When I was growing up about 20 miles south of Fort Smith, I had multiple newspapers to choose from: the daily Southwest Times Record, plus the weekly Mansfield Citizen and the Greenwood Democrat, as well as the school paper I cut my teeth on. For statewide news, there were the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette dailies. In college, I added the Jonesboro Sun (owned by the Troutt family until 2000), the ASU Herald and The Commercial Appeal out of Memphis.
Midway through my childhood in 1980, Arkansas had 154 total newspapers, including 34 dailies, seven semi-weeklies and 113 weeklies, according to the Arkansas Press Association. A few months before I graduated with the first of two degrees from Arkansas State University in 1991, the 13-year Little Rock newspaper war ended, the victor (the Arkansas Democrat) taking on the assets of the fallen Arkansas Gazette, which had been bought by Gannett just five years earlier.
While
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