Newspapers are closing around the country at an alarming rate. That’s also true for rural Arkansas where a 19-year-old is determined to save one.
Last month the Central Delta Argus-Sun was sold to Hayden Taylor. A 19-year old whose family’s roots in the area go back five generations. Taylor is a throwback to the time decades ago when a few young men his age ventured into owning newspapers, but it was rare then and is almost unheard of now in the age of the internet.
Taylor has never taken a single course in journalism, but that’s not stopping him. Besides, he says he’s more concerned about management and administration than how to make the bottom line work.”
Taylor attended Williams Baptist College in Walnut Ridge for a year and never decided on a major but he says he’s always enjoyed reading, did well in history and politics, economics and religion and believes those interests line up with writing.
Taylor’s Monroe County Herald debuted last month with a list of about 1,800 subscribers. He’ll also produce a free weekly shopper to be mailed to 7,000 residents in the area. Weekly inserts by four area grocery stores will go a long way toward covering the weekly’s financial overhead. The paper is based in Brinkley, Arkansas, a town of about 4000 residents.
His friends say they get their local news from Facebook but already showing a reporter’s cynicism he says he just don’t believe that pointing out — “That ‘news’ isn’t always news, and it’s hardly ever really local.”