It’s hot in Magnolia, and it’s dry. We have recorded six 100-degree-plus days this year. Our high yesterday was a relatively mild 96. Columbia County is under a heat advisory today and Friday. Most of Columbia County is under a severe drought and the entire western half of the state is under…

Published on this website today is an article we picked up from a fellow online publication, The Tyler Loop in Tyler, Texas. It details the most recent efforts to “recycle and rebuild” downtown Tyler. Tyler, like Magnolia, has its share of abandoned or disused hotels, gas stations, vacant lo…

A trash container has appeared in front of the SAU University Village location where Panda Express will be located. This means that work will soon start toward the opening of the restaurant. Bring on the orange chicken.

The sign in front of the former Larry’s Pizza says that Sam’s Southern Eatery & Seafood will open soon. The first Sam’s opened in Shreveport in 2008, and now has more than 50 locations in nine Southern states. About one-third of its entrees feature seafood of some description, while also…

We read with interest plans that the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission has to build a conservation education center at El Dorado’s South Arkansas Regional Airport. A 3,200-square-foot building is planned on 12 acres that will include a fishing pier, archery range, nature trail, aquarium an…

A consistent annoyance to us are those residents who suggest how other people should spend or invest their own money. We encourage these people to invest their own money in a business, combine with several others to do the same, or seek a loan to accomplish a desired goal. We know there’s pl…

Various interest groups have turned in three sets of petitions to the Arkansas Secretary of State, seeking to have their initiatives placed on the November general election ballot. The initiatives involve the expansion of casino gambling, term limits for legislators, and Arkansas’ minimum wa…

News broke over the weekend that the former executive director of the Rotary Club of Springdale, Courtney Palfreeman, has been charged with the theft of about $245,000 from the club over a period of many years. In line with Rotary tradition, a new slate of officers took over in July of last …

Many people posted complaints on our Facebook page to express annoyance about fireworks, especially about hearing them late into the evening of Wednesday, July 4. Magnolia city ordinance says that fireworks may be legally used in the city from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. from June 20 to July 10, …

The annual Sparks in the Park at East Side Park went well on Tuesday evening, just prior to the Fourth of July holiday. We enjoyed the Split Decision band – we’ll listen to hits by Earth, Wind & Fire anytime – and the fireworks show was good. We were also pleased to broadcast the firewor…

Shan and Steve Morgan held an open house on Sunday at the former Magnolia Insurance Agency on the north side of the square, which they converted into living space back in 2016. The 1,700-square-foot home on the square has recently come back up for lease. If you’re interested or just want to …

“The time for thoughts and prayers is over” is the message we personally delivered to several current and wannabe state legislators who attended last night’s Golden Triangle Economic Council annual meeting, held at the Story Hog Barn. We told each of them basically this: If it is going to ta…

Posted at the top of our news queue today is a notice promoting the upcoming meeting of the South Arkansas Heritage Museum. It is an “advertorial,” an announcement that the sponsor – in this case, the museum, paid to have magnoliareporter.com post in a prominent position on our website for t…

Southern Arkansas President Dr. Trey Berry has been hinting for a couple of months that a plan was in the works to acquire more student housing. But it was unclear whether new or existing apartment space was involved. Now we know. SAU has agreed to buy the Bluebird Hill Apartments for $1.3 m…

The countdown is on for the Emerson PurpleHull Pea Festival on Friday and Saturday. We are proud to sponsor the magnoliareporter.com/KZHE-FM Rotary Tiller Championship, which will be held at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Which means that we predict that the best chance for rain in the coming week is 3…

We enjoyed the Magnolia Arts Center’s production of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” on dress rehearsal night. There are three more performances tonight, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. It’s always a pleasure to see plays that bring together both local comedic adult actors and younger act…

Returning today as an advertiser is the Emerson PurpleHull Pea Festival. The festival takes place next weekend, June 29-30, in Emerson. We’re a proud sponsor of the magnoliareporter.com/KZHE-FM World Championship Rotary Tiller Race. That’s an event not to be missed. But neither is the peas a…

Stephens Country Store has returned to magnoliareporter.com as one of our advertising clients. The store on the square has a lot to offer in gifts, toys, gourmet foods and other items, but it has carved out one very special niche in Magnolia – swimming pool repairs and maintenance, chlorine …

Les Kent let us know that he was in the neighborhood on Monday night to corral honeybees from a nearby residence. Kent and his wife Valerie are members of the Stateline Beekeepers Association. The association has worked hard during the past few years to preserve bees, protect and educate the…

The City of Magnolia has sent a bushhog through the property off South Jackson Street that was recently donated to it by Belva Smith. It has opened up a view between South Jackson and South Calhoun. Mayor Parnell Vann said the city has no immediate plans for the property beyond keeping the b…

Please don't repost articles from chaos sites that deliberately create fiction and post it as news, spread lies as fact, or make outrageous claims without supporting material. Reposting information from these sites is irresponsible and to some degree even dangerous. If you see friends or rel…

We’ve heard within the last 24 hours from both Fred’s and II Brothers Italian Restaurant via Facebook. The air conditioning at the Fred’s store on West Main has been out for more than three weeks, and II Brothers didn’t reopen as promised after the Memorial Day weekend. II Brothers’ message …

We can’t provide you with a direct link for legal reasons, but we can tell you that the online journal, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education published an article on Monday by Aaron Brand titled, “Southwest Arkansas schools courting Hispanic students.” It detailed the efforts that two-year sch…

