Minden Press-Herald

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The Minden Press-Herald is a Monday-Friday daily newspaper published in Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, by Specht Newspapers, Inc. It serves the Minden and south Webster Parish circulation area with mostly local news.

Contents 1 The original Minden Herald 2 Harper Brothers and Lowe 3 The Spivas’ Webster Printing Company 4 Emergence of the Press-Herald 5 Specht Newspapers, Inc. 6 Divisions of the Press-Herald 7 Current and former Press-Herald staffers 8 References

[edit] The original Minden Herald

The earliest use of the name Minden Herald dates to 1849, when publisher/printer/editor William Jasper Blackburn, an Arkansas native, arrived in Minden, then a part of Claiborne Parish. He was a Democrat, a supporter of the Union, and opposed slavery. He was mayor of Minden too for a single one-year term from May 1855 – May 1856. Blackburn’s Minden Herald was published for about six years. It was not the first newspaper in Minden. That distinction went to the former Minden Iris, which emerged in the founding of neighboring Bienville Parish in 1848. ^[1]

The Minden political climate shifted to favor the Know Nothing Party, which repudiated "non-native" ideas, and Blackburn moved to Homer to establish his Homer Iliad. During the American Civil War, Blackburn published in opposition to the Confederate States of America. Tried in Confederate District Court in Shreveport, Blackburn survived conviction by a single vote on charges of having produced counterfeit Confederate currency. Had the verdict been unaminous, he would have been hanged.^[1] Blackburn remained in Homer during Reconstruction and served in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican from 1868-1869. Thereafter, he was a member of the Louisiana State Senate until he was defeated in 1878 by the emerging Redeemer Democratic government. Blackburn relocated to Little Rock, where he published the Arkansas Republican. ^[2]

[edit] Harper Brothers and Lowe

The name Minden Herald was revived briefly during Reconstruction, but few, if any, issues of the newspaper are extant. A quotation from the Shreveport Times, which began publication in 1871, refers in 1872 to the existence of the Minden Herald. A later Minden Herald appeared in 1924 under the direction of printer Clifton Harper (1902-1982), explained John Agan, Minden’s official city historian. Harper attended Minden High School and worked at another publication called the Webster Signal. Clifton Harper studied printing under the direction of his brother, William Harper. He worked for a competitor of the Webster Signal, the new Minden Tribune. Clifton Harper left Minden in 1924 to attend Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He and his wife, the former Myrtle Buckley (1904-1990), both completed their degrees in business administration and journalism and returned to Minden, where Clifton’s brothers, William Harper (1894-1971) and Clinton Harper (1904-1978), along with Prentiss Lowe, began their Webster Sentinel in October 1928. Clifton Harper joined the paper as editor.^[1]

On November 14, 1929, the name Minden Herald was restored; therefore, the Harper brothers and Prentiss Lowe were the fathers of the "Herald" half of the Minden Press-Herald. At the time, the Webster Sentinel explained that the resumption of the name Minden Herald was intended to clear up confusion over another journal, the Webster Signal-Tribune, which had begun in 1926, when the Webster Signal merged with the Minden Tribune.^[1]

[edit] The Spivas’ Webster Printing Company

Under Harper’s leadership, the weekly Minden Herald was published on Friday. His editorials called for economic growth and modernization. Harper Brothers and Lowe acquired ownership of the other local paper, the Signal-Tribune, published on Tuesday. In February 1932, the Minden Herald purchased the Webster News and changed its name to the Minden Herald and Webster News published as a single newspaper. This arrangement continued until April 1937, when the Harper Brothers left the local newspaper market, and the papers were sold to the Webster Printing Company, owned by Hubert Spiva and Lilla Stewart Spiva. Hubert Spiva was a veteran newspaperman and his wife, Lilla, daughter of Daniel W. Stewart of Minden, had experience in journalism. The new company ceased publication of the Signal-Tribune and instead issued the Webster News as a separate paper on Tuesday.^[1]

Through the 1940s, Webster Printing and the Spivas had sole control of the Minden newspaper market. After Hubert Spiva’s death, his widow, Lilla, continued to run the corporation. In 1949, Clifton Harper returned to the local newspaper scene with his new Minden Press. He engaged in an aggressive marketing campaign and moved his publication to Thursday to have a day’s advantage on the Minden Herald. For a time, Minden was again served by three local papers: the Minden News on Monday, the Minden Press on Thursday, and the Minden Herald on Friday.^[1]

