Kane Webb
Stories by Kane
Book dishes up insights on 10 state governorships
posted: 10/31/2010 5:19 a.m. Discuss
Good morning, class. Books off your desks. Time for a pop quiz. Stop groaning. If you did your reading, it’ll be easy. Ready? Here goes.
Meet the Mallets
posted: 09/12/2010 6 a.m. Comments 2
It’s less than a month before the Arkansas Razorbacks open the football season against something called Tennessee Tech, and the kitchen table in Jim and Debbie Mallett’s home here in Texarkana is crowded with preseason magazines. They all seem to share the same theme, or at least the same cover: a picture of Jim and Debbie’s only son, Razorback quarterback Ryan Mallett.
Larry Paul Arnn
posted: 04/18/2010 6:28 a.m. Discuss
What if you created a college that kept things, first things, simple — with an emphasis on the liberal arts of history, literature, languages, philosophy, economics, all taught using the Socratic method?
Best Books ’09 Chapter Two
posted: 01/03/2010 3:08 a.m. Comment 1
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It was the last book he read. I brought my paperback copy to the hospital, and he read it in a night.
Best Books ’09
posted: 12/20/2009 4:21 a.m. Discuss
Part 1 of 2 Have you ever seen anyone fall in love with a book? I mean actually seen it—as if you’re watching a movie and the two main destined-foreach-other characters finally connect ?
Worst Books '09
posted: 07/19/2009 4:24 a.m. Discuss
Bad books? I love 'em. Because the worst books produce the best reviews. Think about it: Can you remember a great book review about a great book? Neither can I. But let a talented reviewer get hold of some hardbound atrocity that has somehow oozed up from the literary tar pits and you're in for a treat.
COLUMNISTS Entirely personal
posted: 06/28/2009 2:24 a.m. Discuss
This is the sixth time I've tried to start this column. An editor I once knew would tell me that means I have nothing to say. Not this time. This time, I have too much to say.
In defense of sportswriting
posted: 05/17/2009 2:38 a.m. Discuss
On the back page of today's Perspective section, David Kinkade does a fine job of identifying a genre of commentary that's suddenly filling news pages everywhere: The Aging Journalist's Lament for Newspapers.
Ballpark blues
posted: 05/10/2009 5:54 a.m.
The television interview was set for the new Arkansas Studies Institute, that hybrid-actually, more like a tri-brid-structure at the corner of Clinton Avenue and Rock Street in Little Rock's hybrid River Market district. (Part beer halls, part libraries.)
Coffee with Bud
posted: 05/10/2009 5:44 a.m.
The phones here at the office have caller i.d., so when mine rang Tuesday afternoon, I saw the name "Bud Cummins."
Private schools: Keep out!
posted: 05/03/2009 2:19 a.m.
A plan to move the 21 private school members of the Arkansas Activities Association into their own championship bracket passed [at the district level].
'Fine little machines'
posted: 04/19/2009 3:02 a.m.
Wells Tower had this great idea for a story. He'd go to Florida, land a job at a carnival, submerse himself in the carnival culture, and write a piece that would dispel all those stereotypes about carnies and the creepy lives they live. It'd be positively George-Plimptonesque.
Players
posted: 04/19/2009 2:59 a.m.
With any luck (warning: delayed pun ahead) you'll be able to buy your lottery tickets this fall. Just in time for Christmas shopping! That is, if the new Lottery Commission can convince somebody to run the thing for a paltry 300-grand.
Re-entering Plucky Newport
posted: 04/12/2009 3:03 a.m.
"These were two calamities that I lived through and remember, but both times the little town came back stronger and better than before. After the fire, [a man] coined the phrase, 'Plucky Newport' .
Polspeak not heard here
posted: 04/12/2009 2:53 a.m.
The other day, I spent the afternoon with Penn, Wyatt, Sullivan and Aubrey. Including me, we had enough for a basketball team. Of course we'd have to play in the 3-year-old-and-under (plus a forty-something ) league.
COLUMNISTS: Housekeeping
posted: 04/05/2009 3:10 a.m.
I guess I should address this. Especially since most of the complaints/queries have come by snail mail, which says something about the demographics of our readers, I guess, anecdotal evidence of one more reason why newspapers are struggling. To wit, we're all gettin' old! And 'em young'uns have lit out for the internets.
