The story of the Arkansas Gazette ended on October 18, 1991, with paper's sale to its rival, the Arkansas Democrat . The story shows a typical transformation of an American newspaper from independent, local ownership to remote corporate control that illustrates what happened to many American newspapers in the generation following World War II. Wounded by the fiercest newspaper war in the United States, former publisher J. N. Heiskell's heirs sold the Gazette to the Gannett Corporation in 1986,