Talk:Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Untitled

Actually, the Arkansas Gazette was the oldest continuously published newspaper west of the Mississippi. The Gannett Corporation sold it to the rival Arkansas Democrat in 1991, and the Democrat then combined the names of the two papers. No one was fooled though...the Arkansas Democrat Gazette continues to champion the same conservative editorial positions it did prior to the merger, although it now claims to have inherited the mantle of the Gazette and its Pulitzer for its coverage of the 1957 Central High Crisis...ironic, given that the news editor's father was a prominent opponent of the desegregation of that school!

Criticism section

The size of the quote from Marilyn Mitchell's e-mail seems to me to be giving undue weight to one staff member's resignation. In my opinion, the incident, while a one-day news item, has little or no encyclopedic value. -- Donald Albury 21:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to shortening the quote (which I did), but the previous editor removed it entirely. In my opinion, the incident does have value because it sheds light on the newspaper's administration and is relevant to existing criticism.Athene cunicularia (talk) 16:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The article says that many employees of the Gazette were liberal, and were not hired by the conservative Democrat-Gazette.

The former Gazette staffers were not left without jobs because they were liberal. They were left without jobs because the job market for major daily newspaper reporters and editors in Little Rock was suddenly cut in half. The positions that were left were filled. Many of the people at the Gazette had great talent, but to have fired Democrat employees to make room for Gazette ones — even better Gazette ones — would have been unreasonable. In fact, it's to the D-G's credit that it retained as many Democrat employees as it did once the war ended. As the article points out, it is standard practice to downsize after a war — not take on even more staffers.

Furthermore, the very best Gazette reporters were totally objective in their work. Their personal political beliefs would not have — and should not have — had an influence in their hiring.

As for Marilyn Mitchell's e-mail, I'd go on and leave it in. People who read about an employee sending a mass e-mail to "Fuck the Glass" can draw their own conclusions about her credibility.

-- The preceding unsigned comment was made by 12.9.217.229 (talk) at 08:35, 4 March 2008 (UTC) (Athene cunicularia (talk) 18:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC))