I wrote this story for The Glenwood Herald, which ran in the March 20 edition. The newspaper is one of six purchased recently by Newsroom Ventures LLC, which is owned by Roby Brock.
The Glenwood Revitalization Group is trying to find a tenant for the first floor of the historic Alford building. Photo: Michael Hibblen
Walking through the Alford building, Kayla Hartsfield, president of the Glenwood Downtown Network, imagines the possibilities while acknowledging what’s at stake. She hopes to find an ideal business that will move into the 4,000-square-foot first floor of the historic building, becoming an anchor in the revitalization of the city’s two-block downtown area.
Respondents to a survey conducted last fall overwhelmingly said a restaurant is the kind of business most needed to fill a void in dining options for the many visitors who come to the city for its outdoor recreation, she said.
”We need a tenant and would love to have dining. We have a shortage of a variety of dining.”
Maybe it could be a steakhouse, perhaps a restaurant that features live music — there are many possibilities, she said. Second in the survey was a business that provides family entertainment, while tied for third was having an event space or a fitness/wellness center.
Kayla and her husband Ki Hartsfield, an executive vice president at Southern Bancorp, are among six couples in their 30s and 40s who are part of the Glenwood Revitalization Group. All were raised here, then after most had attended college, came back and opened businesses or took over family businesses. They’re wanting to improve the community by rejuvenating the downtown, which she says in recent decades had become a “ghost town” and an “eyesore.”
The Alford, which is the largest building downtown, was constructed around 1915 at the corner of Broadway and 2nd Street. The bottom floor was originally a general store while the second floor was a hotel.
Until work began a couple of years ago, the brick structure had a weathered whitewashed look with the second-floor windows boarded over while an awning hid the original arched front entrance. Now the exterior has been restored with walls that are painted dark green while the architectural features are tan. A mural painted on the side says “Welcome to Historic Downtown Glenwood Arkansas.” Inside the first floor, the brick walls are now exposed and the original ornate tin ceiling tiles are bright and clean.
The Alford building as it appeared on Nov. 12, 2011 can be seen across the street at the corner of Broadway and 2nd streets in Glenwood, Ark. Photo: Chris Litherland/Creative Commons
Kayla Hartsfield inside the Alford building, with construction waiting to be completed when a tenant is selected for the first floor. In the back is an entrance that leads up to the second floor. Photo: Michael Hibblen
For two years the group has been actively seeking a tenant for the first floor, while the plan for the second floor is to again house visitors to the city.
“We would love to eventually — longterm — be able to have nightly rentals up there to help feed our downtown district,“ she said. “The boarding rooms are still intact on the top floor. We still have some of the original doors intact. It’s a really cool place.”
For the business on the first floor, rent will be decided based on several factors, Hartsfield said. Most important will be the cost to complete the renovation.
“We’re building out to suit our tenant’s needs, so we haven’t completed the inside or the outside yet because we’ve been still trying to find that perfect tenant.”
Hartsfield said the goal isn’t about profitability, but finding a tenant who will be successful and a good fit for the downtown. About 10 entities have inquired with some sending business proposals, but she says none have worked out.
Since November 2024, several businesses have opened or relocated to downtown. Hartsfield said they include Mercantile on Broadway, which she manages selling gifts, baked goods and seasonal produce, while a cafe in the back is run by a third-party vendor.
Caddo River Realty and Jackson Title Company moved a few weeks ago to a building on a corner. Legacy Boutique sells women’s clothing, while the Beauty Haven salon offers high quality facials and other skin treatments. Next door to Hartsfield’s shop, Fillabulous Aesthetics has begun moving in. When it opens soon it will provide weight loss management, IV therapy and lip filler treatments.
“So, just a variety,” Hartsfield said. “Its been great because we’re all different types of businesses, so we’ve been able to really feed each other. They send people to us, we send people to them.”
While speaking about the overall downtown project earlier this month at Henderson State University, Ki Hartsfield estimated that at least $1.6 million has been invested in the area by the Glenwood Revitalization Group.
It’s hoped that finally landing a tenant for the Alford building will help achieve the group’s goals for the downtown.
“We’re ultimately wanting to do something that the community can be proud of again. So just community pride and then economic development,” Kayla Hartsfield said. “We have all of these tourists come and they’re driving to Hot Springs. They’re driving to other towns for shopping and dining and entertainment and things to do, so [we’re] trying to change that and get them to stay here and then spend their money here.”
Michael Hibblen at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York as snow was coming down on Dec. 5, 2002.
