NW Arkansas paper sets shift from print
Hussman announces digital transition
SMITH — The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette will be a digital-replica newspaper — plus Sunday print edition — by the end of the summer, publisher Walter Hussman Jr. told the Fort Smith Rotary Club at a noon meeting Wednesday.
That means the Monday-through-Saturday newspapers will no longer be printed or distributed in the 12-county circulation area of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Instead, those papers will be available in a digital-replica format to subscribers who use iPads, computers or other devices to read them. The Sunday paper will be delivered in both print and the digital-replica format.
Brent Powers, president of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, made the announcement to staff members in Fayetteville on Wednesday afternoon.
“We fully expect to be done by the end of August,” he said of the conversion.
The Northwest Arkansas shift to a digital replica follows a similar effort in the
other 63 counties of Arkansas, where readers get the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Subscribers in Little Rock received their last Monday-Saturday print edition on Saturday. But the print edition for those days is still available for single-copy sales at some locations in the Little Rock area, along with the Sunday print edition.
Hussman is chairman of WEHCO Media, Inc., which is the parent company of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He is the publisher of both newspapers, which share content.
Hussman has been providing Apple iPads to subscribers who want one so they can read the digital-replica edition. They can keep the iPads as long as they continue to subscribe.
About 27,000 iPads have been distributed, at a cost of about $11 million. About 22% of readers who kept their subscriptions decided they didn’t need an iPad from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
The conversion of readers in six counties in the Arkansas River Valley began in early January.
So far, 78% of subscribers in the River Valley have kept their subscriptions, said Hussman. That’s slightly lower than the 79% conversion rate in the 63 counties where the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was distributed.
Harrison served as a pilot project for the 12-county Northwest Arkansas edition, which includes Fort Smith and the Arkansas River Valley.
“We did this first in Harrison as a test, and the people of Harrison have really responded,” said Hussman. “Ninety-seven percent of the people in Harrison have signed up for this. Almost everybody.”
In an interview after the meeting, Larry Graham, vice president of circulation for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, said subscribers in Newton County also have been converted to the digital replica of the paper. Graham said conversion of the River Valley counties should be complete by March 6.
That will leave only four counties to be converted to digital — Benton, Carroll, Madison and Washington.
In one way, Northwest Arkansas has been more challenging than the rest of the state, said Hussman. Because of a heated competition there between local newspapers — some owned by the Walton and Stephens families, who could afford to absorb losses — newspaper subscribers were paying much less in Northwest Arkansas than in other parts of the state or the nation, said Hussman. He said the average subscription price for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was $19 per month when he began the shift to digital.
Hussman said he needs to get subscribers to $34 a month to make the newspaper profitable. In Northwest Arkansas, he’s doing that for some subscribers by raising the rate $1 per month.
“We’re not in this for a quick profit, obviously,” said Hussman. “We’re in it to make this newspaper sustainable.”
Hussman has been working for two years to convert subscribers to digital.
Hussman told the Rotarians that he has an interesting connection to Fort Smith. His father, Walter Hussman Sr., was roommates with Donald W. Reynolds when both were journalism students at the University of Missouri. Reynolds owned the Fort Smith newspaper and several others through his Donrey Media Group.
Walter Hussman Jr. said he went to Chapel Hill, N.C., for a meeting in 2018. He read the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on the way there. It was 36 pages in six sections. For the trip back, he picked up a copy of the weekday News and Observer. Hussman said the Raleigh paper was only 20 pages in two sections.
“On the way home, I was thinking, ‘Golly, this is really sad. Are we going to have to do what they did in Raleigh, cut all these pages of news? Are we going to have to put out a 20-page paper?’” said Hussman. “And I thought to myself, you know, people in Arkansas aren’t going to want to read a paper like that, and I don’t want to publish a paper like that.”
Hussman said a subscription to the Raleigh paper cost $50 a month in 2018 and can now cost more than $100 a month.
“This has happened in big cities, too,” said Hussman.
On Jan. 11, Hussman said, he was on an airplane and picked up an issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was 22 pages and cost $88 a month. The same day, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was 36 pages, and a subscription costs $34 a month.
“It’s dramatic what’s happened,” said Hussman.
When he saw the Raleigh paper, Hussman said, he realized the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was going to lose money that year. That’s when he decided to eliminate some of the newspaper’s unprofitable circulation to distant corners of the state. He followed that with the decision to shift to a digital replica of the paper.
After Hussman’s Wednesday presentation at Taliano’s Italian Restaurant, Jim Dunn, president emeritus of the United States Marshals Museum in Fort Smith, said he’s looking forward to getting an iPad from the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He already has one iPad, but having a second one will allow Dunn and his wife to read the paper simultaneously, he said.
“I have been a Democrat-Gazette fan for 60 years,” said Dunn, 71. “I have been fearing for newspapers because I read the newspapers and what was happening to them. I think this will increase circulation of a credible source of news, which is a challenge today. I think it’s a win-win for everyone, and I can’t wait to get it on my iPad.”
The Arkansas Democrat became the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1991 after a newspaper war with the Arkansas Gazette, which was the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River.
The Sunday editions of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette will still be printed because many businesses advertise in that edition of the paper, and many people want the print edition on Sundays. The Sunday papers will continue to be available for single-copy sales at locations around the state as well as in Northwest Arkansas.
WEHCO Media schedules training sessions to help readers who need tutorials on iPad operation. Hussman said reading the replica version of the newspaper on an iPad is a vast improvement when compared with reading a newspaper on the website. Many readers say they prefer it to print. Also, the iPads can be used to watch movies, surf the internet and read other publications, said Hussman.
The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette covers news in Benton, Boone, Carroll, Crawford, Franklin, Johnson, Logan, Madison, Newton, Sebastian, Scott and Washington counties.