Buy, sell, in brief
posted: 03/29/2009 2:25 a.m.
Keep it short, they say. Seven-hundred words, they say. Run another buy-and-sell, you say.
COLUMNISTS Back into the pool
posted: 03/15/2009 2:33 a.m.
I feel a bit like Ali coming out of retirement to fight Larry Holmes. Okay, more like the last guy on the bench called in when all the good players go down with injury.
Far from the front:
posted: 03/08/2009 1:32 a.m.
GREENBRIER, Arkansas He is buried in a cemetery here in this town of 3,042, located some 10 or 12 winding miles up U.S. 65 from Conway. He rests in Greenbrier as the son of Susie and Lewis, as a descendant of Arkansans, and as one of the fallen heroes of Dexter Filkins' full-metal book, The Forever War.
Shoptalk
posted: 03/08/2009 1:31 a.m.
There is too much going on in the world. As I write this, the day's paper is heavy with sober headlines.
Road eats
posted: 03/01/2009 2:02 a.m.
BALD KNOB-AMAGON-NEWPORT, Ark. - It's one of the best parts of the job, which, as of deadline, I apparently still have. An assignment takes me on the road in Arkansas, and, well, I get to go on the road in Arkansas. Translation: I get to eat on the road in Arkansas.
A builder looks at Main
posted: 02/26/2009 6:22 a.m.
Bob East called the other day. He's the builder of the new Warren Stephens project along Main Street. You know the one. It's the proposed building for state offices that'll replace a row of historic structures along the block that intersects with Capitol Avenue.
SUNDAY CONVERSATION TIM GRIFFIN A conservative unleashed
posted: 02/22/2009 2:26 a.m.
"On my command, unleash hell." It's a line from the movie Gladiator starring Russell Crowe, the opening scene, where the Roman army under the command of Crowe's General Maximus is about to engage-and ultimately slaughter-the barbarians.
The (in)Dispensable Man
posted: 02/22/2009 2:20 a.m.
"So he knew how to do even that, the hardest thing. Quit."-John Updike, from his "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." This is an assignment. Sort of. You see that fellow whose cat-ate-the-canary mug greets you on the front of this section like an invitation, a challenge or a threat? (Or all three?) He's the boss.
The Main debate
posted: 02/19/2009 2:20 a.m.
A friend passed along a clipping he'd dug out of the archives the other day in an effort to research what went wrong in Downtown Little Rock.
Obama and A-Rod
posted: 02/12/2009 5:16 a.m.
It's natural but way too easy to compare this president favorably to his predecessor when it comes to the art of, um, speakery, and certainly press conference-ifying or Q-and-A-ification.
A SUNDAY CONVERSATION BOB WOODWARD Are newspapers doomed?
posted: 02/08/2009 3:27 a.m.
I spied him first outside the Clinton School of Public Service, at the old Choctaw Station, in the passenger seat of an SUV, eating a hamburger.
Finding heaven in Slovak
posted: 02/08/2009 3:24 a.m.
SLOVAK, Ark. - There are some things a man blessed to be born and raised in Arkansas should do in his life. And one of them is to attend the annual oyster supper here at the little community of Slovak (pop. 100-ish ) in the southwest tip of Prairie County.
Parks for sale-cheap
posted: 02/05/2009 4:57 a.m.
You know what infuriates most about that committee of rubber stampers recommending that the city of Little Rock sell Ray Winder Field to UAMS for a piddlin' $1.1 million?
Who is Bill Halter?
posted: 02/01/2009 2:23 a.m.
The lieutenant governor of Arkansas entered the restaurant with his 2-year-old daughter in one arm, and his wife, carrying their 3-month-old baby girl, on the other.
COLUMNISTS Get back, on a roll
posted: 02/01/2009 2:19 a.m.
Ayear ago on this unofficial national holiday, Super Bowl Sunday, all was fat and happy. That is, if you didn't look too hard. The Dow was above 12,700 points. Hooray! But down some 1,400 points from four months earlier. Oh.
Lost among the ghosts
posted: 01/29/2009 5:10 a.m.
