Douglas praises his newspaper

Bob Douglas, former managing editor of the Arkansas Gazette and current columnist and consultant for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, praised the newspaper he works for in a Aug. 30 column saying it’s a much better publication than the Gannett Corp. would have provided if that company had won the Little Rock newspaper war that ended in 1991 with the demise of the Gazette and the birth of the D-G.

We agree with Douglas’ comments concerning the continued effort by Publisher Walter Hussman to improve the D-G. The profit-oriented Gannett would have retreated to Little Rock and provided little or no coverage of the hinterlands of Arkansas had it won the war. Hussman, obviously, is a man with a mission, and covering the entire state is part of that mission.

But we think Douglas was stretching it a bit for when he compared the D-G to the Dallas Morning News saying the Texas newspaper, generally considered one of the best in the nation, “would be among the few larger-city papers that would measure up” to the D-G in “thorough news coverage.”

As Douglas said in the column before making the D-G comments, “I know I risk unfavorable mention in journalism reviews when I write what immediately follows, because I am paid by a beneficiary of these remarks.”

We didn’t want to disappoint him.