ROGERS — Advances in printing and technology have changed the way news is produced in the last 40 years at the Rogers Morning News.
The purpose of the newspaper remains the same, said Rusty Turner, editor and publisher of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers. Journalism gathers and distributes information whether on a mobile device or a printed page, Turner said.
“I think the industry has changed more in the past 15, 20 years than it has since Gutenberg dreamed up moveable type,” he said.
Technical changes have been far-reaching in the past 40 years at the Rogers Morning News. In 1962, a predecessor, the Rogers Daily News, was owned by Donrey Media and it became the first newspaper in the state to go from hot metal printing to offset lithography.
Oscar “Okie” Boyd, a former publisher, oversaw several conversions to offset printing as a regional manager with Donrey in the 1970s.
Offset machines used flat metal plates instead of raised type. Boyd said printers told him the new system would never work.
Linotype machines had been the standard since the late 1800s. Type was set a line at a time and cast in a hot lead alloy. The hot mixture had to be just right and, because the resulting plates left letters upside down and backwards, it was difficult to proof, Boyd said.
“Anything was better than that,” Boyd said.
During his tenure in Rogers the most dramatic shift Boyd oversaw was the transition from afternoon newspaper delivery to early morning delivery starting in 1978.
“Afternoon newspapers were slowly dying,” Boyd said.
Television, still new to most rural areas, started the news at 6 a.m. and Boyd fought to keep up with their news coverage.
“TV was your biggest competitor in those days,” he said. “They were tougher competition than when it was just radio.”
His bosses put the change down as a gamble. Boyd started printing a morning edition titled the Northwest Arkansas Morning News in addition to the Rogers Daily News. It was the first local paper to make the switch, Boyd said. Months later, the Northwest Arkansas Times in Fayetteville also started delivering an early morning edition. The first six months were tough, Boyd said, but circulation doubled in the first year. In 1981, the afternoon edition was discontinued.