Texarkana Gazette

Texarkana Gazette front page from December 30, 2006, reporting the Execution of Saddam Hussein
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner(s) WEHCO Media, Inc.
Publisher Kirk Blair [1]
Editor Les Minor
Founded 1875
Language English
Headquarters 101 E. Broad St., Texarkana, Arkansas
Circulation 24,352 daily
25,741 Sunday[2]
Website TexarkanaGazette.com
Texarkana Gazette building in Texarkana, Texas

The Texarkana Gazette is a daily newspaper founded in 1875 and currently owned by WEHCO Media, Inc. It serves Texarkana and surrounding areas.

History

It was acquired through the consolidation of several newspapers in 1933 through the efforts of the Iowa-born businessman Clyde E. Palmer. Palmer established a newspaper and radio station chain that reached into Hot Springs, Camden, Magnolia, and Stuttgart. In 1952, Palmer acquired the television station KCMC which became KTAL-TV in 1961. It serves both Texarkana and Shreveport. Through a reorganization in 1968, The Camden News in Camden, Arkansas, technically became the parent company for the Palmer newspapers, including the Texarkana Gazette.

Palmer's Texarkana Gazette still circulates in Bowie, Red River, Morris, Marion, Titus, and Cass counties in Texas and Miller, Little River, Hempstead, Nevada, Howard, Sevier, Pike and Columbia counties in Arkansas. Newspapers are also delivered into McCurtain County in the southeastern corner of Oklahoma and into northern Caddo Parish in Louisiana.

The Texarkana Gazette has more than 130 employees and some 120 independent carriers that deliver newspapers in a 60-mile radius. The average circulation is about 25,000 daily. The previous afternoon daily, the Texarkana Daily News, ceased publication in 1978. Rodger Dean Duncan, who later worked for two White House administrations and is now a prominent business consultant, was managing editor of the two Texarkana newspapers in the late 1960s.

Palmer determined that the key to newspaper success was (1) the readers, (2) the advertisers, (3) the employees, (4) the creditors, and (5) the stockholders, in that order.

The paper earned the coveted 2010 General Excellence award from the Arkansas Press Association competing against eight other large dailies including the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette which placed second.[3]

Controversy

In September 2013, the paper and Editor Les Minor generated controversy when the paper refused to publish the wedding announcement of a gay couple. "The Texarkana Gazette publishes wedding, engagement and anniversary announcements related to marriages or impending marriages that are recognized by states in which it circulates," Minor said.[4]

Notes

  1. ↑ "ArkansasBusiness.com - Arkansas Business News - Little Rock, Arkansas - Arkansas Business News - ArkansasBusiness.com". Retrieved 26 December 2015.
  2. ↑ "Total Circ for US Newspapers". Alliance for Audited Media. Retrieved 2013-06-09.
  3. ↑ "Arkansas Press Association's News Editorial 2010 Contest Winners" (PDF). 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-03.
  4. ↑ "Gay Texarkana couple claims discrimination in wedding announcement denial". 2013. Retrieved 2013-09-04.
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