My first experience with Arkansas came as a young child while visiting my grandmother in Lake Village. We made a couple of trips annually from my home in Alabama. So, when I returned home from a high school baseball game during my sophomore year and my mother sat me down to inform me we would be moving to Arkansas, I was hardly concerned. Heck, I knew every small town along the 305-mile trek, much of which crossed the Mississippi Delta. The University of Arkansas, I figured, couldn’t be far from Lake Village.
It wasn’t far. It was farther. To be exact, it was eight miles farther from Lake Village to Fayetteville (313 miles) than it was from Marion, Ala., to Lake Village.
I got into the media business during my freshman year of college and in some form or fashion – newspapers, magazines, radio, public relations – I have been there ever since, a period that encompasses 31-plus years.
I became familiar with the Daily Record over the last several years during the Arkansas Press Association’s annual conventions. To say I’m proud to be a part of this team is an understatement. I am excited.
I have been at media outlets in five states, with positions ranging from editor, sports editor and daily talk show host. My last stop was an eight-year adventure in rural Madison County, which has a population of just a little more than 15,000. Nevertheless, it was one of my most enjoyable adventures in the newspaper business. For such a densely populated area, there were some giant stories there. The desk that Jim McDougal used at Madison Bank & Trust still sits upstairs at an old building on the tiny Kingston Square and still has a faded label on the second drawer down on the right that reads “Whitewater.”
A colleague in the business told me once as I shared some of the tales I’d come across during my time in Madison County that there were Pulitzers hanging from the trees there, only no one would ever live long enough to either, one, enjoy it, or two, finish it.
I am going from living in a rural setting to anything but. However, one of the scariest nights I spent in Madison County came not when digging up skeletons in its closet, rather dodging Mother Nature’s ice storm of 2009. I remember transformers exploding around downtown Huntsville as if I was in Bosnia Circa 1995. I drove out to my place late that night, dodging fallen trees on the roads as if I was Will Smith maneuvering around New York City in I Am Legend. As I exited my vehicle to run inside and get some supplies for what was sure to be an overnight stay at the office, the large oaks on my property cried out loud from the weight of the ice that snapped off limbs as easily as the strong winds had discarded their dead leaves.
Every town in every state has left me with memories money could never buy. I’ve learned that good people are not bound to one region anymore than those that couldn’t spell good if you spotted them the g and the d. I remember a lady approaching me at a store once and scolding me for “only writing about bad news.” She happened to have the paper in her hand and I asked her to open it and take a count of the “positive articles” as opposed to those that were not so positive. After the first two pages, she realized she had miscalculated with the Positives leading something like 7-1.
Sometimes, it’s the bad news that catches the eye quicker. But I do not believe that has to be the case. I believe a true newsworthy item is newsworthy regardless of the end result. They don’t always hang from trees, but you don’t necessarily have to dig up dirt to unearth them, either.