Arkansas weekly, started in 2018 after GateHouse Media shut down paper in Hope, is still thriving after pandemic

Mark Keith

In September 2018, GateHouse Media shut down The Hope Star, an 89-year-old twice-weekly paper in Hempstead County, Arkansas, the birthplace of Bill Clinton. Local furniture store owner and radio host/ad salesman Mark Keith and his friend, local businessman Wendell Hoover, wanted to keep local news alive in their town, and founded the weekly Hope-Prescott News. The paper is thriving these days, according to the Arkansas Press Association's Arkansas Publisher Weekly, and the duo has even opened up a sister weekly, the Little River Journal in nearby Ashdown.

Their success is no small feat. The News is a free-circulation paper entirely supported by advertisers, a task made far more difficult as ad sales tanked nationwide during the pandemic. But Keith said they never lost advertisers, and perhaps even gained ad money because there were so many employment ads.

Nonetheless, the pandemic has still been difficult for the papers' staff, from the logistical challenges of printing and reporting while some were sick or quarantined, to the pain of writing obituaries for beloved friends. Read more here.