Showing posts with label Newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newspapers. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Wednesday, March 18, 1914. "Among the things that Wyoming may be thankful is that it is not on the borderland of barbarous Mexico". Enduring jingoism.

British Wilson, border news?

Wilson was in fact an anglophile, but his government certainly wasn't dominated by the British.

And Mexico barbarous?

Some old headlines are oddly contemporary, as are some jingoistic views, we have to say.  This almost sounds like a Trump rally, as over the weekend he declared that some migrants aren't human.


Barbarous?

Is the cigarette ad a football helmet, or a pilot's helmet?


And the brown bottle thing is correct:


The Boomerang was less dramatic, but it did have an interesting item on pipe smoking at a St. Patrick's Day party.



Sunday, March 17, 2024

Wednesday, March 17, 1909. John Redmond appeals to the readers of the Rocky Mountain News.

 


Colorado had a substantial Irish  and Irish American population, both of which were represented by my father's grandparents, who at that time lived in Victor, near Leadville.  Redmond was a major Irish figure who was working diligently towards Irish self rule, something that would come flying apart due to World War One.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, March 16, 1909. A serious Congress.

Thursday, November 2, 2023

A headline you don't expect to see.

This was at one time very common:

 Last operating prison ship plans to close in New York

I didn't realize it happened at all anymore, and it sounds like it was intended to be a temporary measure here.

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Friday, September 28, 1923. The terrible news.


The news of the prior day was in the paper, much of it horrific locally.

Abyssinia, known better as Ethiopia, was admitted to the League of Nations.

The Giants took the National League pennant, beating the Brooklyn Robins 3 to 0.

Monday, September 18, 2023

Tuesday, September 18, 1923. Berkeley Fire, Upset Oklahoma Legislature.


Those items were the big news.

More locally, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission decided there would be a sage chicken season that year, but it would start in October, rather than Septeber as it now does.  And the first deer of deer season was taken.

Saturday, September 16, 2023

Sunday, September 16, 1923. The Amakasu Incident.

Prominent anarchists, Sakae Ōsugi and Noe Itō, his wife and Sakae's 6-year-old nephew Munekazu Tachibana, were beaten to death by the Kenpeitai, under the command of Masahiko Amakasu. The bodies were then thrown into a well in what would become the Amakasu Incident.

The soldiers responsible were court-martialed, with their defense being impromptu national defense.  The convicted defendants received relatively light sentences.

Oklahoma was clamping down on the KKK.



 

Friday, July 28, 2023

Saturday, July 28, 1923. President Harding falls ill.

President Harding cancelled visits to Oregon and Yosemite National Park as he was ill with what was believed to be ptomaine poisoning.  He remained in bed in a special locomotive car.  

Secretary of the Interior Herbert Work did address a crowed at Grants Pass, Oregon, stating:

It comes about that during our last day at sea many of us were attacked by a temporary indisposition, not due to seasickness but to food put up in a can. I will not say what the item of food was, for thereby I might depress the value of the canned product.


The Tribune noted that Harding was on board the train, but as this was likely a morning edition, it didn't report his illness.  This was not the case everywhere.



Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Wednesday, June 20, 1923. Leaving on the Voyage of Understanding.

President Harding left the White House, for the last time in his life, to begin his whistle-stop tour of the West. The trip was billed a "Voyage of Understanding" and was even intended to have a detour to Alaska.

The President also relinquished control of his newspaper, The Marion Star.  The paper still exists.

Automatic weapons, one of the things that made the Roaring Twenties roar, were making their appearance.


Sunday, June 11, 2023

Newsprint finis. The Casper Star Tribune.

With a history dating to 1891 with the weekly Natrona Tribune, published by the Republican Publishing Co., but with a name, reflecting mergers and a somewhat complicated history, dating to 1961, the Casper Star Tribune has ceased printing a Sunday edition.

Volume VII of the Natrona Tribune, the first year of its publication.

Today's edition was the last print Sunday tribune.

The Trib has tried to put a happy face on it, but it's not a happy story.  Clearly the paper is in economic trouble and part of that is online competitors, of which Wyoming has at least three substantial ones at the present time.  It already quit issuing print papers on Mondays, and now it will only issue two print papers per week, and mail them to subscribers from Scotsbluff.

Mail?

Yeah.  That's useful.  Having said that, the two print copies we got per week didn't arrive super quickly.  I'd usually read the electronic edition before that.

A sad end to an era nonetheless.

I prefer the print edition.  Maybe that's just me, but I like to be able to thumb through the paper, and frankly I pick up more content reading it that way.

Well, no more.  I'm not going to continue having a print subscription for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which is now the option, had get them a week later when the mail gets here for them.

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Sunday, May 23, 1943. Tragedy at the Kielce Cemetery.

The heaviest air raid of the war to date took place, with the RAF raiding Dortmund, breaking a record it had set as recently as May 12 in a raid on Duisburg.


The Luftwaffe raided Bournemouth, Hampshire with FW190s.

German police killed 45 Jewish children in the Kielce cemetery.  They had been the survivors of their parent's prior murder and aged from 15 months to 15 years old.

France-Amérique, a pro Free French English language newspaper, started publication in New York.  It's still in print.

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

The death throws of the newspapers.


Back when I was in high school, I briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a journalist.

I was never very serious about it, it was only one of the possibilities I was considering.  In junior high and my first year or so of high school, I was fairly certain that I'd pursue a career as an Army officer, but already by that time that desire was wearing off. I liked writing and still do, so it seemed like a possibility.  I also liked photography, and still do, and it seemed like a career where you could combine both, although in that era press photographers were usually just that, photographers.  

