Clyde E. Palmer

Clyde Eber Palmer (August 24, 1876 – July 4, 1957) was the owner of a chain of newspapers and radio stations and a television outlet covering southwestern Arkansas and part of northeastern Texas during the early to middle 20th century. He operated his media conglomerate from Texarkana, Texas.

Palmer was born to Mr. and Mrs. Eber Palmer in Spirit Lake, the seat of government of Dickinson County in northwestern Iowa near the Minnesota border. He began his journalism career in 1894, at the age of eighteen, as a stenographer at the then Texarkana Gazette and News.

In 1909, Palmer and his second wife, Bettie (1889-1974), were on their honeymoon and traveling by railway from Fort Worth to Florida. They stopped in Texarkana and decided to stay a few days in Palmer's former city of residence. Before they resumed their trip, Palmer purchased for $900 the Texarkana Courier, one of several newspapers then in existence in the Texas-Arkansas border city.

Over the years, Palmer consolidated the rival papers into the Texarkana Gazette, his personal favorite of all the newspapers that he would own or co-own. An ambitious businessman, Palmer thereafter acquired the News and Times, since the News-Times in El Dorado, the Hot Springs New Era and Sentinel Record, and The Camden News in Camden in Ouachita County. He became co-publisher of the Hope Star in Hope in Hempstead County, and the Magnolia Banner-News in Columbia County. Palmer also had an interest in newspapers in Stephens in southern Ouachita County, Stuttgart in Arkansas County, and Russellville in Pope County.

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