Longtime "Arkansas Week" host Steve Barnes, center, in a photo from 1988. His guests were, left to right, original host Tom Grimes, reporter Joan Duffy, editor Max Brantley and Pine Bluff Commercial and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial writer Paul Greenberg.
Some of the state’s top journalists are joining newscast veteran Steve Barnes of Little Rock on Friday as Arkansas PBS celebrates the 40th anniversary of “Arkansas Week”, the state educational network’s weekly news and public affairs program.
Barnes has hosted the show since 1988.
Arkansas PBS will mark the milestone with a six-minute montage of clips from the program over the decades, along with recollections from journalists who regularly appeared with Barnes and other hosts, including longtime Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Moritz.
Others making appearances will include Ernie Dumas, the dean of the state’s political journalist and a former reporter and editorial writer at the Arkansas Gazette before spending decades at the Arkansas Times; Tom Grimes, the inaugural host of “Arkansas Week”; longtime Gazette and Arkansas Times editor and writer Max Brantley; and Rex Nelson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, another former editor of Arkansas Business.
The retrospective will be part of an episode in which Sen. John Boozman, R-Arkansas, will discuss the farm bill.
The episode will air at 7:30 p.m. Friday and again at 10 a.m. on Sunday.
“Since our first edition, ‘Arkansas Week’ has delivered to its audience a consistent diet of substance,” Barnes said in a news release from the network. “Our focus, always, has been on the matters that matter.”
Barnes said the idea was to address questions and analyze problems, as well as possible solutions. “We have brought to our table the journalists who have covered them firsthand, along with the academics and scientists and physicians who address them from their perspectives. Experts in Arkansas commerce, too, and education.”
The idea for the program began with Grimes, who was an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Arkansas when “Arkansas Week” was born in 1983
Moritz was editor of Arkansas Business from 1999 to 2021, when Lance Turner assumed the editorship. Moritz remains a contributing editor at AB.
Grimes was an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock at the birth of “Arkansas Week” in 1983. He had produced a Little Rock cable TV news program and thought the concept might work well at Arkansas PBS, then known as the Arkansas Educational Television Network.
“I drove to Conway to see AETN’s administrator, Fred Schmutz,” Grimes said in the release. “He bought the idea and the broadcast started.”
Since then, countless journalists and newsmakers, seven U.S. senators, 18 U.S. representatives and numerous members of the Arkansas General Assembly have appeared.
Grimes hosted the program until leaving the state in 1983 to get his doctorate at Indiana University. He is now a journalism professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, near Austin.
Several hosts followed, including Clarence Cash, Thedford Collins and Scott Charton, until Barnes took the host chair in 1988.
The Arkansas PBS Engage Blog features a Q&A with Grimes on what it was like to produce a weekly public affairs television program in 1983, and Steve Barnes reflecting on 40 years of “Arkansas Week.” Much of the full interviews with Grimes, Barnes, Dumas, Moritz and Nelson will be available on YouTube.
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