BITS & PIECES: Welcome, Dr. Fisher

While we were ankle deep in our journalism studies at Henderson State University between 2004-2008, a Reddie alumnus named Bob Fisher was at the helm of a private Christian college in Tennessee

By JOEL PHELPS | The Arkadelphian

The college grew from 2,927 students to 8,800 under his 21-year leadership. Revenue at Belmont University, meanwhile, grew from $42 million to $378 million — that’s no typo. We don’t know Dr. Fisher personally, but we’ve gotten messages since Henderson announced that he would be taking the reins, and they’ve all been optimistic about his arrival. Our alma mater could use a big dose of optimism. We’re hopeful that Dr. Fisher — during the brief time he’s committed to be here as interim chancellor — has what it takes to boost campus morale and show the world that Henderson, though seemingly limping along these days, will bounce back. Arkadelphia and Clark County need Henderson.

Our heart hurts for any family coping with the death of a loved one. We really don’t like certain parts of this job.

A current poll shows a whopping majority of our [dedicated] readers [who participate in the polls] either rarely or never buy lottery tickets. Hmm, that’s odd considering about half a million dollars worth of lottery tickets are sold each month in Clark County. Take the poll if you haven’t already.

We often visit the websites of our South Arkansas counterparts, of which there are many. To name our favorites: magnoliareporter.com, mysaline.com, hopeprescott.com and salineriverchronicle.com. Having spent our adolescence on a Cleveland County peach orchard, we consider Warren as part of our “old stomping grounds.” With a population of around 6,000 residents, it’s applaudable that the businesses in a town smaller than Arkadelphia have invested some advertising dollars into the operation of a community newspaper, albeit online. Established in 2010, The Chronicle has a few years on us; they’ve also got quite the ad stack to keep them going. Remember, when you’re reading The Arkadelphian, it’s because of the advertisements. It costs money to produce news. To quote a line from our favorite Mel Brooks film, “If we don’t get no tolls, then we don’t eat no rolls.” This website has had 1.2 million views so far in 2023. That’s for 7.5 months; for comparison, we had 1.1 million views for the whole of 2022. Most of our existing advertisements have expiration dates in the end of this year. To keep this train rolling, we are grateful for our current advertisers and hope more will follow. If they don’t, we can at least say we tried.

We felt quite silly this morning when we realized we had waved at a bicyclist making a right-hand turn signal on Caddo Street. It’s not often people signal with their hands, and we suspicion most people don’t know how to.

With the exception of the wife and mother-in-law, whose opinions rarely count (we’ll pay for this statement), no readers have complained so far about the new way we’ve presented our lede sentences. We’d love to hear feedback. Email editor@arkadelphian.com or text 501-304-2134.

Collusion? Nice try.

Joel Phelps is editor of arkadelphian.com. Opinions expressed in Bits & Pieces are his own. I’ll eat when I’m hungry, I’ll drink when I’m dry