Andrew Bagley was ready for a telephone interview, following Highway 49 on an hour’s drive from Helena-West Helena to Brinkley on “a beautiful day in the Delta.”
Bagley was offering Whispers an update on the health of his two newspapers, the Helena World and the Monroe County Argus, in Brinkley, and describing the life of a man with perhaps too many jobs.
Bagley was already a college instructor of history and political science as well as a radio sportscaster when he and Helena businessman Chuck Davis saved the World in 2019, buying the weekly from GateHouse Media, which was shutting it down.
Then last August Bagley and Davis bought the Brinkley weekly from perhaps the youngest publisher in the country, Hayden Taylor, who was just 19 when he bought the assets of the Central Delta Argus-Sun of Brinkley in 2017 and renamed it the Monroe County Herald.
Now it’s the Monroe County Argus, owned by Davis and Bagley’s Helena World Chronicle LLC. It’s the only active newspaper in Monroe County.
“Circulation has been stabilizing after a total redesign and things are improving” in Brinkley, Bagley said. “We’ve still got some improvements to make, and now that the public notice debate is over, I can get back to thinking about strategic staffing decisions I have to make.”
The publisher was referring to legislative debate over bills that would have ended state requirements that government entities publish legal notices in newspapers. Bagley worked hard to make sure those bills failed.
“We’ve seen a largely positive response from the communities over there and we’re working weekly to improve the product.”
In Helena, circulation numbers have more than doubled to between 900 and 1,000 copies a week, Bagley said. “In Brinkley, we’re right at about 650.”
Bagley has four employees at the Helena paper and for now just one in Brinkley, with the World’s staff providing administrative support. Weekly journalism veteran Rick Kennedy is editing both the World and the Argus, with his main task being graphic design and layout. “He does some writing still, and he’s doing that for both papers.”
Bagley, who got his bachelor’s degree from Ouachita Baptist University and a master’s from Baylor, is still writing as well, with assistance from freelancers and a contract photographer. “We cover eight schools between the two papers, and I’m doing probably 90% of the sports.” Bagley also covers school board meetings and the Phillips County Quorum Court.
“We’ve grown the business enough that now we’re thinking about some additional people, but it’s got to be the right people,” he said. “We need ad sales folks and reporters, and we’ve got to figure out a way to economize. We think we might be hiring in the next few months, with those people doing more for both papers.”
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