I’ve been grappling with the reality that CBS News Radio will be shutting down in May. Even though I haven’t worked for the network in decades, the announcement Friday — nonchalantly noting it was part of a 6% reduction in the news division’s workforce — was heartbreaking. I spent 10 years reporting for CBS, first from radio affiliates when local stories were big enough to warrant national coverage, then about four years of reporting directly for the network while based in Miami.
It was a time before corporate radio companies had dismantled local station newsrooms and the broadcast schedules of most stations still had local talk shows and news blocks.
I learned so much while reporting for CBS and experienced a level of professionalism like nothing I had experienced before. Looking at social media posts this past weekend from former colleagues has been difficult, to say the least.
The 99-year legacy included Edward R. Murrow during World War II essentially creating modern broadcast journalism as it still exists today through the way he and the reporters he hired provided first-hand storytelling with the sound and voices of the events they covered. Before then, radio news was primarily summaries of news headlines.
While working in the 1990s for CBS radio affiliates KARN in Little Rock and WRVA Richmond, Virginia, I reported for the network every chance I got. There were tornadoes, the Whitewater-related convictions of former associates of President Clinton — including the forced resignation of Gov. Jim Guy Tucker — and many executions which I reported from inside Cummins Prison. The first time one of my reports was the lead story on a CBS newscast was May 14, 1994 with Correspondent Dav Raviv anchoring.
AUDIO: My first report to lead a CBS News Radio newscast, May 14, 1994, on Arkansas executing two inmates on the same night.
AUDIO: A June 8, 1995 report on the sentencing of Webster Hubbell as part of Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr’s investigation.
The editors in New York who would record my reports didn’t hesitate to sometimes rip apart my scripts and help me reword them in the most succinct and impactful way possible. That’s what a young reporter needs to get better.
In Miami, I worked for WIOD — which was an ABC affiliate — but continued filing for CBS because I felt a sense of loyalty and appreciation for CBS, which at that time didn’t have a radio affiliate station in the market. I kept expecting my bosses at the Clear Channel station would tell me I should be reporting for ABC, but I guess they didn’t give it much thought. CBS also paid better than ABC because in addition to taking a report, they would pay for several additional soundbites.
AUDIO: My report for CBS on the trial of a company charged in connection with the 1996 Valujet crash that killed 110 people.
I would be rewarded for maintaining that relationship when an international custody fight over six-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was brewing in 2000 and CBS News Radio Executive Producer Charlie Kaye essentially assured me I could get enough freelance work to more than cover what I was making at WIOD. I ended up tripling my salary that year, thanks to the Elian saga stretching out for six months, then the 2000 presidential election being decided by Florida after five weeks of recounts in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
When news would break elsewhere in the region, I would get calls at all hours telling me flight arrangements were being made, get my stuff together and head to the airport. Correspondent Peter King in Orlando was the other person CBS News Radio had in the state. He told me the importance of always having a to-go packed and ready with a few days worth of clothes and supplies. If I got these calls during regular hours, desk assistants would often hand the call over to Kaye who would be so amazingly calm amid major breaking news as he instructed me what to plan on doing.
Among the stories I covered was a plane crash on Abaco Island in the Bahamas that killed R&B singer and actress Aaliyah, a shark attack in Pensacola that killed an eight-year-old boy, an anthrax attack that killed a photo editor at a tabloid publisher based in Boca Raton and South Florida’s connections to the men who carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
AUDIO: A montage of my reports for CBS on the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida.
AUDIO: Reporting from Abaco Island in the Bahamas on the August 2001 plane crash that killed R&B singer Aaliyah for CBS News Radio and the Westwood One program America in the Morning.
I know it’s advised that people put up boundaries between their professional and personal lives, but that wasn’t for me. I considered being a reporter a lifestyle, maybe to a fault.
To celebrate our first anniversary in 2001, my wife Susan and I decided to spend the weekend at a beachfront hotel in Fort Lauderdale. We had checked in, were having dinner and on our second round of drinks when my phone rang and it was CBS. I answered and was told NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt had just died at Daytona International Speedway and could I start heading that way. I explained it was our anniversary and the desk assistant apologized for interrupting us. I knew nothing about racing, but knew who Earnhardt was and that this was a huge story. After having this bouncing around in my head for a few minutes and talking with my wife, she reluctantly agreed I could leave to drive up to cover the story, where I arrived around midnight and immediately started reporting for the hourly newscasts. She spent the rest of the weekend in the hotel by herself. Needless to say that was not good on my part.
