Northwestern Exposure

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest Arkansas edition has a new business editor. John Cummins started at the newspaper’s Springdale office Aug. 16.

Despite a short stint as a sportswriter, Cummins says his main background is in business. Cummins came to the D-G from the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo where he was the newspaper’s first business editor. He worked there for two years and started the Journal’s stand-alone Sunday business section.

From 1995 to 1997 he worked as the Vermilion Parish bureau editor for the Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, La. There, Cummins says, he covered everything from cops to courts to business. Prior to that, he worked for about six months as a sportswriter for the Times-News in Kingsport, Tenn.

Although Cummins says the Lafayette newspaper went head-to-head with the Baton Rouge paper and a tough alternative news weekly, Northwest Arkansas is a whole new game.

“This definitely is the most competitive market,” he says. “I’d like to say I thrive on competition. I guess the reader’s the final judge on that.”

Cummins will edit the Northwest section and oversee the bureau’s staff, including Richard Bedard, who replaced Tony Cox as editor of the newspaper’s weekly “Business Matters” section.