Arkansas Blog

Is it that employing columnists of the quality of Bradley Gitz, Dana Kelly, Mike Masterson, Philip Martin, Jay Grelen, and Linda Caillouet saves more money than laying off news staff and reducing the news hole?

I hate to admit it, but I think that prick Boo is right about the web. Giving away your product for the hope of ad hits isn't yet a sound business strategy. Certainly not in the South. If I could read the DOG online, free & know I didn't have to give him nearly $10 a month, I do it. Well, except for Sunday's. I like the physical paper & coffee on Sunday's.

I agree that his columnist are mostly sh!t. Not just wrong, but bad writers. Say what you will for Martin (and he's full of himself) the guy can write. Though he does have a fondness for polysyllabic words that he likes to show off with. Even Greenberg can write, despite being pompus. However, the "wholly a pleasure" crap has run its course. With the exception of Lyons, the rest are crap.

The TeeVee column is outdated before it hits your doorstep. They could use a city or architecture critic and a columnist with a LR/NLR local focus. I miss the likes of Brummett and his debates with JRS right there in front of you.

I admire Murphy and Amy Scheling (sp?) work. I only recently found out the DG had a couple other blogs (bible, pets, hog recruiting) as well.

However, news is old when it reaches my doorstep. I've usually read everything they print online. Local and state stuff I read here, on this blog.

But blogs are hard. Even here at the AT the only decently consistent blogger is Max.

And column work is hard too. Warwick's Sabin's insight has been long missed from the pages of the AT and I can't see his replacement in the wings. No one else seems focused on real local & state and statewide politics. Here at the AT it's all about the latest band or some other entertainment story (Millar, Koon, Jenkins, etc.) They're fine, but frivolous often reporting about their incestuous social circles.

I'm hoping the latest Lu.C.A. dibocle will bring Sabin back to his sense & the AT. But with his work at the OA, I doubt it.

Philip Martin is a much better writer than the Daily DoG deserves (but the greatest American rock band is neither The Band nor REM but the Talking Heads).

Just what I need to keep me up to date -- two local papers owned by out-of-state companies. I've always got a gripe, I guess. The latest: obits that inform us that he loved his family and she canned poke salat every spring. The Commercial must be getting paid by the word. When it's my turn, unless my obit is two words -- she died -- I'm gonna come back and haunt somebody. Everyone will know I didn't go to meet my heavenly host anyway.
GateHouse has junk bond status? Ouch.

Hussman is a very lucky man, but his luck will run out sooner rather than later. Once the Activist investors are through with Dillard's the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is sunk. Click on my name for a list of 11 reasons why Hussman will go down in history as a typical newspaper owner who couldn't wrap his mind around the "Internets".