Arkansas Blog

Married for 44 years and then divorced at 72, how sad.

Married for 44 years and then divorced at 72, how sad.

A wonderful career and life built on nepotism.

Oh, how I wish that this was not a part of his legacy "Faced with the prospect of costing the Gazette's more than 300 employees their livelihood and in light of his fiduciary responsibility to the various Heiskell family heirs if the newspaper went out of business, Patterson reluctantly decided the newspaper should be sold to an organization with more financial strength. Ultimately the newspaper was sold in 1986 to the Gannett Corporation and Patterson retired. The Gannett group removed other family members from the operation and made major changes in content and business practices, but these did not prove successful enough to win the competition with Hussman and the Democrat, and Gannett in 1991 decided to close the Arkansas Gazette - the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River - and sell its name and assets to Hussman."

I have served in the enlisted ranks of the journalism business for more than 40 years, some 18 of them with the old Arkansas Gazette. I can cuss publishers with the best of my fellow reporters, and have.
But in the dark days of 1957, when bigotry ruled the day in Arkansas and its people needed a great newspaper, the Arkansas Gazette became one, thanks in no small part to the courage and integrity of Hugh B. Patterson Jr.
J.N. Heiskell was the great heart of the Gazette during that time, and Harry Ashmore was its great voice, but it was Patterson who was charged with keeping the paper afloat in the face of hostile public opinion and overt hostility from the state government.
He, along with Heiskell, Ashmore and probably the finest staff of any American newspaper at that time, informed Arkansawyers about the crisis with complete and absolutely objective news coverage and pricked its conscience with courageous editorials.
It is easy to second-guess the decisions made much later that led to the demise of the Gazette; it is the semi-official passtime of old Gazette hands, and I am as enthusiastic a player as anyone else.
But the fact remains that in a time of great peril for the state and its people, the Gazette stood for the right when it was unpopular and even dangerous to do so, and Hugh Patterson was one of the main reasons that it did.

The transcript of Roy Reed's 2000 interview with Hugh Patterson can be downloaded as a PDF at http://libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/ACOVH/HPatterson3.pdf Interesting stuff about his views of the Hussman family and the back-and-forth between the Gazette and the Democrat. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to read the Demozette's version of the obit in Tuesday's paper.

It occurs to me that in the interest of full disclosure, I should have revealed in my earlier post about Hugh Patterson that I probably should be considered a side-pocket member of the Patterson family by reason of marriage, a fact that caused both of us some justifiable moments of discomfort and embarrassment a few times over the years

Thank you, Mike. We needed your commentary here. I was disappointed to read the work of a couple of asshats in the comments section, and then your well-spoken comments appeared. Thanks again.

"...Pulitzer Prize-winning defense of the rule of law..."

Hmmm...I'm guessing that phrase won't be found in Patterson's Dem-Gaz obituary!

Your saying there is know truth to the nepotism claim?

The DemGaz will no doubt run a smarmy editorial praising Patterson for a lifetime of service in a doomed cause. This will soften readers up before Herr Greenberg goosesteps in with his Roget's for an eloquent essay on the good fight, no doubt quoting The Iliad or making some reference to athletes dying young, etc, etc. This is a big one-- Paul may have to mention his own Pulitzer a couple of times just to burnish the credentials. Too bad John Robert Starr is cleaning rest stop toilets in Hell-- I'm sure he and his Phi Beta Kappa Key would welcome the opportunity to eulogize poor luckless Hugh.

To eulogize?

Mr. Patterson was my grandfather's best man, and worked closely with my Uncle, Jim Williamson, who was general manager at the Gazette. He was highly respected by my family. My thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time.

I thought the Ark Dem-Gaz did an admirable job with his obit article in today's edition. Below the fold on the front page.

I had the pleasure of knowing Hugh and Louise; two classier and finer people would be difficult to find. The stand of thier newspaper and family in 1957 continues to serve as a model of what US citizens with courage and intellect can do in the face of lawlessness and threats to fundamental Constitutional rights. Wish we had a few such folks in our Congress today!
In the middle of this century when we can get a better historical perspective on the loss of the Gazette, I believe it will be seen as a major setback in the progressive growth and development of Arkansas.

I could make a case that the eight best years of my life were spent working for J. N. Heiskell, Harry Ashmore, Bill Shelton, and Hugh Patterson. Hugh paid my salary and that would have been enough, but he did more. He sat in his office downstairs and endured the certain knowledge that up above him, on the third floor, were a couple of dozen of the crankiest editors and the most arrogant reporters ever assembled in an American newsroom. He put up with us because now and then one of us would find a story that made him proud, or some Allbright or Owens or Whitworth or Portis or some kid who was there today and gone tomorrow would strike off a sentence that would make him smile. That's all he required. In my opinion, that's a definition of a good publisher.

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! on the Democr@p-zette for requiring membership login to view the obit for this fine man. I daresay that current subscribers would not still be on board if many hallmarks of the original Arkansas Gazette had not been retained. As my Grandma Margaret would say "piss on them!"