At the corner of Walnut and Main, just over the levee from the river in this Delta town, I spotted the ghost of Hodding Carter Jr.
View from Graveyard Hill
posted: 01/22/2009 4:28 a.m.
The other day some business took me to Helena. Excuse me, that'd be Helena-West Helena, as it's now officially known with its fancy hyphen and all.
Literacy index: Up
posted: 01/18/2009 3:02 a.m.
One day last week, a friend and co-worker passed along a story from the New York Times with a headline that seemed straight out of The Onion. (A difference between the two is that The Onion actually intends to be funny.) "Fiction Reading Increases for Adults" read the headline over a story by Motoko Rich.
Steady as she goes
posted: 01/15/2009 1:30 a.m.
Midway through Gov. Mike Beebe's second State of the State address to the Arkansas Legislature, just after the part where he asked the honorables to add another $50 million to his prized Quick Action Closing Fund for economic development and just before the part where he talked about scaling back but not eliminating the "onerous" grocery tax, it hit: Mike Beebe is the no-surprises governor.
COLUMNISTS He said what?
posted: 01/11/2009 3:08 a.m.
Every other year (for now) before the start of the regular session of the Arkansas legislature, the state press association holds a little dogand-pony show, inviting journalists for lunch and the governor and leading legislators in to take questions. Remarkably, the pols show up.
Buy, sell, hold, fold
posted: 01/08/2009 5:03 a.m.
Forget Wall Street (as if we could). Let's go off-off-off the Street and check the stock values on politicians, sports and even writers.
COLUMNISTS Pat Hays' Rockin' Eve
posted: 01/04/2009 2:56 a.m.
It felt like old times. Jake Sandlin, who covers North Little Rock like a colorful quilt for this newspaper, and I were at the same event, notepads in hand, waiting for the action.
Office pool 2009
posted: 01/01/2009 2:12 a.m.
Bill Safire, the former house conservative at The New York Times, used to write an annual guessgram called the office pool that predicted events big, small, important and insignificant in the coming year.
Back on Huck duty
posted: 12/25/2008 1:41 a.m.
Skip Rutherford, the dean, talent scout and master of ceremonies at the Clinton School of Public Service, said Monday that it was the coldest day in Arkansas in two years.
Stranger than fiction
posted: 12/21/2008 2:59 a.m.
Directions to Charlaine and Hal Schulz's place in this southern Arkansas town are highlighted by a left turn on to a county road just past the John Deere dealership. Last house on the right, behind the pond. Watch out for the dogs. They're yippers, though, not biters.
COLUMNISTS 'Tis a mystery
posted: 12/21/2008 2:50 a.m.
If you weren't the parent of a little one, you might avoid Clement Clarke Moore's Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas-better known as The Night Before Christmas-like a last-minute trip to the mall. But you are.
Memo from the chair
posted: 12/18/2008 4:47 a.m.
Just when you thought this Change election was over, here comes a real stunner. Apparently, I was elected chairman of the state's Republican Party.
Boooooooooo!
posted: 12/11/2008 1:47 a.m.
My friend and co-worker on the Editorial page, David Barham, has a great saying. Well, he has lots of great sayings. He's the only person I know who is both a Cubs fan and a Saints fan.
No to Yes Men
posted: 12/07/2008 2:40 a.m.
"He gives me no assistance," Confucius said of one student. "There is nothing that I say in which he does not delight." Today's quiz: Guess who's quoted. Below are two comments from two presidents-elect. See if you can guess who said what. Here's a big hint: One speaker is Barack Obama. The other is Abraham Lincoln.
Paving paradise
posted: 12/04/2008 2:11 a.m.
If you're out and about in Little Rock over the next few days, drive by Ray Winder Field and say goodbye. For good this time.
Best books of 2008
posted: 11/30/2008 2:39 a.m.
Since we've been doing the annual, year-end Best Books list, I've had readers ask, "Why don't you run the list in time for holiday shopping?" To steal a line from Mark Twain, who's all over Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and apparently wrote some books too, I am gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I do. I say I don't know.
COLUMNISTS A last review (or four)
posted: 11/30/2008 2:31 a.m.
Once upon a more literate time, there was a magazine called Sports Illustrated.
