Arkansas Gazette

{{short description|Defunct broadsheet newspaper based in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States}}

{{Infobox newspaper

| name = Arkansas Gazette

| type = Newspaper

| format = Broadsheet

| founder = William E. Woodruff

| foundation = {{start date|1819|11|20}}

| ceased publication = {{End date|1991|10|18}}

| language = English

| headquarters = The Gazette Building
112 West Third Street
Little Rock, Arkansas
72201-2702

| publishing_country = United States

| oclc = 8794697

}}

The Arkansas Gazette was a newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, that was published from 1819 to 1991. It was known as the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River. It was located from 1908 until its closing at the now historic Gazette Building. For many years it was the newspaper of record for Little Rock and the State of Arkansas. It was Arkansas' first newspaper.

History

The Arkansas Gazette began publication at Arkansas Post, the first capital of Arkansas Territory, on November 20, 1819. The Arkansas Gazette was established seventeen years before Arkansas became a state. When the capital was moved to Little Rock in 1821, publisher William E. Woodruff also relocated the Arkansas Gazette. The newspaper was the first to report Arkansas' statehood in 1836.{{cite web|url=http://www.oldstatehouse.com/educational_programs/classroom/arkansas_news/detail.asp?id=216&issue_id=20&page=2 |work=History of Newspapers in Arkansas |title= Gazette and Democrat Wage Newspaper War |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061102012054/http://www.oldstatehouse.com/educational_programs/classroom/arkansas_news/detail.asp?id=216&issue_id=20&page=2 |year=1998 |archive-date=November 2, 2006 |publisher=Old Statehouse Museum}}

File:Gazette Building.jpg

Over the decades the paper was bought and sold many times.{{cn|date=September 2022}} During the Civil War the paper shut down from September 1863 to May 1865.{{cn|date=September 2022}} After the war the Gazette became the first newspaper to have telegraphic services from which they began to receive news from places like New Orleans, Louisiana, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri.{{cn|date=September 2022}} In 1870 the paper editorialized that, "Although we have been most shamefully and outrageously wronged, cheated, and defrauded out of our just and lawful rights, by a most notoriously partial and partisan execution of the registration and election laws, we have succeeded in electing a respectable minority to the legislature, who will act as a Spartan guard at the Thermopylae of our menaced rights and liberties, and beat back the invading tide of radicalism that threatens to overwhelm us with ruin."{{cite web | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YKVCAAAAIAAJ&dq=t.d.+hawkins+arkansas%C2%A0&pg=PA91 | title=Outline of Executive and Legislative History of Arkansas | last1=Herndon | first1=Dallas Tabor | date=January 22, 2024 }}

In 1908 the "Gazette" added colored comics. After the Elaine massacre of 1919, state officials concocted an elaborate cover-up, claiming that blacks were planning an insurrection.{{cite web|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/15/white-press-has-history-endangering-black-lives-going-back-century/|title=The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century|website=washingtonpost.com|access-date=September 25, 2022|author=Megan Ming Francis}} Newspapers, including the Arkansas Gazette, repeated the falsehood that blacks in Arkansas were staging an insurrection: the Gazette wrote that Elaine was "a zone of negro insurrection."{{cite web|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/15/white-press-has-history-endangering-black-lives-going-back-century/|title=The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century|website=washingtonpost.com|access-date=September 25, 2022|author=Megan Ming Francis}} Subsequent to this reporting, more than 100 African Americans were indicted, with 12 being sentenced to death by electrocution.{{cite web|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/15/white-press-has-history-endangering-black-lives-going-back-century/|title=The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century|website=washingtonpost.com|access-date=September 25, 2022|author=Megan Ming Francis}} After a years-long legal battle by the NAACP, the 12 men were acquitted.{{cite web|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/15/white-press-has-history-endangering-black-lives-going-back-century/|title=The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century|website=washingtonpost.com|access-date=September 25, 2022|author=Megan Ming Francis}}

During the Little Rock Nine Crisis the "Gazette" promoted the integration of schools which lost them millions of dollars.{{cn|date=September 2022}} But in the aftermath the "Gazette" regained its status.{{According to whom|date=September 2022}} In 1958, the "Arkansas Gazette" was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and Harry Ashmore of the "Gazette" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for their coverage of the school integration crisis in Little Rock. {{cite web|url=http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1958/|title=1958 Pulitzer Prizes|website=pulitzer.org|access-date=November 8, 2016}} {{cite web|url=https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/arkansas-gazette-2344/|title= Arkansas Gazette|website=encyclopediaofarkansas.net|access-date=November 30, 2018|author=Donna Lampkin Stephens}}

Through much of its history, the Gazette was in competition with the Arkansas Democrat.{{cn|date=September 2022}} Competition became more intense in 1979 when the Democrat changed from publishing in the evening to publishing in the morning.{{According to whom|date=September 2022}} After 12 years of bitter competition in the morning, the Arkansas Gazette published its final edition on October 18, 1991.{{cn|date=September 2022}} The assets of the newspaper were sold to Walter E. Hussman Jr., owner and publisher of the competing Arkansas Democrat. Hussman renamed the surviving paper the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The surviving newspaper proclaims itself a descendant of the Arkansas Gazette, but this viewpoint is disputed by the 726 full-time and 1,200 part-time employees of the Arkansas Gazette who lost their jobs with the demise of their newspaper, as well as by readers of the "Gazette" who preferred the quality of journalism found in the "Gazette" to that found in the "Arkansas Democrat," even holding a vigil for its demise.{{cite web|url=https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/arkansas-gazette-2344/|title=Arkansas Gazette|website=encyclopediaofarkansas.net|access-date=November 8, 2016|author=Donna Lampkin Stephens}}{{cite web | url=http://www.aetn.org/programs/oldgraylady/| title=The Old Gray Lady: Arkansas' First Newspaper| date=2016| website=aetn.org| publisher=AETN| access-date=November 8, 2016}}