Hussman Heir Taking Reins of Democrat-Gazette Newsroom

Eliza Gaines is a daughter of Wehco Inc. Chairman Walter Hussman Jr., and this month she’ll become the first woman to serve as the top editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Minutes into an interview in the corner office she’ll occupy as the new managing editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Eliza Gaines reached for her ringing phone.

“Sorry, it’s my dad,” she said, setting the cellphone aside without answering.

“Are you sure you want to ignore the boss?” her interviewer asked.

Gaines smiled and nodded; she’s the daughter of Publisher Walter Hussman Jr., chairman of Wehco Media, the chain that owns the Little Rock paper. She’ll take over next week for longtime Managing Editor David Bailey, who is retiring at 70, and she’s seizing the reins as the paper plots a quick return to profitability.

Gaines laid out the timing. “March 16 is David’s last day, March 17 is my first day [as managing editor], and March 18 is my birthday,” she said.

She’ll be 33 years old.

But the ascension is more than the typical boss’s-kid-gets-plum-job story. For the Hussmans, it’s a family tradition.

Gaines is taking newsroom command in an existential battle, with the entire daily newspaper industry on the brink and the Democrat-Gazette betting its survival on converting subscribers to a digital replica of the paper presented on iPads. The iPads, nearly 30,000 so far, are free as long as subscribers stay current.

The iPad idea, which won Hussman an innovation award at the recent Key Executives Mega-Conference in Fort Worth, is working, Gaines said. After two years of losses at the paper, “we’re budgeting to be profitable this year,” Gaines told Arkansas Business late last month. “We can’t really get into numbers, but we are budgeting to be profitable.”

The numbers will allow the paper to keep its 100-strong newsroom intact, a luxury in the shrinking newspaper world. Gaines got word that her father was proceeding with the digital replica while she was on maternity leave with her third child. “I’ll admit I thought the idea was a little scary, because as a young person with experience in audience development I had questions,” but she never thought it unworkable “because my dad is so innovative and has a great history of success with ideas. And I knew he had done a pro forma to see how many people we’d need to convert to succeed.”

That success came at the price of halting weekday print delivery and eliminating dozens of non-newsroom jobs. The paper laid off 28 non-newsroom workers in late January, with President and General Manager Lynn Hamilton calling the cost reductions necessary for profitability. At the time, Hussman said the paper had distributed 27,000 iPads and that 87% of statewide subscribers had converted to digital plans.

The next step is winning over younger people to replace an aging readership.

“Obviously getting younger readers is one of my major goals, and I feel like we have come out the other side of this iPad conversion project and that we can breathe a sigh of relief,” Gaines said. “Now we can focus on keeping people happy and making this product even better, because we’ve just been so focused on converting people. Now there’s so much opportunity in the digital realm.”

‘She Is the Future’

Gaines’ promotion from Wehco vice president of audience development to newsroom chief made sense to the staff, several workers told Arkansas Business, on and off the record. Gaines worked as a reporter and for a year was executive editor of the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, another Wehco paper; she has a master’s in mass communication from the University of North Carolina, her father’s alma mater, and represents a new wave of Hussman relatives in publishing.

“I personally think Eliza’s appointment shows the commitment the family has to this newspaper,” said Rachel O’Neal, the paper’s veteran High Profile and Styles editor. “I have only heard positive comments from my co-workers. She is the future of this newspaper.”

Bailey, the retiring editor, said O’Neal’s take on the staff reaction was authentic. “Walter asked me about the idea of Eliza beforehand, and I thought it would be well-received,” Bailey said last week. “It’s reassuring to see the next generation of a family so fully invested in the paper. Nobody wants to see another family newspaper go away. And with Eliza as editor, and her brother, Palmer [Hussman] and cousin Nat Lea [Wehco’s president and CEO], the family continues to put time, energy and talent into the company. It gives the staff confidence.”

Gaines’ appointment in some respects parallels her father’s immersion in the family business 50 years ago. In 1970, Walter Hussman Sr. summoned his son home from New York, where he’d been writing for Forbes magazine.

“I was enjoying being in New York and not really wanting to come back,” Hussman said in the 2016 interview. But his father put him to work running the Camden News, the paper Hussman Sr. had bought from his father-in-law, chain founder Clyde E. Palmer, in 1949. “The idea of moving from New York to Camden, Arkansas, when I was 23 and single wasn’t so appealing,” he said.

The nascent Wehco chain was at a crossroads, and the younger Hussman had a choice: return and learn the business, with an option to bail out later, or stay a New York magazine writer while his father retired and sold off the chain.

“He said, ‘If you come back to Arkansas and you try the family business and you don’t like it, you can always go back to New York and get another job. But if you stay up there and work as a writer and we sell the business, that option is gone.’”

Eventually, “I was glad I came back,” Hussman said. He learned the business, helped devise a cable TV system for Vicksburg, Mississippi, and was off on a career that left him with two dozen papers and a fortune once measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Last year, he and his family gave $25 million to UNC, where the journalism school now bears the Hussman name.

Walter Jr. moved to Little Rock as publisher after Wehco bought the Arkansas Democrat in 1974. He was 27 and courting Robena “Ben” Kendrick, whom he wed in 1975. In 1983, they adopted Palmer, and four years later identical “mirror” twins Eliza and Olivia. Eliza is right-handed, Olivia left-handed; Eliza has a slightly crooked front tooth tilting right, while Olivia’s tilts to the left. (A former schoolteacher, Olivia Hussman Ramsey didn’t enter the family business.)

Gaines says she wanted to work for the family. “I do feel an obligation, but certainly not in a negative way,” she said. “I feel like I understand the DNA of this company, and I hope I can lead it in a way my father would be proud of.”

She’s proud to be the first woman as chief editor, but “I don’t think gender has anything to do with it,” Gaines said. “All that matters is that I’m invested in the success of the company.” The job is in her blood, she said. “Growing up, being in the newsroom and my dad’s office and seeing how everything worked was fascinating.”

At a different point in the interview, Gaines said she felt prepared for the job. “I do feel ready, because I started out in the newsroom and I have a background here, and I’m known here.”

Spreading Digital Wings

Wehco is now converting its other papers to digital, including the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which had previously been specifically excluded from the program because of intense competitive pricing in the region.

Walter Hussman insisted the digital replica generally mirror the printed paper, calculating that readers shouldn’t be expected to face a delivery change and a content change simultaneously.

Still, Gaines is ready to stretch her digital wings on web and mobile formats, experimenting with video storytelling, podcasts “and maybe different forms that are more appealing to a younger audience.”

An audience engagement editor, Stevie Nielson, is working with Gaines to lure younger readers “with interactive features and newsletters hitting their mailboxes with news they’re interested in,” Gaines said. But she made it clear that no changes will come to the iPad format. In other digital areas, though, she’d like the paper to do a better job “showing people the story behind the story, maybe with a reporter doing a short video. I think seeing how the story came together would help engagement.”

As a manager, she believes in positive reinforcement. “My dad is encouraging, but he’s not really a pusher,” Gaines said. “He’ll give advice, but he’s not overbearing, and will not lay down the law on what to do. He offers guidance and is a really good mentor. I want to follow that path, letting people do what they’re good at, and letting them shine.”