We occasionally receive requests from individuals, businesses and other institutions to delete from our databases information relating to them or to family members and friends. This includes news articles, press releases, photographs and videos posted by magnoliareporter.com on the website, …

We welcome today as a new advertiser Premier Urgent Care. Area residents have longed for an “urgent care” clinic that is open for extended hours, and also on weekends. It’s happened. Premier Urgent Care has opened in the shopping center next to Walmart at 50 Highway 79 North. It is open 8 a.…

Starting Monday, we asked the readers of the Magnolia Reporter page on Facebook the question, “Where was your first date in Magnolia?” The responses continue to pour in, and many are coming out of the Magnolia time machine with businesses that no longer exist, such as Tiger Harry’s, Charlie’…

Among disturbing social trends are obituaries in which surviving family members denigrate the deceased, or involve the deceased leaving instructions to survivors for the publication of obituaries containing certain verbiage directed against other family members, public figures or institution…

With the news that Kevin Barker plans to turn the former Warnock Furniture showroom on the east side of the square into a microbrewery, we had a little fun during the weekend by asking our Facebook readers to share memories of one of the building’s former occupants, Sterling’s. Sterling’s wa…

Returning as an advertiser on magnoliareporter.com is local musician B.J. Kyle, and B.J. Kyle Music. He will provide lessons this summer to students interested in piano, banjo, guitar, mandolin, ukulele and voice. People who want to take lessons may text Kyle at the telephone number on his a…

The sign on the door of II Brothers Italian Restaurant says that the business would be closed May 28-29 for Memorial Day. Wednesday and Thursday have passed and the restaurant remains closed. This has led to speculation that II Brothers won’t reopen. We put the question of whether II Brother…

We appreciate the readers who tipped us about the massive mail theft that has been inflicted upon Magnolia residents during the past year. We’re still receiving reports from readers at the Magnolia Reporter page on Facebook about the extent and the impact of this crime. We have contacted pos…

We already knew that the East Side Park swimming pool owned by the City of Magnolia has been closed. But word came over the weekend that the Magnolia Country Club has also closed its pool. The club issued this statement to its membership: “After reaching out to numerous professionals to addr…

A late “welcome back” to the Columbia County Assessor’s Office as an advertiser. Assessor Sandra Cawyer wants to remind everyone that their tax assessment deadline is Thursday, May 31. That’s this Thursday. The public may visit her office between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. at the Coun…

It’s always a bad sign when the smartphone starts chiming at 6:30 a.m. Usually that means a story is breaking. Wednesday, it meant two stories were breaking, which led to a third story. So we had more news out by mid-morning than we do most days. This gave us license to take what’s almost a …

We’re still learning about video, and who knows how this is going to turn out, but magnoliareporter.com does plan a live broadcast tonight from the Columbia County Courthouse as the election results are posted. We don’t know precisely when we’ll go live. We can’t get into the area where the …

From everything we could see, it was another well-oiled Magnolia Blossom Festival and World Championship Steak Cook-off. We salute the festival committee, volunteers, event organizers and teams who made it possible. There were new events, such as the beer tasting tent. There were special eve…

The Magnolia Blossom Festival has begun! We’re looking forward to two days of friends, food and fun. CLICK HERE to see our brief guide to the festival. It’s not fancy but we think the most important details are easy to find.

Even as we write this, teams are playing in the NCAA Division II Central Region baseball tournament at SAU. And, the SAU Lady Muleriders will play Minnesota-Duluth later today in a best-of-three series in a Division II Super Regional.

We have often considered pulling the plug on this website’s involvement with Facebook. At present, there are only a couple of reasons we don’t do so. But they’re good reasons. The first reason is that Facebook has incredible reach. More than a billion people. This makes it easy to track down…

With the success that both the Southern Arkansas University softball and baseball teams have had in recent years, this was bound to happen: Both teams hosting regional playoff events simultaneously and, as the calendar turns, on Magnolia Blossom Festival weekend. We remember the last time SA…

We enjoyed an evening of softball at SAU on Thursday as the Lady Muleriders advanced in the NCAA Division II softball regional with a big 9-1 win over defending national champion Minnesota State. Among things to which we pay attention are that the three other teams in Magnolia represent grea…

Premiere Urgent Care has posted on Facebook that its clinic at 50 Highway 79 North will open on June 1. It will be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. The clinic will be operated by Dr. Matt Barnett and Dr. Jason Franks. Danielle Ownes and Tiffany Hearnsberger h…

Don’t know how we missed the fact that there was no Miss Magnolia Pageant preliminary this year for the upcoming Miss Arkansas contest this summer. We are told that the most recent organizer of the pageant graduated from SAU recently, and that there simply wasn’t time to organize a 2018 page…

Southern Arkansas University welcomes softball teams from three other universities to Magnolia on Thursday through Saturday for the NCAA Division II Softball Central Region 2 Tournament. These four teams are among 64 squads vying for the national softball title. SAU hosts the tournament by v…

We’ve been experimenting with a daily video that takes a brief look at what’s on our website. We are not video journalists by training so we admit that the effort is rank amateurism. But we’re working on it, and we want to get better in both the amount and the production quality of news we r…

We welcome today the Shamekia Roy for Columbia County Collector campaign. Roy has been the deputy collector to Collector Cindy Walker and seeks the Republican Party nomination for the post. People who click on the ad will be redirected to the Roy campaign’s page on Facebook where they can le…

A downtown business operator has approached us with his concerns about public and employee parking around the square with the upcoming opening of Java Primo in the former Chambers law office on South Jefferson, just off the square. If Java Primo enjoys the success of its Arkadelphia and Hot …