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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: OLD NEWS: 100 years ago, this paper turned 100
OLD NEWS: 100 years ago, this paper turned 100
by Celia Storey | Today at 7:19 a.m.
Excerpt from the cover of the 1919 Arkansas Gazette Centennial Edition, a 244-special section published Nov. 20, 1919. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
A "human spider" planned to scale a bank building in downtown Little Rock that day — Nov. 20, 1919 — and nobody was trying to stop him. The fly, one Bill Strother, was not the biggest news on the front page of the Arkansas Gazette. That news was the Gazette, its own self.
One hundred years ago, the Arkansas Gazette declared itself 100 years old. It dated its founding from the first edition of The Arkansas Gazette by William Woodruff in the Arkansas Territory.
I think today most of us take it for granted that Nov. 20, 1819, marks the inception of an entity known as the Arkansas Gazette. Having spent the past year reading 200 years of the various, discontinuous newspapers that self-identified as guises of the Gazette, I know that this is an idea. I would not add "just" an idea. This idea is historic. It was developed by Woodruff — a slave-holding supporter of slavery who adhered to the profit motive so firmly he only loaned out his books for a fee — in collaboration with his son, an unreconstructed Confederate artillery officer — and agreed to by a parade of unrelated newspaper owners who came after them and, therefore, the Gazette's history tracks the history of its state.
If to be 100 requires maintaining the same title for a century, the Gazette did not qualify. If the main thing is to have been owned by one person or one family, the Gazette didn't qualify on those grounds either. If it's about espousing a particular point of view, no, the Gazette was not a consistent voice. And I say thank goodness: After Reconstruction, its ownership shuttled through boards of directors and a few major shareholders whose prime motives included enforcing segregation.
....
....
Email:
cstorey@adgnewsroom.com
Style on 11/18/2019
Print Headline: 100 years ago, this paper turned 100
by Celia Storey | Today at 7:19 a.m.
Excerpt from the cover of the 1919 Arkansas Gazette Centennial Edition, a 244-special section published Nov. 20, 1919. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
A "human spider" planned to scale a bank building in downtown Little Rock that day — Nov. 20, 1919 — and nobody was trying to stop him. The fly, one Bill Strother, was not the biggest news on the front page of the Arkansas Gazette. That news was the Gazette, its own self.
One hundred years ago, the Arkansas Gazette declared itself 100 years old. It dated its founding from the first edition of The Arkansas Gazette by William Woodruff in the Arkansas Territory.
I think today most of us take it for granted that Nov. 20, 1819, marks the inception of an entity known as the Arkansas Gazette. Having spent the past year reading 200 years of the various, discontinuous newspapers that self-identified as guises of the Gazette, I know that this is an idea. I would not add "just" an idea. This idea is historic. It was developed by Woodruff — a slave-holding supporter of slavery who adhered to the profit motive so firmly he only loaned out his books for a fee — in collaboration with his son, an unreconstructed Confederate artillery officer — and agreed to by a parade of unrelated newspaper owners who came after them and, therefore, the Gazette's history tracks the history of its state.
If to be 100 requires maintaining the same title for a century, the Gazette did not qualify. If the main thing is to have been owned by one person or one family, the Gazette didn't qualify on those grounds either. If it's about espousing a particular point of view, no, the Gazette was not a consistent voice. And I say thank goodness: After Reconstruction, its ownership shuttled through boards of directors and a few major shareholders whose prime motives included enforcing segregation.
....
....
Email:
cstorey@adgnewsroom.com
Style on 11/18/2019
Print Headline: 100 years ago, this paper turned 100