The GateHouse Media-owned Arkansas News Bureau, based in North Little Rock, is no more after the company laid off its only remaining reporter last week.
Reporter John Lyon confirmed his departure from the office in a statement to Arkansas Online on Monday afternoon. The announcement was first reported by Arkansas Business.
Lyon said he received word of his layoff Friday, adding that he was told “GateHouse Media has decided not to have a state bureau in Arkansas anymore.”
The reporter, a native of Oklahoma City, had worked at the Arkansas News Bureau since 2006. Before that, Lyon worked at the Times Record in Fort Smith from 2000 to 2006 and at the Elk City Daily News in Elk City, Okla., from 1992 to 2000.
The Times Record, now under GateHouse’s umbrella, had been owned by Stephens Media at the time Lyon worked at the publication.
Attempts to reach a GateHouse representative for comment were not immediately successful.
The bureau had fed publications owned by GateHouse with news content throughout the state. The company owns several newspapers in Arkansas, including the Times Record, Pine Bluff Commercial, Siftings Herald in Arkadelphia, Stuttgart Daily Leader and Hope Star.
Before its closure, the bureau had once employed several journalists, including Robbie Neiswanger and John Brummett, both now of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Earlier this year, GateHouse said that it would combine seven of its newspapers in central Arkansas to form two countywide weeklies: the North Little Rock Times to cover Pulaski County and the Lonoke County Democrat. The move was said at the time to be an effort to help with financial sustainability.