02/02/2017
Here's my editorial for tomorrow's paper that was cut in half by a printer's error. Spread the word--if anyone actually reads my scribblings--that it can be found online until I can re-run it next week.
No longer a minor
Twenty-one years ago yesterday morning, a skinny kid of 22 stood anxiously by the press at the Hope Star as the first edition of his new newspaper, The Standard rolled off the press.
“If I had a camera, I’d take your picture,” one of the layout ladies told me as she came back to see the new venture roll off the press.
I sure wish she’d had a camera. That picture would have made a great wall-hanger. But no matter; I have 21 years of memories.
I was just a dumb kid who had dropped out a year shy of completing college at Ouachita Baptist University, full of ideas and the dream of running my own country newspaper in a small town.
My original intent had been to be a public school history teacher and then that changed briefly to the idea of teaching at the college level before I realized that really wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.
Mrs. Jean Eason at Arkadelphia High School had already planted the dream in my head through the DECA program that I could run a business of my own, something I had watched my father do all my life, so it didn’t take much for me to abandon the idea of teaching school. In fact, all it took was an observation course at the old Gurdon High School to let me know that I didn’t need to be teaching.
Rudy Preston, he of Clark
County American fame, had proven to me that it was possible to start a new newspaper in Clark County and after about six weeks of working for him, I felt ready to venture out on my own. Naturally, I wasn’t ready, but you can’t tell that to a 22-year-old who is full of dreams, not to mention himself.
The alert reader will notice that with this week’s edition, the masthead has been modified just a bit. No, we haven’t changed the name of the newsper; rather, we’re just acknowledging what we’ve been called these last 21 years.
The first newspaper that we remember reading, sprawled out on the floor as an elementary school student, was the old Southern Standard, an Arkadelphia and Clark County icon since 1868 when two ex-Confederates, Adam Clark and J.W. Gaulding, arrived in Arkadelphia from Camden with a newspaper press and set up shop to fight against the corrupt Carpetbagger regime. That paper lasted until October 1989. It was our original intent to restart the old Southern Standard in all its glory, but alas, little did our younger self know that it was not possible to actually “re-start” what we never owned.
After a kindly competitor advised us to reconsider that idea as we sat in her office in January 1996, we quickly said, “Well, I’ll just call it The Standard, then” and we agreed that idea would be a good one.
That quick name change a few weeks before the first paper was set to print caused us to have to change the fliers we had handing out, but we never did make a change at the bank and to this day, the bank account bears the original name. A year or so later, as email became popular, sentiment caused us to use the original name in our address, which is still being used today.
However, what prompted us to finally make the masthead modification was the public. Early on, everyone in Arkadelphia it seemed, referred to us as “The Southern Standard,” even though the name on the masthead read differently. It wasn’t long before it seemed that so many of the folks were calling us by that name. Today, many of the checks written to us have that name on them, even from places that had no connection with the old newspaper that has been gone for nearly three decades.
A couple of years ago, we added the words “Published in the tradition of the Southern Standard 1868-1989” in the ownership box on page four to pay tribute to the late, great weekly that sparked our interest in newspapers. Last year, we changed our visitor’s guide publication, Trade Days Gazette, to become te Southern Standard Magazine so as to give it a wider scope in hopes of expanding it in the future.
After 21 years, The Standard is all grown-up and perhaps now is as good a time as any to acknowledge the name we’ve been known by all these years. No, we’re not making a business change; we simply modified the masthead. The old paper started by Clark and Gauding is sadly a remnant of the past, gone forever, living only in memory and the occasional reference in historical articles. We tip our hats to those from the past and press on towards the future. Perhaps, if the good Lord wills, we will make it another 21 years, still reporting the news as accurately as we know how, while pleading for the same Southern values our long-ago Fourth Estate brethren advocated so many years ago.
As always, thanks for your support. It’s been a great ride these last two decades.
