Layoffs are bad news for the Democrat-Gazette

WEHCO Media, the communications conglomerate that runs several newspapers, magazines and television companies across Arkansas and beyond, announced major layoffs at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Tuesday. 

The 74 employees who will be cut by the year’s end at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette all work in “production, circulation and advertising,” leaving their newsroom of more than 100 staffers untouched. The news operation in Northwest Arkansas, however, will not escape unscathed. The Democrat-Gazette reported Tuesday that 13 of the 28 employees leaving the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette work in the newsroom representing a big hit to its 40-plus person editorial team. This is the first round of newsroom layoffs for the Democrat-Gazette since 2020, the newspaper reported.

These layoffs come on the heels of WEHCO’s sale of the Chattanooga Times Free Press in July, the sale in  March of  the Pine Bluff Commercial to local media mogul Roby Brock, and the sale at the end of December of the company’s three newspapers in Missouri.

So what’s going on with our pals three blocks up at Capitol and Scott? Surely the Hussman family didn’t prevail in Little Rock’s epic newspaper war and expand beyond state lines, only to cede hard-won ground a few decades later. 

The Arkansas Times loves to trash talk the state’s newspaper of record on occasion, but in truth we big fans of watching their energetic battalion of print journalists taking their watchdog role very seriously. We’re lamenting the newsroom layoffs in Northwest Arkansas. 

But with the even-keeled Arkansas Advocate fully established in the state and another nonprofit news endeavor, Arkansas Today, firing up any minute, perhaps our media ecosystem will churn on in good health.