Daily Record has Best Package on Marriott Fire

We were wowed on Feb. 4 when we picked up the Benton County Daily Record and saw the newspaper’s coverage of a fire the night before that destroyed the Residence Inn by Marriott in Rogers.

The package took up two-thirds of the front page under the headline “Inferno consumes hotel.”

David Kever had an outstanding photograph on Page 1 that showed flames leaping above a fire truck ladder. Jason McGuire took the second photo on the page, which gave perspective by showing the entire hotel engulfed by fire. Kyle Weaver, the reporter, did a good job on the story from an on-the-scene point of view.

We were a bit confused by the fire coverage in The Morning News. With four zoned editions, the newspaper played the story and a dramatic photo from Marc Henning on Page 1 in its Rogers edition. But the Bentonville edition ran only a photo on the front page and sent readers to Page 2 to read for the story. The fire got only three paragraphs on Page 1 of The Morning News’ Fayetteville edition (with no photo up front).

This was the biggest fire in Northwest Arkansas in years, so we think the story and a photo should have been on Page 1 in all editions of The Morning News, even though there were no injuries in the fire. After all, Fayetteville and Rogers are only 16 miles apart.