[edit] Emergence of the Press-Herald

In January 1953, the Webster News was renamed the Webster Review and then, in October 1954, the Webster Review and the Minden Herald were consolidated into a single publication issued on Thursday in competition with the Minden Press on Monday. This change came at the same time that Major DePingre (1928-2007), a Leesville native and a Louisiana State University graduate, was hired as editor of the latest Minden Herald. In December 1955, Webster Newspapers Corporation was formed under the direction of Tom Colten (1922-2004), a Detroit native, who arrived in Minden from Bogalusa, where he had been business manager of the Bogalusa Daily News. Webster Newspapers purchased the Minden Press from Harper and the Minden Herald from Mrs. Spiva and combined the newspapers under the long-anticipated Minden Press-Herald name. DePingre was named editor of both the Minden Press (Monday) and the Minden Herald (Thursday). Colten served as publisher of both papers beginning with the January 1956 issues.^[1]

[edit] Specht Newspapers, Inc.

In 1965, Colten sold the newspapers to Richard Hill. He then became the executive director of the Minden Chamber of Commerce and was elected the next year as mayor, having served two consecutive four-year terms. While Colten had hoped to establish a daily newspaper, that change did not occur until July 18, 1966, when the current Minden Press-Herald made its debut. Thereafter, the Press-Herald was sold to Specht Newspapers, Inc., which publishes the newspaper at 203 Gleason Street in Minden, along with the Bossier Press-Tribune in Bossier City.^[1]Chipley Newspapers of Pensacola, Florida, is a subsidiary of Spect Newspapers.^[3]

[edit] Divisions of the Press-Herald

The Minden Press-Herald is divided into these sections:

Local News

Community News

Opinion

Sports

Obituaries

Good News (includes religion)

Classified

The Press Herald shares the website nwlanews.com with its sister publication, the Bossier Press-Tribune.

[edit] Current and former Press-Herald staffers

• John Agan writes "Echoes of the Past", a periodic column for the Press-Herald on local history, much of it from the 19th century. He is a professor at Bossier Parish Community College in Bossier City and the official Webster Parish historian.

• Juanita Agan writes a periodic column "Cameos", which focuses on "older times" or "Americana".

• Josh Beavers is the executive editor of the Press-Herald.

• Wayne E. Dring, former advertising director and managing editor of the Press-Herald during the early 1970s, is the publisher of the Bienville Democrat in Arcadia, the seat of Bienville Parish.

• Kerry B. Garland (March 15, 1951 - October 4, 1983) began his career as the sports editor and then the managing editor of the Press-Herald. He was later a public relations representative for International Paper Company, whose career was cut short at the age of thirty-two in an automobile accident. Reared and educated in Minden, Garland was a regional reporter and state desk staffer at the Shreveport Times. He received his bachelor of science degree in journalism from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in 1979. His last position was as coordinator of public relations for International Paper Company. He was a member of the Louisiana and Texas Forestry associations. Garland was killed instantly in a two-vehicle accident in rural Natchitoches Parish. A spokesman for the Louisiana State Police said that he was northbound on Louisiana Highway 1 south of Derry when he attempted to pass a pick-up truck. His vehicle slammed head-on into an oncoming tractor-trailer rig driven by Natchitoches resident Joe Dinnos, Jr. (born 1925), who was uninjured. The Shreveport Journalism Foundation awards a $1,000 scholarship annually in Garland's honor. A second award commemorates former area broadcast and print journalist Orland Dodson, Jr. (1925-1987), of Shreveport.^[4]

• Marilyn Miller, a former Press-Herald executive director, is an industry public relations representative and the author of Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light: A True Crime Story based on a crime in Webster Parish on Christmas 1916.^[5]

• Nody Parker (1943-2007) was sports editor of the Press-Herald in the early 1970s and an area baseball coach. He had a second career in education in Texas.

• Stanley R. Tiner, the executive editor of the The Sun Herald in Biloxi-Gulfport, Mississippi. Tiner, a Shreveport native, was the managing editor of the Press-Herald, his first position after graduation from Louisiana Tech University.

[edit] References