About three times a year I would take a train up to New York and spend a few days at the CBS Broadcast Center alongside people I otherwise only knew by phone, emails and messages. It was fascinating to see how the radio network operated and to meet the legendary anchors I only knew as voices, most of whom had been on the air there for decades. People like Christopher Glenn, Nick Young, Bill Whitney and Steve Kathan, among others. Working remotely, the desk assistants were often my first line of contact, and it was also great getting to know them.
One was Joshua Cook, who by chance married a woman from Arkansas and today lives in Little Rock. We got together for lunch about a month ago and spent much of that visit sharing memories and discussing the evolution in recent years of CBS News Radio. There’s no longer a radio affiliate in Little Rock, so lately I’ve been listening to the top-of-the-hour newscasts on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel. And when driving at night in Arkansas, I still tune in to the amazing AM signal of WBBM in Chicago.
It has been clearly apparent that the CBS radio operation has been much more lean in recent years and isn’t getting as much from its affiliates. Or maybe it doesn’t have the same kind of money to pay for reports.
It is telling that the three commercial radio news stations I worked for while reporting for CBS no longer have active newsrooms. KARN, WRVA and WIOD, like their broadcasting peers, once had a regulatory obligation as well as a sense of civic obligation from local owners to provide strong local news coverage. Ted Snider, who owned KARN and the Arkansas Radio Network for decades, knew that necessitated hiring a full staff of anchors, reporters, editors and producers.
Don’t get me started about what deregulation and distant corporate owners have done to the radio industry. And with a merger approved last Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission, the same thing is now happening to television. Public broadcasters definitely stepped up to fill the void and that’s the direction I took my career.
In 2003, as the build up to the war with Iraq was dominating national news coverage, I was getting less work from CBS. So when the Miami Herald was creating a radio news team as part of a new partnership with NPR station WLRN, I was hired there, starting a wonderful 22-year run in public broadcasting, which eventually included a return home to Little Rock, where I led the news department at KUAR, before three years at Arkansas PBS. But public broadcasting is retrenching after last year’s elimination of federal funding and the simple truth is that fewer people are watching or listening to over-the-air broadcasts.
Some partisans are cheering the demise of legacy media, but the evolving landscape will have fewer fact checkers and less accountability. It’ll be harder for people to know what is true. But at the same time, podcasting is exciting in that it allows anyone with an idea to reach an audience without the need for a broadcast signal.
The demise of CBS News Radio is disappointing in so many ways. The network was started in 1927. Couldn’t the current management at least let it live one more year to celebrate its 100th birthday rather than having the date for its death be planned for May 22? I guess not.
I reported this story for Talk Business & Politics and The England Democrat. I’m looking forward to covering future Arkansas political events involving candidates of all backgrounds.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner speaks to supporters Monday night in England, Ark. Photo: Michael Hibblen.
In her first official campaign event since winning last week’s Arkansas Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Hallie Shoffner spoke to several dozen people Monday night (March 9) in the city of England, asking for financial support to counter negative attack ads against her.
In a meeting room at the England Fitness Center amid the sound of a nearby pickleball game being played, she thanked those who have given to her campaign, including many who wrote checks that night. To date, she said she has raised $1.3 million, but noted incumbent Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has outraised her campaign 10-to-1.
A quarterly campaign finance report submitted to the Federal Election Commission last month showed Cotton, who is vying for a third term, had $9.6 million cash on hand at the end of last year. $918,000 of that came from political action committees, the report said.
Shoffner asked the group who had seen recent ads running on television and online that interpose images of Shoffner with nationally-known Democrats while a voice says “Hallie Shoffner has the values of radical, liberal elites, not Arkansas families.” Text messages sent to the cell phones of some Arkansas voters described her as a “radical lunatic.”
“That kind of advertising works and that’s why we have to compete against it,” Shoffner said.
In an interview, Shoffner suggested the attacks show Cotton’s campaign is “scared — and they should be,” she said. “Tom Cotton is one of the most unpopular politicians in Arkansas and in DC — both — and they’re very concerned because we’re running a campaign that is all about the people.”
She told the group, which calls itself the England Area Democrats in Lonoke County, that the average donation to her campaign has been $50, “which means this is truly a grass roots campaign. We have thousands of donors, and most of them come from right here in the state.”
Shoffner added, “People know very well where Tom Cotton gets his money, which is corporate PACs, and most of that is from outside of the state. This is about Arkansas and believing we can be one of the most prosperous and healthy states in the country. And that’s the kind of vision I want to bring to the Senate.”
