley Award was presented at the APA Annual Convention in Jonesboro to honor the work of the late Arkansas Democrat-Gazette associate editor and “Voices” page editor. Oakley died in 2023
Her 35-year career was hallmarked by her championing of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act and her staunch opposition to laws that would weaken the people’s right to know.
The new award was announced by the Arkansas Newspaper Foundation in November 2023 and was created with seed money from the Hussman Foundation.
Entries in the APA’s Better Newspaper Editorial Contest Arkansas Freedom of Information Reporting category are considered for the award, which includes a $1,000 prize and plaque.
“Strong Like You,” on March 12. The book tells the story of Walker Lauderdale, a 15-year-old linebacker searching for his missing father across the Ozarks.
APA announced details of its annual advertising conference including the lineup of speakers and the return to Petit Jean Mountain.
APA highlighted the career of University of Arkansas School of Journalism and Strategic Media instructor Renette Smith McCargo. McCargo, who also serves as director of the Arkansas Scholastic Press Association,
has also worked in newspapers, radio and television in Arkansas and Tennessee.
“My concern about journalism today is the audience, spreading misinformation, disinformation, and deep fakes without attempting to fact-check details in the story,” McCargo said. “As a journalism instructor, I believe I have to teach students to analyze what they view and read. Additionally, I want to teach students to look for more than one source on the topic. Student journalists must learn to ask more questions, listen to the responses, and trust their instincts.”
B. Caldwell and production manager
Stephen Caldwell, son of Marvin B. and Dorothy Reddell Caldwell and grandson of Roy H. Caldwell, donated a collection of photos and other newspaper memorabilia to the Dennis and Jan Schick Newspaper
discuss layout at the Courier-Index, February 1972.
Museum in the APA headquarters.
The Caldwell family published the CourierIndex in Marianna for 41 years after Roy
Herald staffers attending the Southeast Journalism Conference were (from left) Anna Cox, sports editor; Jerry Don Burton, news editor; Elijah Templeton, opinion editor; Caroline Averitt, life editor; and Rachel Rudd, editor-in-chief.
APRIL
Marvin
Milton Holcomb
2024
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APRIL (CONTINUED)
Caldwell bought half interest in the newspaper in 1944. The other half was purchased by Marvin Caldwell in 1949. Marvin Caldwell became the editor and
MAY
The APA filed a second ballot question committee, Arkansans for a Free Press, to help fundraise and collect signatures to get the Arkansas Government Disclosure Act and Amendment on the November 2024 ballot.
The committee is composed of former APA past presidents, former and current newspaper publishers, FOIA attorneys and
publisher in 1957 when Roy Caldwell died. He stayed in that role until his death in 1983. Following his death, Dorothy Caldwell published the newspaper for
persons in academia.
Buddy King, an APA past president and former Texarkana Gazette publisher, is serving as the committee chair. Other officers are: APA past president and former Harrison Daily Times owner Jane Dunlap Christenson, vice chair; APA past president and former Community Newspapers president Mike Brown, secretary, and Arkansas Newspaper Foundation board member and Dean Emeritus, Clinton School of Public Service Skip Rutherford, treasurer.
two more years before selling to General Media, Inc. in 1983.
Elaine Brown took over as editor at the Pocahontas Star-Herald while John Allen French transitioned out of the position into his new role as regional sales director for CherryRoad Media.
APA Past President and former Arkansas newspaper publisher, Derwood Brett, died June 16 in Hot Springs at the age of 76.
Ashley Hogg, publisher of the AdvanceMonticellonian in Monticello and The Eagle Democrat in Warren and Larry Killian, owner and editor of the South Arkansas Sun in Hampton were elected to serve on the APA board of directors.
Ashley Kemp Wimberley serves in an advisory capacity.
Student journalists from Arkansas State University take home 49 awards at the Arkansas College Media Association’s annual contest and spring conference.
The Herald, A-State’s campus newspaper and online news outlet, won 42 awards while the student radio station, Red Wolf Radio, won two. ASU-TV won five awards, including the General Excellence Television Producer/ Director of the Year for Station Manager Easton John
At-large board members reelected for 2024-25 were Jennifer Allen, owner and publisher of Hot Springs Village Voice and HSV Life magazine; Jeremy Gulban, publisher of the Marshall Mountain Wave, Pocahontas Star Herald, the Clay County Courier in Corning, the Clay County TimesDemocrat in Piggott, the Villager Journal in Cherokee Village and The News in Salem; Scott Loftis, editor, publisher and majority owner of the Carroll County News in Berryville and the Eureka Springs TimesEcho and Brent A. Powers, president of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, LLC.
