Area Residents Vote For Their Favorite Radio Personalities

The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas recently solicited votes for “favorite DJ in Northwest Arkansas.” The winners will be featured, with photos, in an upcoming issue of the newspaper.

Winners in each category, and the number of votes they received, were: Buck Waters and James West, KFAY-98 FM, morning, 1,460; Crystal Hudson, KEZA- Magic 107.9 FM, mid-day, 81; Chuck Barrett, KFAY-AM, afternoon, 3,209; Jay Savage, KKEG-FM 92, nighttime, 84; and Kyle Kellams, KUAF-91.3 FM National Public Radio, other, 1,500. Kellams, as news director for KUAF, isn’t officially a disc jockey, so he fell into the “other” category as a write-in nominee. Kellams says he doesn’t know who’s responsible for the write-in campaign.

Democrat-Gazette editor responds to criticism

In the July 30 issue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, deputy managing editor Frank Fellone wrote a column responding to criticism from readers who don’t want to receive the newspapers’ Northwest Arkansas edition, which premiered July 12 and allegedly covers news in a 12-county area.

In the same issue, two readers — from Fayetteville and Fort Smith respectively — blasted the D-G, saying they preferred more Little Rock news, not the heavy emphasis on Washington and Benton counties that the Northwest Arkansas edition now contains.

“We are very unhappy to see this shift to a regional edition [in Northwest Arkansas],” wrote the Fayetteville reader. “The reason we subscribed to the paper in the first place was to get a more comprehensive, broader scope of state news, especially Little Rock.”

“We’re trying to cover the living daylights out of Northwest Arkansas local news, the same way we try to cover the living daylights out of the news in Central Arkansas and all over the state,” wrote Fellone. “That’s not a replacement for our statewide coverage. It’s in addition to it.”

Fellone says all of the Little Rock news is in the Northwest Arkansas edition: It’s just buried on the inside news pages.

Apparently, it’s buried so well the readers can’t find it.

Covering a 12-county area of “Northwest Arkansas” is a stretch, especially since the cities and counties within the D-G’s arbitrary Northwest Arkansas circulation zone vary so greatly.

We figure most of the 12 counties will be neglected by the D-G’s coverage, but readers in those counties will receive the Northwest Arkansas edition nonetheless, and it will be full of stories pertaining to Washington and Benton counties.

Whether the readers in the outlying counties will continue to subscribe to the D-G is yet to be seen.