Arkansas Gazette

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Arkansas Gazette

The Arkansas Gazette was a newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, published from 1819 to 1991. It was the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River and served as the newspaper of record for Little Rock and the state for many years. It began in 1819 at Arkansas Post, the first capital of Arkansas Territory, on November 20, 1819, even before Arkansas became a state. When the capital moved to Little Rock in 1821, publisher William E. Woodruff moved the Gazette there. It was the first paper to report Arkansas statehood in 1836. Over the years it changed hands many times. During the Civil War the paper closed from September 1863 to May 1865. After the war it was one of the first papers to use telegraph news from cities like New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis.

In 1870 the paper editorialized about rights and elections. In 1908 the Gazette added colored comics. After the Elaine massacre of 1919, state officials claimed Blacks planned an insurrection; newspapers including the Gazette repeated that claim, referring to Elaine as a zone of negro insurrection. More than 100 African Americans were indicted, and 12 were sentenced to death, though they were eventually acquitted after a long NAACP-led legal fight. During the Little Rock Nine crisis the Gazette supported school integration, which cost it money, but the paper later regained its standing.

In 1958 the Arkansas Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and Harry Ashmore of the Gazette won a Pulitzer for editorial writing for coverage of the school integration crisis.

For much of its history the Gazette competed with the Arkansas Democrat. In 1979 the Democrat switched from evening to morning publication, intensifying the rivalry. The Gazette published its final edition on October 18, 1991. Its assets were sold to Walter E. Hussman Jr., owner of the Arkansas Democrat, who renamed the surviving paper the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The new paper calls itself a continuation of the Gazette, but many Gazette employees and readers dispute that claim.