In addition, the board voted on and approved the following to serve as officers on the 2024-2025 Executive Board: Immediate Past President Eliza Gaines, publisher of the Arkansas DemocratGazette, Northwest Arkansas DemocratGazette, Camden News, Magnolia BannerNews, Hot Springs Sentinel Record, El Dorado News-Times and the Texarkana Gazette; President Andrew Bagley, co-owner and publisher of the Helena World and Monroe County Argus; and Vice President John Robert Schirmer, editor and publisher of the Nashville News-Leader, Murfreesboro Diamond and Glenwood Herald
The Associated Press announced a new 501(c)3 charitable organization to fundraise for state and local journalism.
JUNE
APA President Betty Magie passes the gavel, along with a hug, to incoming APA President Brett in 1989.
Bill Lewis, whose career spanned more than three decades, dies
Willard “Bill” McKinnon Lewis died from longstanding coronary disease on December 24 at his home in Little Rock. He was 95.
Born in 1929 to James D. and Alma Swan Murphy, he grew up in the home of an aunt and uncle, Bennie and Webb Lewis, following the death of his mother when he was three months old. After serving two years in the Army in Japan, he had his surname legally changed to Lewis, the name he had used all his life.
Lewis held a bachelor’s degree in journalism
Werner
from Mississippi Southern College, now the University of Southern Mississippi, at Hattiesburg. While in college he worked part-time at the Hattiesburg American and after graduation worked briefly at the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and then four years with United Press, the newswire company.
Lewis joined the Arkansas Gazette in October 1956. As a general-assignment reporter, he covered a great variety of events, including the 1957 Little Rock desegregation crisis, and interviewed hundreds of prominent people, among them Sir Edmund Hillary, John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt and Gens. Jimmy Doolittle and Mark Clark. His byline, Bill Lewis, became familiar to Gazette readers throughout the state.
A review of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra written when the non-staff regular reviewer became ill led to 25 years of writing for the newspaper reviews of the Symphony, concerts, plays, restaurants, and books. Lewis also wrote occasional
food columns for the late Millie Woods and her successor, Harriet Aldridge
Later in his career Lewis wrote mostly feature stories. His travel writing took him to some 55 countries, and he frequently wrote about developments in the medical field, particularly the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences, and interesting local people, before he retired from the Arkansas Gazette for health reasons in 1990.
He was a charter member of the Society of Professional Journalists, also known as Sigma Delta Chi, and was the instigator of the Farkleberry Follies bi-annual musical theater comedy spoofing politicians and other newsmakers in the late 1960s.
Lewis is survived by his wife of 68 years, Mary Sue Harris Lewis; two sons, Gregory McKinnon Lewis, M.D. and his wife Mary Strek, M.D. of Chicago, and David Harris Lewis of Little Rock and five grandchildren. There is no service planned.
Trieschmann, journalist, teacher and playwright, dies at 60
Award-winning playwright, teacher and journalist
John Werner
Trieschmann IV died in Little Rock on December 26, following a stroke on December 1. He was 60.
Walcott
Born in 1964 in Hot Springs, he was the oldest child of Dr. John Trieschmann III and Ann Grisham Trieschmann. Diagnosed as a child with Gaucher’s disease, an enzyme disorder that causes skeletal abnormalities, Trieschmann spent a fair amount of his childhood and teenage years on bed rest recovering from surgeries, and credited this time as fostering his interest in writing as to keep himself occupied.
A 1982 graduate of Lakeside High School in 1982, Trieschmann held a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Hendrix College and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, emphasis playwriting, from Boston University, where he studied with Nobel Prize–winning poet and playwright Derek
His early bylines include freelance writing of music reviews and features for alternative newspapers such as the Village Voice, Boston Phoenix, Nashville Scene, Memphis Flyer and Little Rock’s Spectrum Weekly. In 1993 he joined the staff at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as a writer and features editor for the Arkansas Weekend and Sunday Style sections, working there until 2009. His original humor column, “Weekend Kemosabe,” twice won awards in APA’s Better Newspaper Editorial Contest. He drew an original cartoon, “Information Overload,” and after leaving the DemocratGazette continued as a freelance writer, also contributing to the Arkansas Times
From the late 1990s to 2013, Trieschmann published plays, both full-length and oneact, with the New York publishing company Playscripts and with Dramatic Publishing Company in Illinois. These 25 published plays have been staged more than 100 times per year, mostly by middle schools and high schools in the United States, as well as by schools and theatre companies in Canada, England, New Zealand, Romania, Japan and Italy. His play, “All I Really Need To Know I Learned By Being In A Bad Play,” is a bestseller with Dramatic.
