Newspaper’s history: small town feel

By Lynn Atkins

Posted: November 25, 2009 at 6 a.m.

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ROGERS — The first issue of The Rogers Hometown News in December 1994 contained front page stories about the Rogers Chamber of Commerce and the Rogers Little Theater.

Two of the people pictured on the front page, Raymond Burns and Ed McClure, are still local newsmakers.

Some things haven’t changed in 15 years.

“There was a niche that we filled as a weekly,” former editor Dana Mather said. “And a lot of people enjoyed that.”

Jeff Thacker was one of the three original staff members. He sold ads when the paper opened and later served as general manager. The first editor was LindaHicks and she was replaced by Linda Augsburg Stirratt in 1996.

“We worked seven days a week,” Thacker remembered. “We saturated a lot of Rogers. We sent out a ton of papers for a while.” He remembers that he missed his first high school reunion because he was working at the paper.

In 1994, Rogers was one of the few area communities that didn’t have a weekly paper, Thacker said. Community Publishers Inc., the company that started the Hometown News, owned weeklies in several town around the region.

“Rogers was growing to the point where it needed its own newspaper,” Thacker said.

“It’s always been more of a local news and features paper,” Mather said. “It was just news about what’s going on around town, like the chicken-dinner news,” she said referring to notices of small fundraisers and meetings. “There’s not always space for that in the daily papers.”

Mather took over the Hometown News in 1997.

She was the third editor of the small weekly. She remembers many local columnists who were happy to contribute because they wanted an outlet for their writing.

At one time, the Hometown News had a regular gardening column and one about veterinary medicine.

Members of the Rogers Historical Museum staff and the Rogers Public library have contributed over the years and for a while Mayor Stev e Womack was a regular columnist. More recently James Hales has been contributing a weekly column about Rogers History.

Marie Putman’s “Life in the Ozarks” is probably the longest running column. It began in 1997.

Sometimes the content of the paper depended on the interests of the reporters, Mather said. When reporter/photographer Bill Thompson was a staff member, there were many photopages and features about interesting people he met, including a man who built a car that was also a boat.

Many well-known names were mentioned in thoseearly papers. Dick Trammel, Opal Beck and Joye Kelley were all interviewed in 1995. Janie Darr wrote a guest column.

Mike Jones became The Rogers Hometown NewsEditor in 2000. In 2002, Don Groves took over and Mike Roark followed him in 2005. In 2007, Kent Marts took the reins.

Over the years the Hometown News earnedenough Associated Press Awards to fill the wall near the front door, but the 2009 awards may have been the paper’s best showing. Competing against other small weeklies around the state,the paper earned 14 awards including a first for General Excellence and seven other first place awards for columns, photo pages, and coverage of education and business.

News, Pages 1 on 11/25/2009

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