Subscriber Rejects CPI/Wehco Alliance

Bentonville resident Edith Irvin, a subscriber to the Benton County Daily Record for more than 30 years, made her feelings public Oct. 28 about the newspaper’s “alliance” with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

She posted a sign on the front porch of her home on Moberly Lane reading, “I don’t want your paper. Stop it PLEASE!”

Irvin said she put up the bright yellow sign only after making two attempts, one in person and one via certified mail, to cancel her subscription to the Daily Record. She became upset with the newspaper in late August when it began arriving inserted within the D-G.

The two-in-one delivery format is a result of Community Publishers Inc., which owns the Daily Record in Bentonville and the Northwest Arkansas Times in Fayetteville, entering into a joint-delivery agreement with the D-G. CPI’s dailies are now distributed as separate papers within the D-G’s Northwest Arkansas edition.

Irvin said the bulky newspaper hybrid, which on its most sparse days has run 80-100 pages, is too much to manage. On Sunday, the page count is closer to 200.

“That’s just a bunch of wasted paper that I have to dispose of,” Irvin said. “It’s a nuisance. For 30 years, I’ve started my day by opening the Daily Record, reading the news and working the puzzles. Now all of a sudden, they’re sending me this big old paper I don’t have time to dig through.”

Irvin said that at one point, she did subscribe to the D-G’s Sunday edition because her daughter, North Little Rock author and Bentonville native Darcy Pattison, occasionally reviews children’s books for that edition. Pattison has written two children’s books — “The River Dragon” and “The Way Finder.”

“I didn’t want to act ugly,” Irvin said, “but I went in to the Daily Record’s office and wrote them. What else was I supposed to do? I don’t want the paper any more if it’s going to be delivered like that.”