Danny and Pam Cook hold an edition of the Warren Eagle Democrat
Reports that the Warren Eagle Democrat will print its final edition next Wednesday after 136 years of publishing are true, but there’s an asterisk.
Publisher Danny Cook, 71, who owns the weekly with his wife, Pam, guarantees only that their last issue will be next week. He’s trying to sell, and he reports that several potential buyers are interested.
“I can say that we will quit publishing next week,” Cook told Arkansas Business. “But I have heard from several folks who might be interested in buying the paper and keeping it going; I’m meeting with one group next week.”
Age and ailments are behind the decision, Cook said, adding that the paper is still profitable, though not nearly as prosperous as it might be if it had owners who could devote full-time effort to it. He has always split his time with another Warren business, a heating-and-air shop, and various painful ailments have slowed down Pam, he said.
The Cooks are asking $170,000 for the paper, including the office at 200 W. Cypress St., its print shop, computers and software, subscription list and other assets, Danny Cook said.
The paper, one of the oldest businesses in Bradley County, announced its plan to stop publishing with a note in its weekly edition Wednesday.
The news was relayed by the Eagle Democrat’s online rival, the Saline River Chronicle, then picked up by Arkansas Times. The Eagle Democrat has no website.
“Unless something materializes in the next two days, this will be the last issue,” Cook said in a telephone interview. “My wife is not in good enough health to keep working, and my doctor has told me I can’t go on running two businesses.”
Cook said that unlike the dozens of Arkansas newspapers that have closed or merged and thousands across the country crippled by advertising and readership losses to the internet, the Eagle Democrat, which began publishing in earliest form in 1885, is on solid financial footing. “At about 3,900 a week, circulation is still good, and the advertising is still there, but I was the person responsible for selling ads, and there would be a lot more with some aggressive selling.”
Cook said he was throwing sweeteners into his sales pitch for the paper, which he sees as a natural for a “younger mom-and-pop team.” After paying himself back for loans he made to the paper over the years, Cook said he would leave $30,000 in the newspaper’s bank account to provide any buyers a cushion, and that the new owners would also benefit from accounts receivable of about $50,000.
“That means somebody could get into this by investing only about $90,000,” Cook said.
The Eagle Democrat, which covered Warren’s history from the days of the Spanish-American War to the deadly tornadoes of 1949 and 1975 to the triumph of Warren High School’s 2001 state championship team, has been averaging 10 pages a week, and special editions like the fall football special remain popular. In recent years, the paper has faced stiff competition from the Saline River Chronicle, an online outlet founded in 2010 and owned by local artist and shop owner Rob Reep.
The Cooks bought the paper in 1998 from longtime publisher and owner Bob Newton, who arrived in Warren as the Eagle Democrat’s editor in 1957 and gradually bought it outright, according to Max Brantley, who wrote about the closing plans in Arkansas Times.
“Whether we get a buyer or not, we plan to keep the office open for weeks,” Cook said. “If you know anybody who might be interested in a paper with a lot of positives, tell them to stop by.”
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