Arkansas Blog

good times and fond memories!!!!!

Ouch... as i was editing "The Old Gray Lady" documentary I came to a portion where Roy Reed has a long monologue about Ganett. He summed up the film perfectly I thought. Of course he mentions how Gannett diminished the importance of the front page. Well, I was able to find, in the basement of the ADG, the clipping of the infamous UALR spandex, and I used it as visual reinforcement of Mr. Reed's point. Out of the over 70 hours of tape we shot, no one mentioned Brantley was responsible... and we didn't ask... we assumed it was Gannett. If only there were a way to print a retraction/correction in the film world. My apologies to Gannett... looks as though I need to do some minor re-editing before public television broadcast. Thank you Mr. Brantley.

ARK. BLOG: I told a researcher the full story on this and was surprised at how much time was devoted to it in the film. Quite misleading, I thought. But it always has been so. It became a metaphor for Gannett, though they had not a thing to do with it. I won't bore you with the loose justification for how the story occurred.

Max, I don't think you can take all the credit/blame for the spandex picture. As I recall it, the decision to play the photo prominently on Page One was made by the Sunday news editor.

ARK. BLOG: Kind of you to offer me cover. Of course the Sunday news editor ultimately is responsible for Page One. But it was my call on the reporting side and I recommended it as the best of the features we had to offer that week. And, though it doesn't matter now, it was a pretty good feature by William Green. And you tell me, how are you going to tell a story about a controversial new sort of form-huggin cheerleader outfit -- a then-new material that had prompted a huge controversy at a college in Mississippi before the outfits were adopted at UALR -- without a good color illustration? This was public service at its finest, the more I think about it. Let me see if I can find some Spandex for our next issue of the Times? Perhaps a trend piece on the increasingly revealing nature of pep group outfits since that fateful day when I doomed the Arkansas Gazette with my photo selection. Yes, that's the ticket. More Spandex.

"ARK. BLOG: I told a researcher the full story on this and was surprised at how much time was devoted to it in the film. Quite misleading, I thought. But it always has been so. It became a metaphor for Gannett, though they had not a thing to do with it. I won't bore you with the loose justification for how the story occurred."

I just checked, and we showed the UALR pic for less than 15 seconds. The film was one hour and thrity one minutes. In my opinion that doesn't amount becoming a metaphor for Gannett. Now if you take the video from Channel 4 news of the USA Today robot spinning in circles... which I chose to use at least on 3 occasions, there is your metaphor for Gannett. To me, "Quiet misleading" implies intent, it wasn't our intention, it was a mistake.

ARK. BLOG: 15 seconds is a long time in a 90-minute movie to linger on one single news story, particularly since the film contained I don't think even a reference to the fact that the Ark. Gazette (not the Democrat) won the sweepstakes awards in both the APME and APA contests the last four years of its existence. I'm not defending Gannett by any stretch -- any review of D-G or journalism review articles or my interview in the oral history proejct would show this (including several with my explanation of responsibility on the infamous Spandex story) -- but I think the movie had a point to make and did so with devices such as that article. I know how desperate the researcher was to find it. I provided help (and the back story) and thus was very surprised to see it used at such length to underscore Roy Reed's remarks. I, however, didn't mean to say the article became a metaphor for Gannett in your film. But you need only Google spandex and Gazette to see that it DID became a metaphor community-wide and the facts were often a victim in the process. (After all, why did you seek it in the first place?)

Walker Lundy is an idiot, but none of the Gannett hands were tainted by the Gazette experience. Moon boy is the publisher at USA Today, a real demotion.
I'm probably one of the five people who has read the oral history project on the Gazette and Max went into great detai on the cheerleader photo.
While that is the one that always comes up, it was another Max project that was much more damaging.
Getting your momma to buy stock in Dillard's so you could get the annual reports led to them to pulling all their advertising. It was also inferred that Hussman promised favorable coverage of Dillard's for as long he owned the Democrat, which is why the stories of racial profiling at Dillard's and the resulting lawsuits never make the paper.

ARK. BLOG: I'd make a few edits in that recitation, but, gee, it's all too painful. But, yes, I fessed up to my role in the great Dillard's exodus in the oral history as well. Though, I think I may have given myself too much credit. I think it's clearer now, in part thanks to the interview Hussman gave to the filmmakers, that information he developed about ad rates (specifically that Dillard's, the Gazette's biggest advertiser, wasn't getting the lowest rates) was the biggest cause of unhappiness at the department store chain. A news story we did based on the annual proxy, was, however, apparently the straw that broke the camel's back.