In 1994, Trieschmann was the first playwright to receive the Porter Fund Literary Prize in Arkansas. Trieschmann also was the first-prize winner of the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans New Play Competition for his play, “Lawn Dart.” His play, “Disfarmer,” was produced by Arkansas Repertory Theatre for the inaugural ACANSA Festival in 2014.
He was writer and director for the world premiere production of Mozart: Revealed and Schubert: Revealed with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in Fort Wayne, Indiana Trieschmann was known to several classes of Arkansas Governor’s School students in the 1980s as “Mr. A.V.” From 2000-2013 he was an adjunct professor at University of Arkansas Little Rock, the University of Central Arkansas and Hendrix College, teaching theater, film and playwriting.
He served as a full-time professor at University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College from 2013-2021, followed by a two-year stint in communications at Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield.
He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Martha Castleberry Trieschmann, and sons John Trieschmann V and Kit Trieschmann
Bill Lewis
Werner Trieschmann
As a young journalist’s first assignments go, it wasn’t exactly auspicious.
But for me, it was an introduction to an idea that I spent the next four decades learning and relearning and eventually sharing in a news environment that was drastically changing:
The best news out there is local. Local people. Local interests. Local needs. Local issues.
That sense of “local first” faded in my head in some later newspapers, in Little Rock and Tampa, Florida. I became confident in spelling Nikita Khrushchev, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eduard Shevardnadze and Karol Wojtyla. (Those are a former leader of the Soviet Union, a U.S. diplomat, a Soviet foreign minister and the birth name of Pope John Paul II.)
I had taken a part-time gig working for the Courier-Democrat’s longtime editor, Bill Newsom, while I was a student at Arkansas Tech. (It was so long ago it still may have been Arkansas Polytechnic College.)
As I remember, the first time Bill handed me a “real” assignment was after a thunderstorm had moved through the area. Lightning had struck a tree in a farmer’s pasture. And, yes, there had been several head of cattle under the tree.
So, my first assignment was to get a photograph of dead cows.
Not quite Pulitzer material.
But in looking back after decades of news experience, it was a perfectly valid news photo. Any farmer would feel the financial loss of four dead cows. Then there was the angle of reminding people of the danger of thunderstorms. It was about as hyperlocal
Guest Column: The best news is local
By Phil Lamb The Courier in Russellville
as you could get in a small town.
As I would learn later, it also had the benefit of being a “Hey, Mabel” story. That concept arises from the need for a newspaper to offer things that would prompt a dinnertable comment that begins, “Hey, Mabel, did you see this picture in the paper?” That is the old equivalent of “going viral” online.
So when I returned to a position at the Courier in the 1990s, I needed a refresher course in local news.
That was provided by Bill’s replacement, editor and longtime journalism teacher Roy Ockert.
I think I still have my reporter’s notebook in which I wrote down his key lesson, probably in red and certainly underlined: “Wire is filler.”
It’s short and to the point, but people outside the business might need a translation of the newsroom jargon. “Wire” means content provided by national news services such as The Associated Press, which of course once came in via telegraph wires. “Filler” is the other content that you fill the spaces around your newspaper’s ads once the “real” news, the local stuff, is placed.
Even before the Internet flooded people’s eyes with what passes for online news, that wire news was available elsewhere. The statewide papers or the day-old Sunday New York Times or Chicago Tribune could provide it.
But neither the wire services, the big papers nor the TV stations ever cared much about what was going on in the local community, unless you had a big tornado or a mass murderer in town.
The local paper is the one doing the heavy lifting with daily stories about local people, local government and school boards, local cops and courts, even local athletics.
A few example sof the importance of local news stand out in memory. Among them is the woman who was fighting an unreasonably high utility bill, which was reversed after our coverage. Then there were the numerous times a reporter came back from a board or council meeting and said the officials who went into a private executive session kept peeking out the door to see if she was still on watch. We generally were. And one vivid week was when the newspaper covered a youth baseball world series with a special section everyday, even on a Monday when we didn’t normally print a newspaper at all.
I also have two favorites in which I played a more direct part in writing.
First, “Their Story, Our History” was a yearlong series of interviews with World War II veterans in the area. Editor Rick Fahr started the series, then I continued when he deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with the National Guard.
Second, “Angel with a mustache” was a Sunday story I wrote about an ice cream delivery driver who died tragically, but whose real story was the kind of life that he lived.
As always, the stories that connect best are stories about our neighbors, or perhaps even about our neighbor’s cows.
It’s like my favorite line of dialogue from my favorite TV show – “We’re all stories, in the end; just make it a good one.”
Reprinted with permission from The Courier in Russellville.