The Times Dispatch of Walnut Ridge is changing hands after nearly a century of Bland family ownership, joining an old ally — the Jonesboro Sun — as a property of Paxton Media Group of Paducah, Kentucky.
The weekly newspaper, based in the Lawrence County seat, made front-page news of its plans to be sold to Paxton, which owns about 50 daily and weekly papers and a couple of Kentucky radio stations. No sale price was announced.
The paper revealed no closing date for the sale, but said Publisher John Bland and his wife, Renee, will be stepping down at the end of September, ending three generations of Bland leadership.
The paper had paid circulation in 2018 of about 3,000, according to the Arkansas Press Association, which listed Gretchen Hunt as editor, Shantelle Redden as ad manager and Tammy Whitehead as circulation manager as of last year.
The newspaper’s front-page article on the sale did not touch on the fate of employees, and John Brand, whose grandfather bought the Times Dispatch after leaving the Newport Independent in 1921, was out delivering papers Wednesday morning when Arkansas Business called for details.
The Times Dispatch was founded in 1910 but got a technological boost when James L. Bland, a Perry County native and former Newport newspaperman, bought it with Independent Publisher Austin Wilkerson in 1921. Bland quickly bought out his partner, and secured a loan from W.O. Troutt, then owner of the Jonesboro Sun, to buy the first Linotype machine owned by an Arkansas weekly. The advanced machine set molten lead into lines and blocks of type, a great advance over previous manual methods.
Wednesday’s article noted that relationship, and said James L. Bland Jr. started working at the Times Dispatch in 1946, followed by his son John in 1980.
Paxton Media Group, a private company, is led by company President and CEO David M. Paxton, himself a descendant of an old newspaper family. Back in 1896, William F. Paxton led a group of investors who founded the Paducah Evening Sun after buying the assets of the failing paper.
Lewis Floyd Sr. of Grimes, McGovern & Associates represented the Blands in the sale.
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