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That is certainly the case with the newspaper business.
Anyone who has been involved with newspapers as long as we have can look back wistfully at some of the strengths and favorable elements associated with the industry in earlier days.
On the other hand, those who are honest will admit many of the difficult production issues are best forgotten.
While computers have their glitches and unpredictability, the ease of production is amazing compared to the earlier days of linotypes, hot lead, darkroom chemicals, laborious "pasting up" of pages and on and on. But, in many ways, those "hands-on" days really do represent the glory years of newspapering.
During a recent convention of the Arkansas Press Association, we had the opportunity to hear long-term journalist and professor Roy Reed present a program relating to a book he edited, "Looking Back at the Arkansas Gazette," an oral history.
The book follows the format established primarily by Studs Terkel, the legendary Chicago writer and journalist, who published oral histories on such topics as working in America and veterans of World War II.
Reed was a reporter for the Arkansas Gazette for eight years before joining the staff at the New York Times and then serving as a professor of journalism at the University of Arkansas.
As many know, the Gazette was the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, founded way back in 1819 in the river town of Arkansas Post near the eastern border of the state. It "died" in downtown Little Rock in 1991 after comprehensively reporting through the years the crucial events not only of Arkansas, but the nation and the world.
"It reported in breadth and depth the events that led to statehood, the coming and going of slavery, the divisions of civil war in both the state and the nation, the pains of Reconstruction, the numerous political and economic upheavals, the constant frictions of race and the creeping progress through it all -- the daily history told with patience, intelligence and wit," Reed writes of the newspaper's history.
The story of the Arkansas Gazette is told through the words of those who worked there during its "golden years" and on into its brief ownership by the Gannett Company and finally its demise following its acquisition by the rival Arkansas Democrat.
It is a fascinating history told by unique participants. Some of the stories of events in the newsroom and beyond can best be appreciated by those who have worked in the industry, but there certainly is enough "color" and history to interest even the casual reader. Much of the newspaper's history was peopled by the proverbial grizzled editors and talented writers who made each edition an accurate history and interesting snapshot of daily life in Arkansas and beyond.
The saga of the Arkansas Gazette in many ways is the story of one J.N. Heiskell, who became editor of the newspaper in 1902 and remained at the post for an amazing 70 years. That fact alone makes the newspaper unique.
Heiskell, of course, was at the helm during the broiling controversy of the Little Rock Central school desegregation in 1957 and guided the "Old Gray Lady" through advertising boycotts and personal threats to newspaper employees. The newspaper earned the Pulitzer Prize for editorials written at the time by executive editor Harry Ashmore.
The pages of the book are alive with both newspaper and Arkansas history as told by those who lived it day to day by being involved in and writing about both the big events and the mundane. And there is plenty of humor, too, as it is clear the old Gazette crew had plenty of fun on and off the job.
Looking back over the history of this great state, it is indeed hard to believe that an institution which was paramount for so many years is gone, never to return.
But it is gratifying, and illuminating, to recapture those earlier days in the actual words of those who lived them, as masterfully edited by one of their own, Roy Reed.
--REK
