Bruce Willingham, fifty-two years a newspaperman, owns and publishes the McCurtain Gazette, in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, a rolling sweep of timber and lakes that forms the southeastern corner of the state. McCurtain County is geographically larger than Rhode Island and less populous than the average Taylor Swift concert. Thirty-one thousand people live there; forty-four hundred buy the Gazette, which has been in print since 1905, before statehood. At that time, the paper was known as the Idabel Signal, referring to the county seat. An early masthead proclaimed “INDIAN TERRITORY, CHOCTAW NATION.”
Willingham bought the newspaper in 1988, with his wife, Gwen, who gave up a nursing career to become the Gazette’s accountant. They operate out of a storefront office in downtown Idabel, between a package-shipping business and a pawnshop. The staff parks out back, within sight of an old Frisco railway station, and enters through the “morgue,” where the bound archives are kept. Until recently, no one had reason to lock the door during the day.
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