Choctaw Plaindealer
The Choctaw Plaindealer is a weekly newspaper published in Ackerman, Mississippi, the county seat of Choctaw County in the east-central part of the state. Published each Wednesday by Louisville Publishing, Inc., the paper carries the motto "Dedicated to the growth and welfare of Choctaw County" and describes itself as covering Choctaw County for over 120 years. Founded in 1887, it is the oldest newspaper in Choctaw County and, for much of its history, the county's only newspaper.
Ackerman is a small town, and the Plaindealer is correspondingly a classic county weekly: supervisors' proceedings, school news, church columns, obituaries, arrest and court news, high school sports and the social record of communities such as Weir and Chester fill its pages. Its office has long stood on North Louisville Street in Ackerman, a short distance from the courthouse square it reports on.
Founded in 1887
Library records held by Emory University date the Choctaw Plaindealer precisely: volume 1, number 1 appeared on August 26, 1887, published in Ackerman by Frank Townsend. WorldCat likewise lists the paper from 1887, with Frank Townsend and later Louisville Publishing, Inc. as its publishers. The paper's own "About us" material confirms the founding year: "The Choctaw Plaindealer was established in 1887."
The Plaindealer was not Ackerman's only early title — library listings note a related Ackerman Record — but it is the one that endured. By the time of its 130th anniversary era, the paper was being described in its own book publishing as the oldest newspaper in Choctaw County, "always a servant to the betterment of the community." Few Mississippi weeklies can document an unbroken run from the 1880s, and the Plaindealer's archive reflects it: Newspapers.com holds some 16,697 searchable pages of the paper spanning 1899–2026.
Ownership by Louisville Publishing
In its modern era the Plaindealer has been published by Louisville Publishing, Inc., the company based in nearby Louisville, in Winston County, that also publishes the Winston County Journal and the Webster Progress-Times. The three papers share staff functions across county lines: the Plaindealer's published management listings name Joseph C. McCain as publisher, with Louisville telephone numbers for classified and retail advertising and circulation shared with the sister papers, and its website listed alongside winstoncountyjournal.com and websterprogresstimes.com.
That shared structure is the economic reality of twenty-first-century weekly publishing in rural Mississippi. A reporter and office manager in Ackerman — Daniel Brunty held that combined role in the paper's 2015 listings — covers Choctaw County, while advertising, circulation and management are coordinated from Louisville. The model keeps a local office and a local paper in a county that might otherwise have lost both.
Ackerman and Choctaw County
Ackerman became the seat of Choctaw County and grew as a railroad and timber town in the red hills of east-central Mississippi. The county takes its name from the Choctaw people, and its communities — Ackerman, Weir, Chester and a constellation of rural churches and schools — form the Plaindealer's natural territory. The paper's pages have chronicled the county through the timber era, the world wars, desegregation, and the long rural population shifts of the late twentieth century.
The Plaindealer's own contribution to that record includes a notable act of local publishing: in 2017 it issued Choctaw County Service Members WWII, a 146-page book listing all the World War II soldiers and personnel from Choctaw County that the paper could locate. The project, published under the Plaindealer's name, is a clear example of a weekly newspaper acting as its county's historical memory.
Content and community columns
The Plaindealer's content follows the durable weekly formula, adapted to Choctaw County. News coverage centres on the board of supervisors, the town of Ackerman, Choctaw County schools and local law enforcement. Its "Issues and Ideas" page provides an open forum for readers, with letters limited to 500 words, required to be signed and accompanied by an address and phone number for verification. The paper also states a corrections policy, promising to print a correction of any error published in the newspaper or online.
Local history has been a recurring feature. The J.B. Cain Archives of Mississippi Methodism at Millsaps College preserve the research and working papers behind a 2005 weekly series in the Plaindealer on local church history, written by columnist C.J. Johnson, who was also project chair of the Choctaw County Historical and Genealogical Society. The series profiled twenty-three Methodist churches identified in June 2005, including congregations in Ackerman, Chester, Weir and the South Union campground — the kind of granular, place-by-place history that only a county weekly undertakes.
Digital presence
The Plaindealer moved online early for a small weekly: by 2006 it was billing itself as the "Only Newspaper in Choctaw County on the web," with classified advertising shared across a three-county network — the Winston County Journal and Shopper, the Choctaw Plaindealer and Shopper, and the Webster Progress-Times. That "Three County Classifieds" arrangement showed how the Louisville Publishing papers pooled their markets for advertisers while keeping separate editorial identities.
In the current digital landscape, directory listings describe Red Hills News as the regional platform serving Winston, Choctaw and Webster counties, formed from the area's historic titles including the Plaindealer, with coverage of community events, government and sports for the Ackerman and Eupora areas. The Plaindealer's own site, choctawplaindealer.com, continues to carry its identity and archive access.
The archive as county record
Because the Plaindealer has published since 1887, its files constitute one of the fullest written records of Choctaw County life. The Newspapers.com archive begins in 1899 and runs to the present, preserving birth, marriage and obituary announcements alongside a century of court news, school history and politics. For genealogists, the paper is a primary source: its church histories, veterans' projects and obituary columns are the raw material from which Choctaw County family and community histories are built.
NewsBank's America's News database also carried the paper's full text for a period spanning 2005 to 2017, extending its reach to library researchers well beyond Mississippi.
Place in Mississippi journalism
The Plaindealer belongs to the red-hills cluster of Mississippi weeklies — alongside the Winston County Journal in Louisville and the Webster Progress-Times in Eupora — that share ownership and production while serving separate counties. Louisville Publishing's later association with Emmerich Newspapers, noted in directory listings for the group, placed the Ackerman paper within one of Mississippi's significant independent newspaper companies while it kept its local office and name.
Its longevity is its distinction. Founded the same decade as many Mississippi weeklies that have since vanished, the Plaindealer still publishes weekly on Wednesdays from Ackerman, its slogan still committing it to the growth and welfare of Choctaw County. For a county of its size, that continuity — one paper, one county, since 1887 — is the story.
The paper's bibliographic record underlines its permanence. WorldCat and university library catalogues list the Choctaw Plaindealer as a weekly English-language newspaper published in Ackerman continuously from 1887, and Newspapers.com's archive for the title notes a paper history that includes the Ackerman Record among its related titles. Researchers can follow the Plaindealer from its nineteenth-century beginnings through its 2005–2017 full-text availability in NewsBank's America's News database to its current searchable archive — a chain of preservation that few Mississippi weeklies of its size can match, and one that makes the Plaindealer the first source for almost any question about Choctaw County's past.
The Plaindealer today
Today the Choctaw Plaindealer continues as Choctaw County's weekly newspaper, published on Wednesdays by Louisville Publishing, Inc. from North Louisville Street in Ackerman, with its archive searchable online and its coverage centred, as it has been since Frank Townsend's first issue in August 1887, on the people and institutions of Choctaw County.
