The recently-renamed Hussman School of Journalism & Media at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Walter Hussman Jr. was driving up Cantrell Road in a raging thunderstorm in late May, thinking about his legacy.
Dodging downed limbs and a car swinging into his lane, he said he wouldn’t be retiring as publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette or as chairman of Wehco Media Inc., its parent company.
“I’m not CEO of the company anymore,” Hussman said in that cellphone interview. “I’m 72, but I’m going to continue helping in this conversion.”
By that he meant the conversion of the Democrat-Gazette from a print newspaper into a digital publication six days a week. By 2020, Hussman plans to print the Little Rock paper on Sundays only, shifting readers to a digital plan that offers them iPads for as long as they keep paying their $36-a-month subscriptions.
Hussman hopes to keep covering news statewide without cutting news staff, and his novel idea seeks to avoid layoffs, which have become routine in the general-interest news industry. It’s a $12 million bet on the iPads alone, the third-generation publisher noted.
Back in May, few knew he was planning a $25 million gift to the University of North Carolina, his alma mater. The record donation to the journalism school christened the Hussman School of Journalism & Media in honor of the publisher, his wife, Ben, and children Palmer Hussman, Olivia Ramsey and Eliza Gaines.
Ramsey and Gaines are also UNC graduates, and Hussman said it “honors the four generations of my family who have dedicated their lives to news.”
News of the gift set off some anger and eye-rolling at a time of austerity at Wehco’s papers. One ex-employee said equipment and facility upgrades have waited for years, lamenting years of pay freezes as well. But no Wehco funds went into the gift, and Americans can use their personal wealth as they see fit. It’s also hard to criticize supporting public journalism education.
At any rate, the North Carolina gift celebrates an Arkansas media dynasty.
Hussman’s grandfather, Clyde Palmer, bought the paper that eventually became the Texarkana Gazette in 1909 and built a hardy south Arkansas chain including properties in Camden, El Dorado, Magnolia and Hope. Hussman’s mother, Betty Palmer, met his father when both were journalism students at the University of Missouri in the late 1920s. Walter Hussman Sr.’s college roommate, Donald W. Reynolds, became the millionaire philanthropist who built Donrey Media Group, once publisher of the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Hussman Sr. took over the family business after C.E. Palmer’s death in 1957, and while employees groused about penny-pinching, he introduced innovations. In the 1960s, he installed a facsimile network connecting his papers, allowing for expensive cold-type composition equipment to handle all ad production at a central site and share those ads with the entire newspaper group. News copy was shared the same way.
Hussman, who finished at UNC in 1968 and got an MBA at Columbia University in 1970, wrote for Forbes magazine for a year before joining the family business, winning with his own maverick ideas like free classified ads and promoting the Democrat as “Arkansas’ Newspaper” after the rival Gazette was bought by Gannett Co. of McLean, Virginia.
Hussman said one key to his making the UNC gift was the journalism school’s adoption of the core values he has been printing in Wehco’s 10 daily papers for two years. The principles, opening with a line from the legendary New York Times Publisher Adolph Ochs and ending with a quotation from Hussman’s father, emphasize impartial reporting, “delivering the news honestly, fairly, objectively, and without personal opinion or bias.”
The pursuit of truth is the noble goal of journalism, the values say, and they call for opinion to be strictly distinguished from news, and for reporters to dig in and follow tips wherever they lead.
The values will be chiseled in granite in Carroll Hall on the Chapel Hill campus, where journalism students routinely study. The coda is from Hussman’s father, who ranked a newspaper’s five constituencies this way: “first its readers, then advertisers, then employees, then creditors, then shareholders.” Keeping those priorities, “especially readers first, all constituencies will be well served.”
Hussman said he often turns to that quote for guidance. “I loved Dad, but his advice has been so useful practically. After 40 years in this business, I still encounter new problems. But if you’re unsure what to do, you can look at that statement about who the newspaper should be serving, and in what order. You repeat that, and all of a sudden the problem untangles.”
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