{"id":1695,"date":"2009-12-08T11:45:36","date_gmt":"2009-12-08T16:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/?p=1695"},"modified":"2009-12-08T17:29:32","modified_gmt":"2009-12-08T22:29:32","slug":"nan-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/12\/nan-better\/","title":{"rendered":"NAN Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

One more \u201cA\u201d and NAN would be tasty flatbread<\/a>. As it is, it\u2019s Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC<\/a>, and the acronym was created, logo\u2019d up, and announced by the new company. One suspects that was to delay unhappy people creating a snide abbreviation or nickname, as happened when the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette<\/em> was formed in 1991 (my name for it never caught on, Demzette<\/em>).<\/p>\n

NAN comprises the Northwest Arkansas edition of the Demzette<\/em> along with the daily newspapers of Fayetteville, Bentonville, Springdale and Rogers. Dozens of colleagues \u2014 and I\u2019ve been around enough years to know and appreciate many of them \u2014 have been laid off. It hurt to see them go. NAN still employs me, but that could change in the new year, or this afternoon. Blame the nation\u2019s Good Depression that started a year or two ago.<\/p>\n

When Ozarkers have had a chance to speak to me in the last month, they uniformly hate the merger, specifically the look of the four city papers. They\u2019re not vague, not ambiguous.<\/p>\n

Until I tell them what could\u2019ve happened: The papers could have been shut down entirely. I alway hope that is a reminder, not news, but to a one, friends, acquaintances and people I do business with (doctor, barber etc.) do not connect the national newspaper crisis \u2014 with big city newspapers in bankruptcy, ending print editions or out-and-out closing \u2014 with home. Some don’t know about San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul and so on. Today: The New York Times<\/a> Co. “expects its print advertising revenue to decline 25 percent in the fourth quarter.”<\/p>\n

A quarter in a quarter is a bunch.<\/p>\n

This Brick<\/strong> isn\u2019t to save me breath. The people who\u2019ve talked to me don\u2019t read it. This is to flesh out my observations of the past five weeks.<\/p>\n

The papers look good in one specific way, as does the redesigned Web site, nwaonline.com<\/a>, in content. All have more articles than ever before. More news, more features. Sure, you can see lots of gaps and bugs, in ink or pixels. That’ll take months to smooth out. The typography is mismatched; more on that in a moment. Yes, the number of opinions on the editorial pages has shrunk.<\/p>\n

Although I am a column maven, I\u2019m not too bothered yet by the cutting of many columns by newsroom staff and by community members. To people who\u2019ve asked me about that specifically, suspecting conspiracy, I say again, the alternative is no newspaper, so even the few writers published by NAN would not see print.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some essays by regular contributors I will miss. Others have been writing too long and frankly need a break. If I am wrong and they should still be hollering about what\u2019s wrong, there\u2019s always the Internet, with blogging and the online version of letters to the editor, “comments.”<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m suggesting to the region is to give this operation at least six months before judging. The four city newspapers will get a shared typographical design before too long. Let\u2019s hope the retention of separate identities in form and content remains the top priority. Seeing the differences between Fayetteville\u2019s Northwest Arkansas Times<\/em> (progressive, often culturally astute) and Bentonville\u2019s Benton County Daily Record<\/em> (Mayberry<\/a>-like, with sophisticated touches) always has been a pleasure for me, heightened by the fact they have been owned by a single media company (Community Publishers then Wehco) for a good decade.<\/p>\n

If there’s a lesson here, besides the Good Depression hits in different ways and some are as near as your driveway, it’s this: Opinions are like orifices, everyone\u2019s got a half-dozen, on a good day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One more \u201cA\u201d and NAN would be tasty flatbread. As it is, it\u2019s Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC, and the acronym was created, logo\u2019d up, and announced by the new company. One suspects that was to delay unhappy people creating a snide abbreviation or nickname, as happened when the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was formed in 1991 (my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-home-street"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":120,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/08\/short-term-newspaper-memory\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":0},"title":"Short-term (newspaper) memory","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, Aug. 21, 2005. Saturday, in The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas the local column of my old Little Rock colleague Doug Thompson (an earnest journalist, sardonic in conversation) wrote glibly and at times carelessly of Wehco Media purchasing from Community Publishers the assets of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3903,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/10\/the-paper-is-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":1},"title":"The Paper’s Back","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The newspaper is here. It's unopened in its yellow rain bag, middle of the driveway. I'm savoring the moment, the anticipation. Also, I wanted to write my rationale first. This being Northwest Arkansas, it's really two newspapers bundled. If this was elsewhere in America, it would be one newspaper with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC aka NWA Media","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/NAN-sense-300x187.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":231,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/09\/no-pox-on-this-tax\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":2},"title":"No Pox on This Tax","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A pox of this tax, or a tax of this pox, (twist of Falstaff's line of Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 2) We should, as these editorials all attest, vote \"yes\" to all four of Fayetteville's tiny tax increases. Northwest Arkansas Times, and the Demzette. Should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":232,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/09\/index-finger-index\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":3},"title":"Index finger index","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I am reading the new biography 'All Governments Lie': The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone by Myra MacPherson. Mr. Stone worked for a few years at the famous experimental New York newspaper P.M. Reading again about the trendsetting daily of the late 1940s and early 1950s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2003\/12\/humor-put-to-pasture\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":4},"title":"Humor, put to pasture","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 26, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2003 Ben S. Pollock Friday, Dec. 26, 2003. Consider the retirement this month of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette humor columnists Richard Allin and Charles Allbright. It's fair and appropriate and honest (as in honest opinion, NOT truth and NOT fact) to point out the positives in the involuntary departure. I believe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8360,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2026\/04\/good-news-is-no-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":1695,"position":5},"title":"Good News Is No News","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 22, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"It's obvious that I'm a news hound, and there's certainly no shortage of news in FaySpRogVille (a portmanteau of Northwest Arkansas's four main cities). Throughout the areas news media, coverage of the University of Arkansas naturally stays prominent, not only because it's one of the largest employers of the Ozarks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education, Coarsely"","block_context":{"text":"Education, Coarsely","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/education-coarsely\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Newspaper vending machines in Toronto in 2011.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Canadian-newspaper-boxes-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Canadian-newspaper-boxes-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Canadian-newspaper-boxes-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Canadian-newspaper-boxes-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1708,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions\/1708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}