Paper’s PB history nearing 140 years
The Pine Bluff Commercial, founded in 1881 by Maj. Charles Gorden Newman, was published by the same family until it was sold to Fort Smith-based Donrey Media Group a little over a century later. According to Newman’s great-grandson, Edmond W. Freeman III, Newman had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and, when Newman died in 1911, ownership of the newspaper went to Edmond W. Freeman Sr., the husband of Newman’s daughter, Blanche.
Freeman, in a telephone interview Sunday, explained that the reason the newspaper passed into the the Freeman family’s ownership was the result of a family tragedy in 1881.
“His only son was drowned at about the age of 12 in the Arkansas River with a young friend of his,” Freeman said. “His only other child was my grandmother, who was married to Edmond W. Freeman Sr. From there the newspaper was passed down to my father, Edmond W. Freeman Jr., then to me.”
Freeman said he and his brother, Armistead C. Freeman, assumed control of the company in the 1960s, Ed as publisher with authority over the newsroom, and Armistead as president of Commercial Printing Co., overseeing production. He said the late 1950s and decade of the 1960s were probably the most turbulent in the newspaper’s history in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education ruling on school integration and subsequent civil-rights legislation as Congress attempted to dismantle Jim Crow laws supporting institutional racism.
“That was the most interesting, lively and critical experience the newspaper ever had during my time there,” he said. “Gov. Faubus was trying to block integration of the schools and we opposed him on that.”
Freeman said the newspaper opposed Faubus’ position on integration and supported civil-rights legislation, which drew some energetic opposition.
“Some of my friends stopped talking to me and there were a lot of anti-Commercial letters to the editor for awhile. We responded by attending and reporting on meetings of the White Citizen’s Council and we printed the negative letters,” Freeman recalled, but said the anger directed at the newspaper had only a minor effect. “There was some falloff of ad revenue and we lost a few subscribers, but by and large the people stayed with us.”
Freeman said during his time as publisher, he was able to attract a number of talented people in the newspaper industry to Pine Bluff, many of whom went on to have high profile careers in the business. One of those was Paul Greenberg, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 while he was editorial page editor at the Commercial and went on to serve as editorial page editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more than 20 years, beginning in 1992.
Another hire who Freeman said stood was Joe Stroud, a native of MeGehee, who he said went from the Commercial to the Arkansas Gazette, then on to the Winston-Salem Journal, and in 1968, to the Detroit Free Press, where he spent the next 30 years until his retirement.
At one point, Freeman recalled, he tried to lure Roy Reed, a columnist for the Arkansas Gazette, to the Pine Bluff Commercial. Although he was unsuccessful, he said, Reed pointed him to another person who was interested.
“I got interested in Roy’s columns but he wasn’t interested in coming to Pine Bluff, but through him I got to know Pat Owens,” he said. “When I asked him where he went to school, he told me he had gone to Kalispel High School in Montana, and I said, ‘No, I mean where did you go to college?’ He said, ‘Well, I only went to college for about two weeks so I didn’t put it on my resume.’”
Freeman said he was astounded that Owens had only gone to college for two weeks, asking him, if he didn’t go college why would he apply for a position as editorial page editor in a newspaper.
“He said to me, ‘If you’re asking do I feel at a competitive disadvantage, the answer is no,’” Freeman said, with a laugh.
Owens got the job, going on to win numerous national awards, Freeman said, and was even awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard, which took him away from the newspaper for a year, during which time Freeman said he hired Greenberg to fill in. Owens later moved on to the Detroit Free Press and from there, to the Long Island, N.Y., daily Newsday.
“I was really fortunate to have been able to attract some genuine talent to the Commercial during my tenure there,” Freeman said. “Owens and Greenberg were two of the best.”
In 1986, Freeman and his brother sold the Pine Bluff Commercial to Donrey Media Group, ending 105 years of operation by the family and expanding Donrey’s holdings to 55 daily newspapers in 15 states.
“My children and my brother’s children had all worked at the Commercial when they were growing up but none of them had any interest in taking over,” Freeman said, of the decision to sell. “My brother was ready to sell and do other things, and I didn’t want to buy his interest out so I agreed to sell.”
Donrey Media Group, founded by Arkansas businessman and philanthropist Donald W. Reynolds, was in turn sold to members of the Stephens family after Reynolds died in 1993. The company was later named Stephens Media Group, then later Stephens Media LLC.
In 2015, Stephens Media was sold to New Media Investment Group of New York, the parent company of GateHouse Media, in a deal the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the largest newspaper in the Stephens Media portfoli0, said was worth $102 million. As part of the acquisition, GateHouse assumed ownership of 17 Arkansas newspapers, including the Pine Bluff Commercial. In January 2019, print publication was reduced to five days a week, and the company began distributing subscriber copies through the Postal Service.
GateHouse Media has in recent years closed a number of its Arkansas newspaper holdings, including the North Little Rock Times, the Lonoke County Democrat, the Arkadelphia Siftings-Herald, the Hope Star, and the Nevada County Picayune Times.
In August, 2019, GateHouse Media announced that it had purchased the Gannett Co. for $1.4 billion, making it the nation’s largest newspaper chain. At the time it also announced the impending closure of the Stuttgart Daily Leader and the Helena World newspapers, and the shutdown of the printing press at the Pine Bluff Commercial, at which time printing of the Commercial was outsourced.
On Monday, acquisition of the Pine Bluff Commercial by WEHCO Media, parent company of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was completed, and the Commercial resumed seven day a week publication and began the transition to a digital replica newspaper through the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette digital platform. Democrat-Gazette officials said they expect that process to take six to eight weeks as subscribers are converted to the new platform.