OPINION

REX NELSON: Celebrating the press

As I emceed the annual awards luncheon of the Arkansas Press Association at Hot Springs late last month, it struck me that it had been 40 years since I attended the event for the first time.

It was June 1979, and I was the 19-year-old sports editor of the Daily Siftings Herald at Arkadelphia. A group of us from the newspaper loaded the car early on a Saturday morning and headed out to pick up our awards. I had wanted to be in the newspaper business since I had learned to read, and this was my chance to meet the giants in the industry. There were Cone and Betty Magie of Cabot, Jay Jackson of Clinton, Frank Robins of Conway, Fred Wulfekuhler of Paragould, J.E. Dunlap of Harrison, Charlotte and Melvin Schexnayder of Dumas, Tom Riley of North Little Rock, and others. They not only published newspapers; they also were community leaders.

Sadly, the Siftings Herald is gone, but I'm still plugging four decades later. One of the great joys of summer--from my days in the newspaper business to time spent working in the governor's office--has been the chance to hang out at APA meetings. I've attended these summer gatherings in Little Rock, Hot Springs, Eureka Springs, West Memphis and elsewhere, catching up with newspaper friends from across the state.

Most people are well aware that these are challenging times in the newspaper industry. Indeed, the crowd at this year's awards luncheon was less than half the size of that at the first luncheon I attended in 1979. Still, as I read the names of dozens of award winners, it was encouraging to realize how many people are out there working hard to cover the communities where they live. Arkansas has always been a good newspaper state, and we lose a little bit of our soul each time one of our historic watchdogs closes its doors.

The APA executive director these days is Ashley Wimberley, who was serving as director of marketing when Tom Larimer retired at age 69 early last year. Larimer, who hailed from a newspaper family at Green Forest, had replaced the legendary Dennis Schick in 2004. Wimberley also comes from a newspaper family. Her parents, Ron and Nancy Kemp, ran the paper at Rector for many years. Ron was the APA president in 1993.

As proof that there are only two degrees of separation in Arkansas, note that Ron's father and my father played football together in the 1940s at what's now Ouachita Baptist University. Our mothers, meanwhile, remained best friends for seven decades. The Kemps and Nelsons are practically family, so I'm not about to say no when Ashley Wimberley calls with a request.

Founded in 1873, the APA was the state's first trade association. Its president from 1873-75 was James Newton Smithee, who had been born into a poor family in 1842 in the hills of what would become Sharp County. Smithee had only three months of formal education and became an apprentice at age 12 at the Des Arc Citizen. At age 18, he purchased the Prairie County Democrat, editorialized in favor of secession and then served in a Confederate field artillery battalion. Smithee was wounded in the Battle of Helena on July 4, 1863. He worked after the war as a typesetter at Memphis and then moved to Little Rock in 1866 to serve as a foreman in the printing office of the Arkansas Gazette. Smithee moved through the ranks quickly--city editor, managing editor and finally owner. He sold the newspaper in 1874 to become the commissioner of immigration and state lands.

On April 11, 1878, Smithee acquired a newspaper known as The Evening Star and renamed it the Arkansas Democrat. He fought a duel with a Gazette owner, John Adams, on May 5, 1878. Neither man was seriously wounded. Smithee was forced to sell the Democrat less than a year after having purchased it when he was charged with a conflict of interest by a state board of printing commissioners.

The APA presidents who followed Smithee were J.H. Sparks of Fort Smith, C.G. Newman of Pine Bluff and Adam Clark of Arkadelphia.

The APA's organizational meeting in 1873 was held at Little Rock. There were 17 charter members. The APA listed its purpose as promoting "the interests of the press by securing unity of thought and action in relation to the profession of journalism and the business of publishing, to elevate its tone, purify its expressions, enlarge its usefulness, advance it in wisdom and justice, extend its influence in the work of true civilization, and to cultivate friendly relations and a spirit of fraternal regard among its members."

When the APA celebrated its 50th anniversary, it was noted that 1,479 newspapers and periodicals had been established in Arkansas since the Gazette printed its first issue in 1819. Only 286 remained in 1922.

Ed Landvoight of the Forrest City Times-Herald wrote of the APA in 1928: "From a club of enjoyment, it has blossomed out as a school of instruction and business."

A separate organization known as the Arkansas Newspaper Women's Association (now the Arkansas Press Women) was established in 1949. Early leaders included the aforementioned Charlotte Schexnayder and Betty Magie along with Roberta Fulbright, the mother of U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright. APW became an affiliate of the National Federation of Press Women soon after it was founded. Schexnayder was an NFPW president.

There may be fewer of us in the newspaper business these days, but the work is more important than ever in a complex, politically divided world. Hats off to this year's award winners. The smiles on your faces took me back 40 years.

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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial on 07/17/2019

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