Spandex-clad cheerleaders? Suddely I understand those "I found my dream home!" ads a lot better.

ARK. BLOG: I take my licks when deserved, but that's an ad department feature, not one of mine.

Actually I don't think any of those things had to do with the demise of the Gazette and I don't think it was Gannett either.
I maintain, and Max might disagree, that the anti-trust lawsuit filed and eventually lost by Patterson was the key and that was pre-sale. But before even that, the refusal of the JOA played a huge part, but Gannett makes for a much easier target, plus they made a fair share of blunders here as well. They just didn't know how to handle a state-wide daily. They badly mishandled the Des Moines Register at the same time as the Gazette and the Clarion-Ledger from a couple of years earlier was another bundle of mistakes, but those papers weren't in a war with another local daily, so they survived.

ARK. BLOG: Much of what you say is exactly right. I think the key thing is that it is always a mistake to reduce a hugely complicated issue to a single, simple explanation. Don't leave out the single-mindedness of Walter Hussman, the tightly held nature of the private company he ran and the tens, probably couple hundred, of millions he spent ultimately acquiring a monopoly here. To the average business person's mind -- such as those that led Gannett -- that was unexpected behavior, irrational even. Pretty smart looking today.

Wooooo-whooooooooo! We're re-fighting the newspaper war!!

Whose side was David O. Dodd on anyway?

And what news story precipitated Orval Faubus into deploying the Guard into the streets between Capitol and Scott and 3rd and Louisiana in order to keep the peace?

Were the troops wearing spandex?

And did the lede for that story consist of a single word:
Wow.

ARK. BLOG: You know too much. I ain't fighting. I surrendered long ago. (But I should add that I was not allowed to keep either a mule or a sidearm.)

Dead.
That's what she is.
A newspaper many called the Old Grey Lady.

Re: Wooooo-whooooooooo! We're re-fighting the newspaper war!!

Funny you should say that. Today a friend of mine, like me a veteran of that same war from the losing side, was commenting about the Huckabee/DoG flap and said that Max has reversed the tables on the Democrat and become the new John Robert Starr.

What do you say, Max? Instead of cheerleaders in spandex, how about a shot of you on a Times newspaper box with a knife in your teeth?

ARK. BLOG: I can't climb that high any more.

Or Max in spandex sitting on a newspaper box with a knife between his teeth... Never mind.

"Exaclty right"
Max made me blush.
If anything it was cable TV. It allowed Hussman to have the money to spend to keep the fight going way after it was prudent to get out.
And since I'm posting under a "secret name" I can go ahead and say Hussman deserves some credit for keeping a decent paper going.
He doesn't have to keep the bureaus around the state. He doesn't need to keep all those pages full of news. Or the free obits, or the stocks listings or anything of the other things he has done.
Yeah, the DemGaz is bad in some rather obvious ways, terrible columnists, a kooky editorial page, an antiquated design and an unfocused presentation of local and state news.
For the one millionth time, three Arkansas national guardsmen die in Iraq at the same time and it gets buried inside. Lordy, that was a poor decision.
But if you count stories and really look at the DemGaz, it isn't that bad.

ARK. BLOG: I agree. And have said so often.

I only wish the Gazette had won its courtcase against the Hussman Enterprises. Never really understood how they could lose that type of thing but they did.

Personally, I chart the Gannett-imposed demise of the Gray Lady from the publication of this headline:

"Jeez, those knees."

Oh, and they screwed up the TV book. And tried to kill In the News. And bounced Shelton out of his chair (sorry, Max), and about 185,000 other studpid mistakes or whatever was left of circulation by then.

Max, tell me you are kidding!
That Sunday's Gazette with the spandex twinks on it convinced me that was the end of the Gazette as we all knew it and wanted it. Tell me that was NOT your decision!!!

ARK. BLOG: Shoot if you must this old gray head.

Her name was Taheeva, she was Miss White River Festival before she went to UALR, and nobody ought to say nuthin bad about her photo. Max has probably made worse decisions (and no need to admit them)

Gawd, wish there was some way to have all those pictures posted. DBI and I need a refresher remedy quickly.