The Southern Star, Alabama’s oldest family owned newspaper, under new owners

OZARK, Ala. (WTVY) - The Southern Star in Ozark was Alabama’s oldest family owned newspaper in the state, but the newspaper recently changed hands.

For 154 years, The Southern Star has been providing news to Ozark and Dale County each week. After being brought to his attention, new owner Pierre Little knew it was the right fit for his company in Calais, Maine.

“I really enjoy I guess the presence of the older publications and so in the readers minds it’s a venerable publication so that was my so that was my initial interest.” said Pierre Little - Publisher and President.

Little says he doesn’t plan to knock the Adam’s family out of their history. Joe Adams column Star Scribe’s Scribblings will continue to be apart of the publishing, a column that he has written for over 60 years.

“I’ve done that in several of my newspapers where we’ve had longtime employees, writers and reporters that have been with the publications they continue writing their column when I take them over and it’s important to the readers that we have a very easy transition and the columns that they like to read are still present there,” said Little.

But Little’s biggest mission, Is helping The Southern Star prosper. Bringing it into the new age with digital media.

“Our strategy on digital is to gather those people who are now being distracted with online news through Facebook the way our digital system works is that we provide links to our stories which link back to our website so those stories get pushed or shared on Facebook and then people can click on them, and it goes back to the website directly to read the stories,” said Little.

Little plans to offer a strictly digital subscription of The Southern Star for those that would like that over a paper copy. All current paper subscribers can go online to subscriber digitally as well.

The Southern Star will also be offering free subscriptions for military members and members of law enforcement and first responders.

To visit their new website you can go to ozarkal.news.

Copyright 2021 WTVY. All rights reserved.

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