Has it really been one year?

It’s hard to believe a year has passed since the kickoff of the new Pine Bluff Commercial. According to the information on the newspaper’s masthead, the newspaper today is 111 editions into its 140th year. That’s a grand accomplishment, but it is a bit misleading. The paper, in many ways, is a year old. The reason I say that is that the paper, under the previous owner, a big chain of newspapers that has now sold many of its other properties that it owned in Arkansas, was about to pull the plug on the Pine Bluff Commercial because it had stopped being financially viable.

Newspapers have had a hard way to go. In the day, they made a lot of money. Then corporations took notice and snatched them up, intent on making huge profits. As newspapers changed hands again and again, each new entity was eager to cut expenses and reap more revenue.

As profits from online advertising ate into that expected newspaper revenue, these new owners kept cutting expenses, and very quickly, that meant fewer and fewer reporters — you know, the people who cover the stories and give readers a reason to buy a paper.

It doesn’t take even a bachelor’s degree in economics to see where that train was heading. And it got there. A year ago, one could fit all of the Pine Bluff Commercial employees into a church van and probably have room for a couple of dogs.

Then Walter Hussman Jr. came along, the man who owns WEHCO Media, which includes several newspapers. Hussman has not been immune from the headwinds buffeting the newspaper industry. But he’s hardly new to the game and he’s definitely not new to taking a risk on the media he dearly loves — newspapers.

So a year ago, newspaper people, city and education leaders and elected officials all gathered in a meeting room at Simmons Bank, everyone wearing a mask and a vaccine many months away, to hear Hussman announce that WEHCO Media had taken over the Pine Bluff Commercial operation. The city, he said, desperately needed a good newspaper, and he was going to ensure that it had one. Seven days a week, a local staff of journalists, news delivered on an iPad just like the flagship, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Voila! A newspaper. And here we are today, dependent less on the fleeting advertising dollar and more on reader subscriptions.

At first it was just Dale Ellis and me. Ellis is a reporter who had been covering Pine Bluff for the Democrat-Gazette before The Commercial changed hands.

Very quickly we added Eplunus Colvin and Sandra Hope, both of whom had been working for the old Pine Bluff Commercial.

Colvin is a passionate reporter who is always looking for the human impact in a story and is uniquely skilled at getting people to talk to her.

Hope and I both trace our lineage back to the mid-1980s when we started work at The Commercial, and as a former reporter and city editor, she understands Pine Bluff perhaps better than anyone else in the city.

Ellis is now doing an amazing job covering the federal courthouse in Little Rock for the Democrat-Gazette. When he left, we were able to get I.C. Murrell back to Pine Bluff. Murrell left The Commercial as a sports editor in 2015 and returned as an experienced editor in his own right.

The takeaway is that the paper has a highly skilled staff of individuals who are excited to be covering the news here in Pine Bluff. And as the editor of the paper, I am especially thrilled, having worked in various capacities at the paper over the years. The idea that Pine Bluff would not have a newspaper — something that seemed inevitable a year ago — was a deep sadness for me. To be part of the rejuvenated newspaper is indescribably satisfying.

But this is really about you, our readers. You are the ones that we serve. You are the ones that benefit from and are better informed by what we do. You and your subscriptions are what make the wheels turn. Thank you for your support and your interest in keeping a newspaper here in Pine Bluff.

Happy Birthday to us!