Founded in 1819 by William E. Woodruff at Arkansas Post and later relocated to Little Rock, the Arkansas Gazette was for most of its history the oldest continuously published newspaper west of the Mississippi River. Known as "The Old Lady of the South," it earned two Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis.

After a prolonged circulation and advertising-price war with the Arkansas Democrat during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Gazette's assets were purchased on October 18, 1991 by the Democrat's owner, Walter E. Hussman Jr., who ceased publication of the Gazette and renamed his own paper the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The transaction ended 172 years of continuous publication and consolidated daily newspaper ownership in Arkansas.