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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Implications, Random Thoughts on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Stephens Media Joint Venture

The plan for a joint venture announced today between the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Stephens Media in northwest Arkansas raises all kinds of questions, many of which we hope to answer in our continuing coverage this afternoon on ArkansasBusiness.com.
Among the many points to ponder should the joint venture deal go through:
Staffing: What does this portend for [...]

Frank Robins III, Former Owner and Publisher of the Log Cabin Democrat

Frank Robins III, the former publisher of the Log Cabin Democrat, died on Saturday at the age of 80. You can read his obituary on the Web site of the newspaper he once owned here. The newspaper’s article on Robins appears here.
Robins was my wife Laura’s uncle. I didn’t get to spend much time with [...]

More From Walter Hussman, the ‘Patron Saint of the Pay Wall’

Noted here mainly for the record, since there’s not much new in this Arkansas Democrat-Gazette piece (on the front of the Business section here in Little Rock) on publisher Walter Hussman’s championing of the pay wall, this time during a Webinar hosted by the American Society of News Editors.
A longtime advocate of subscriptions for online [...]

Here’s An Idea: The Harvard Business Review on the ‘Nichepaper’

Big ups to Robb Montgomery on Twitter for a link to this article on the “nichepaper manifesto.” I’m not big on buzzwords, nor am I big on manifestos, but I like the ideas described in this piece on the future of newspapers by the Harvard Business Review.
What does it boil down to? The future of [...]

Mike Huckabee to Guest-edit Politics Magazine in October

Via FishbowlDC, this item about Republican Mike Huckabee, a “giant” in his party, guest-editing Campaigns & Elections Politics magazine in October. This, from a memo from the publisher:
Team, Exciting news… Campaigns & Elections’ Politics magazine will soon host Governors Huckabee and Rendell as guest editors of two upcoming issues. As you know, both Governor Huckabee [...]

Lock Down: The Democrat-Gazette Takes Free News Off the Web in Northwest Arkansas

It had to happen sometime.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette announced Sunday that, starting Aug. 5, its northwest Arkansas newspaper edition will no longer offer free access to print edition stories on the Web. Like content on the state edition of the paper at ArkansasOnline.com, NWANews.com will be accessible to paying subscribers only.
Publisher Walter Hussman, who’s been praised [...]