OU: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Stephens Northwest Merger Moving Forward

Christopher Spencer’s Ozarks Unbound reports that the merger between the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Stephens Media’s northwest Arkansas operations is moving forward, with newspaper employees interviewing for their old jobs this week:
Staff with The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, the Northwest Arkansas Times and the Benton County Daily Record were told they must re-apply for their [...]

Lottery Execs Hit the JackPot & A Cautionary Tale in Arkansas Business This Week

We’re back in business. Here’s the latest from the Monday print edition of Arkansas Business:
Remember those phat lottery salaries everybody was so riled up about for about five minutes a few months ago? They’re big enough to put a few lottery workers among the “jocks and docs” on our annual list of highest-paid Arkansas state [...]

Molding Young Minds at UALR High School Journalism Day

Much thanks to the Sonny Rhodes and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for inviting me to speak during two sessions of UALR’s annual Journalism Day event, which took place Thursday.
Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press gave the event’s keynote address on “Why Journalism Matters,” and other session leaders included Frank Fellone of the [...]

Construction, Dillard’s & Target in This Week’s Arkansas Business

This week’s Arkansas Business is online. Among the highlights:
Dillard’s Inc. of Little Rock board member R. Brad Martin of Memphis is just pleased as punch to see J.C. Watts back on the board.
Developer Jim Strode wants to jump-start his new Park Avenue development in midtown so bad that he’s given prospective anchor tenant Target Corp. [...]

The Friday Week in Review: You Lie! Edition

It’s Friday, and time for another long look back at a brutal week in politics, sports and the Web. We’re going to try for a reasoned, respectful debate here, so no shouting! But feel free to call us out in comments if we start going on about death panels. Remember: There remains some significant details [...]

Video: Google News Offers Tips, Best Practices for Editors, Publishers

This 15-minute video is totally worth your time if you’re a publisher, editor or Webmaster looking to optimize your news content for Google News. In it, Maile Ohye of Google talks about best practices and answers frequently asked questions about how Google News crawls, indexes and ranks news stories in Google [...]

‘When Wal-Mart Leaves’ in This Week’s Arkansas Business

Labor Day’s over. Time to get back to work. This week’s Arkansas Business and Northwest Arkansas Business Journal are available now. Among the highlights:
Wal-Mart closed its only store in Brinkley in May. What followed goes against conventional wisdom, as city sales taxes rose, local stores added more merchandise and two other retail chains announces plans [...]

Friday Week In Review: Who Will Wear the Crown? Edition

Now that the Great Northwest Arkansas Newspaper War is settled, we can move on to other, more important forms of media self-destruction, like giving away all our online content for free!
Here now, at no extra charge, is a loving look back at the Week The Way It Was, Not Necessarily How We’d Like It To [...]

ArkansasBusiness.com: Democrat-Gazette, Stephens Employees Face ‘Uncertain’ Future

Rob Keys of Arkansas Business’ sister publication, the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, files a report today on ArkansasBusiness.com in the aftermath of yesterday’s joint venture announcement between the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Stephens Media in northwest Arkansas.
Not surprisingly, uncertainty appears to be a common theme among employees of both operations:
Said an employee of the Democrat-Gazette: “There’s [...]

The Morning After: Merry Christmas, Newspaper War Is Over

A round-up of Day Two coverage of the end of the Northwest Arkansas Newspaper War, such as it was.
Michael Tilley’s City Wire has details on the board that will control Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC, saying that the Stephens Media gets 2 seats on a five seat board, which of course means, “Walter wins!” Also: The [...]