Quality Key to Highest City Zone Penetration in U.S.

Newspaper Research Journal, Fall 2004 by Pardue, Mary Jane

The literature suggests that the most important thing news managements can do ...to grow revenue and circulation is to make the content of the paper more diverse and ... make the paper relate to more people and more areas of your community.69

An Arkansas Business story looking at the Democrat-Gazette 10 years later included quotes from experts who praised its continued commitment to local coverage, the amount of news in the paper and Hussman's strategy in winning the war.70 In the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, Harris wrote he agrees that Hussman has continued to improve the Democrat-Gazette.

The profit-oriented Gannett would have retreated to Little Rock and provided little or no coverage of the hinterlands of Arkansas had it won the war. Hussman, obviously, is a man with a mission, and covering the entire state is part of that mission.71

In a March 2000 commentary on the future of news, The Freedom Forum's Charles Overby says he visited the Democrat-Gazette to see why the paper was thriving in household penetration while others were struggling. He leads his column: "I have seen the future of newspapers. ... It's in Little Rock."72

Notes

1. Visit to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock, Arkansas, 8 November 2003.

2. Media InfoCenter Web site, (7 January 2004).

3. Leanne Kirby, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Promotions Designer, e-mail, 11 November 2003.

4. James V. Risser, "Independent Papers: An Endangered Species," Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering, ed. Gene Roberts (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2001), 364.

5. Audit Bureau of Circulations Web site, (7 January 2004).

6. Walter E. Hussman Jr., Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher/owner, personal interview, Little Rock, Arkansas, 8 November 2003.

7. "Arkansas' past entwined with newspaper's vivid story," History of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette'Web site (19 August 2003)

8. W. Parkman Rankin, The Practice a/Newspaper Management (New York: Praeger, 1986), 25-28.

9. Gene Roberts, ed., Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2001), 13.

10. Melvin Mencher, News Reporting and Writing, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2003), 82.

11. Conrad C. Fink, Strategic Newspaper Management (Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon, 1996), 83.

12. Fink, Strategic Newspaper Management, 92.

13. Hussman interview.

14. Walter E. Hussman Jr., Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher/owner, e-mail, 10 November 2003.

15. Hussman interview.

16. James Redmond and Robert Trager, Balancing on the Wire: The Art of Managing Media Organizations, 2nd ed. (Cincinnati: Atomic Dog Publications, 2004), 121.

17. Hussman interview.

18. Arkansas Gazette Company v. Camden News Publishing Company, No. LR C 841020 (E.D. Ark. 1986).

19. Paul Smith, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Vice President and General Manager, e-mail, 29 January 2004.

20. Hussman interview.

21. Stephen Lacy and Hugh J. Martin, "Competition, Circulation and Advertising," Newspaper Research Journal 25, no. 1 (winter 2004).