Cotton reported raising $590,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, with $210,000 of that coming from political action committees. His campaign manager, state Sen. Breanne Davis, R-Russellville, has said donations came from all 75 counties in the state.
Shoffner asked each person in the room Monday to go out and find five people to talk to about her campaign and to ask each of them to make a donation. Then each of those people should also find five additional people to spread the word and give to her campaign, she said.
“We don’t want to get to November and wish we had done more, which is why I’m asking for your help,” Shoffner said. “We don’t have to outraise him, we simply have to outwork him. That’s not going to be hard — he doesn’t really go to work, and I’m a farmer — I can definitely outwork him. But we do have to bring in as much money as possible so that we can go on the air.”
Shoffner said this will be a shoe-leather campaign with her visiting as many communities and shaking as many hands as possible between now and the November election. But money will be necessary to effectively compete.
“This kind of feels like a fight now, as people may know,” Shoffner said. “If you’ve gotten certain text messages or seen certain ads, I’m really fighting. I am fighting on behalf of the state of Arkansas.”
Shoffner, a sixth-generation farmer from Newport, said her message about the damage being done to agriculture by President Donald Trump’s tariffs is resonating with people who had never previously voted in a Democratic primary. She shared the story of being at a friend’s campaign event Sunday in Waldenburg and talking with farmers who are facing similar dire situations as what forced her family farm to close.
Cotton posted on social media on March 4, the day after the primary election, that he had met that day with leaders of the Arkansas Farm Bureau to discuss agricultural interests and headwinds being faced by the industry.
“I’m honored to represent farmers across Arkansas and will keep fighting on their behalf,” Cotton wrote.
He has also backed the attacks on Iran by U.S. and Israeli forces, writing on X Tuesday, “I commend President Trump’s decision to mitigate the threat Iran has posted to the United States for 47 years.”
Shoffner said Monday she feels momentum heading into the general election.
“The numbers on primary night were very strong. We turned out more Democratic voters than we have in a long time and I’m really pleased with that,” Shoffner said. “I believe people are feeling the pain and I think that they believe they deserve representatives who will do better for them, who really represent them and I’m honored that they have put their faith in me in this race.”
Shoffner called Cotton a “resident of Virginia” who is out of touch with the challenges facing Arkansans. She said voters are tired of the rhetoric of the left and right and want a senator who will stand up for everyday Arkansans rather than corporate, political interests.
Shoffner is also challenging Cotton to participate in a debate with her. In his first reelection campaign for Senate in 2020, the Democratic Party did not field a candidate to challenge Cotton and the incumbent skipped a debate with Libertarian Party candidate Ricky Dale Harrington Jr. which was organized by Arkansas PBS. All other congressional incumbents and their opponents took part in that year’s debates.
Monday’s event was Shoffner’s second time to campaign in England. She had previously spoken to the group shortly before formally announcing her candidacy in July, “so we have come full circle,” she told its members.
Little Rock attorney Bob Edwards, who attended England High school and later served as president of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association, said he helped create the England Area Democrats in 2024 to fill a void in political activity there. Edwards said he’s encouraged by the excitement being generated by Shoffner’s campaign.
“I don’t think either party really understands farming,” he said. “Its been the backbone of this state’s economy since its inception. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat, we need somebody that understands that and Hallie understands that.”
This is the online home of news veteran Michael Hibblen. I've worked as a reporter, editor and manager for newspapers, radio and TV stations around the country, with this website telling the story of my career. Also featured on this site are outside interests I've researched, primarily about radio and railroads. The views expressed here are my own and might not reflect those of my employers. Today I work for Newsroom Ventures as an editor and reporter for its six newspapers.
Preserving the Rock Island Depot at Perry
Since 2017, I've been part of a group working to preserve the former Rock Island Depot at Perry, Arkansas. To keep it from being demolished, we raised money to move the depot to an adjacent lot, still alongside the tracks, which is now owned by the city. The building has since been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and our group has become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PRESERVATION OF THE DEPOT.
My Book
Released by Arcadia Publishing in 2017, Rock Island Railroad in Arkansas delves into the history of the railroad, which once had a huge footprint in Arkansas. The book features historic photos and tells the story of the Rock Island, which was shut down in March 1980. READ MORE ABOUT MY BOOK.
For 13 years, from May 2009 to December 2022, I worked for NPR station KUAR-FM 89.1 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. That included 10 years as News Director while continuing to anchor and report. You can read and hear reports from that time on Little Rock Public Radio's website.
