Dr. Donna Lampkin Stephens, associate professor of journalism at the University of Central Arkansas, will be featured on two upcoming episodes of KUAR’s Arts & Letters radio program commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of the Arkansas Gazette.
Stephens’ book, “If It Ain’t Broke, Break It”: How Corporate Journalism Killed the Arkansas Gazette, was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2015. The Oct. 21 and Oct. 28 episodes on KUAR 89.1 FM offer a firsthand account of how and why the Arkansas Gazette, then the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, died on Oct. 18, 1991, after perhaps the country’s last great newspaper war.
Walter Hussman, publisher of the Gazette’s rival Arkansas Democrat, bought the newspaper from the Gannett Corp. and started publishing his newspaper the next day as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Part A, to be aired at 7 p.m. Oct. 21, features an interview with Stephens and describes the storied history of the Gazette — from its founding on Nov. 20, 1819, by William E. Woodruff, through the tumultuous Central High Crisis in 1957 and the death of owner and editor J.N. Heiskell in 1972. Music for this episode was provided The Mallet Brothers, Blues Boy Jag, Anna Jordan, Ramona Smith & Friends, and Shannon McClung. The episode runs 29 minutes.
Part B, to be aired at 7 p.m. Oct. 28, picks up the connecting thread from Part A and offers an extensive review of the paper’s last days. In addition to Stephens, the episode offers a multitude of journalists and others involved in Arkansas’s Newspaper War, including Hussman, Ernest Dumas, Max Brantley, Deborah Mathis, Meredith Oakley, Paul Smith, Philip Anderson, John Brummett and Wadie Moore. Music for this episode was also provided by The Mallet Brothers, Blues Boy Jag, Anna Jordan, Ramona Smith & Friends, and Shannon McClung. This episode runs 52 minutes.
“These episodes have been made with lots of attention and care,” Arts & Letters host J. Bradley Minnick said. “They explore the Gazette‘s essential history and take us into the newsroom, providing us with a firsthand glimpse of the final days of one of America’s finest newspapers.”
Stephens was a sportswriter for the Arkansas Gazette from 1984 until the newspaper’s death. She produced the documentary films The Old Gray Lady: Arkansas’s First Newspaper (2006) and The Crisis Mr. Faubus Made: The Role of the Arkansas Gazette in the Central High Crisis (2010) and has traveled the state presenting the films to students and teachers. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in Journalism and English from the University of Arkansas, an M.Ed. in special education (Teaching Visually Impaired Children) from UALR and a Ph.D. in Mass Communication (History and Law) from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Her dissertation, “If It Ain’t Broke, Break It”: How Corporate Journalism Killed the Arkansas Gazette — the predecessor of the book — earned an honorable mention in the American Journalism Historians Association’s Margaret A. Blanchard Dissertation Award contest for 2013.
Arts & Letters is hosted by Minnick and produced by sound engineer Christopher Hickey and Minnick at NPR station KUAR in Little Rock. Arts & Letters audio podcasts may be accessed through artsandlettersradio.org, iTunes, or via NPR Podcasts at http://www.npr.org/podcasts/476298445/arts-letters.
For more information, visit KUAR.org, call the station at (501) 569-8485, or email arts&letters@ualr.edu.
The UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication includes the Departments of Art, Music, and Film, Theatre and Creative Writing, as well as the School of Communication. The college’s primary mission is the preparation of the next generation of artists, educators and communicators. For more information about CFAC, visit www.uca.edu/cfac or call (501) 450-3293.