I took my high school's journalism class as a result and was on the school newspaper.  Doing that, I shot hundreds of photographs of our high school athletes, as well as some really interesting events.  I did learn how to write in the journalist's style, which involves summarizing the story in the first paragraph figuring that some people will read no more than that, summarizing it again in the last paragraph, and filling in the story in between.  Good news stories still read that way, although I've noticed in recent years that is observed less and less.

During that year or so I had the occasion to tour the local paper, and the class had a senior, a young woman, who actually already worked there as a reporter.

That paper was no small affair.  The paper was a regional one, as well as the city paper, and it's building just off of downtown, still there was very large.  That large structure, with a massive open news floor and a big printing room, was at least the fourth locality it had occupied, outgrowing the prior three.  It would outgrow that one was well and build an absolutely massive structure just outside of town.

Last year, it sold it.

Now, the paper is headquartered in what was once a bar/restaurant downtown.  Much, much smaller.  It doesn't have presses anymore, it prints the paper in another state.  Far from having a large staff of reporters with dedicated beats, it's down to one or two writers who are always "cubs", just starting out.  It doesn't print newspapers at all on two days a week, right now, but relies on an electronic edition that mimics the appearance of a newspaper on your computer.

You can't pick up and thumb through a pdf.

This past week, it announced that it was going to quit printing a Sunday edition and quit physical home delivery for the three issues per week it will still print. Those will be mailed from the printing location in another state.

It's dying.

It's not surprising really, but it is sad.

At one time, it was a real force to be reckoned with, and people frankly feared it.  Everyone subscribed to it.  I know one family that sued it for liable due to what they regarded as inaccurate reporting on them.

Newspapers reformed themselves after the introduction of radio.  That's something that tends not to be very well known about them.  Before radio, many newspapers tended to be some species of scandal rag and they were usually heavily partisan in their reporting.  You can think of them, basically, the way people think of Fox News today.  As radio cut into their readership, papers consolidated and adopted a new ethic that they reported objectively.

They frankly never really achieved full objectivity, as that may not be possible.  But they did strive for it.  The introduction of television reinforced this.  Newspapers became the place where you could, hopefully, get complete objective news and, hopefully, in depth news on various topics.  Even smaller newspapers had dedicated reporters per topic, larger ones very much so.  The local paper had local reporters that reported per topic assignment.  A big paper, like the Rocky Mountain News, had very specified reporters.  The Rocky Mountain News, for instance, had a religion reporter whose beat was just that topic.  A surprising number of local papers sent reporters to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War just to report on the war.

That's all long past.  For quite some time, reporters have become generalists by default, and as a rule, they can't be expected to have an in-depth understanding of any one topic. For that reason, they are frequently inaccurate, even on a national level.  Just today, for example, I read a national story which repeatedly referred to Communion Hosts as "wafers". That's not the right term.  Reporters on crime blindly accept the "mass shooting" and "high powered rifle" lines without having any idea what they mean.  Print reporters repeat in some instances, depending upon individual reporters, hearsay as fact, in part because they likely don't have the time to really investigate everything personally. 

Because we now get green reporters, the obvious fact that the local paper is dying is all the sadder.  At one time green reporters could at least hope to move up the ranks in their local papers, maybe becoming editors or columnists if they stayed there, or they could move on, as they often did, to larger papers.  They still move on, but papers everywhere are dying.  Ironically, the only papers that still do fairly well are the genuine small town papers in small towns. That's good, but that can't be a career boosting job for those who enter it.  

And with the death of the paper the objectivity that they brought in, back in their golden era, which I'd place from the 1930s through 1990 or so, is dying with them.  People are going to electronic news, which so far hasn't shown that same dedication, although recently some online start-ups actually do.  Television news has become hopelessly shallow, fully dedicated to the "if it bleeds it leads" type of thinking, or fully partisan, telling people what they want to hear.  Really good reporting, and not all of it was really good, was pretty informative, which raised the level of the national intellect.  People might have hated reporters, and they often did, but they read what was being reported about Richard Nixon and Watergate or what was revealed in the Pentagon Papers and had a better understanding of it in spite of themselves.  That helped result in Republicans themselves operating to bring Richard Nixon down and society at large bringing an end to the Vietnam War.

Now, in contrast, we have electronic propaganda organs on the net that feed people exactly what they want to hear, and that often is the same thing that comes out of the back end of a cow.

Not overnight, of course. This has been going on for decades, and indeed in some ways it started with the first radio broadcasts.  But radio was easier to adjust to.  The internet, not so much.

The death of a career, an institution, and unfortunately, also our wider understanding.

Sic transit.

Monday, February 20, 2023

Tuesday, February 20, 1923. A 66 hour day.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 201923  The Legislature experienced a 66 hour "day" in a questionable legislature trick designed to keep the clock from winding up on the session. This trick has been repeated since then, but this one was the record.




Friday, February 3, 2023

Saturday, February 3, 1923. French Guns, Legislative Hijinks, Kamchatka Earthquake


The Saturday Evening Post was out, as it was of course a Saturday, with a Rockwell.  This one is apparently entitled "Grandpa's Little Ballerina".

The Country Gentleman went with a mid winter fox and its prey.

A magnitude 8.3+ earthquake struck Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula causing a twenty-five foot tsunami.  Twelve people were killed by seven resulting waves in Maui.

The Soviet Union approved plans to create a civil aviation authority for passenger airlines, leading to the world's most dangerous major airline, Aeroflot.

French guns and legislative shenanigans were in the news.


 

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Friday, January 12, 1923. Fallout from intervention.

British newspapers criticized the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, which had started the day prior. The U.S. declined to act on a German protest of the matter, noting that it had done all it could do, and that doing more would entail "more trouble" than the US was prepared to take on.

Italy's Grand Council of Fascism was formed.

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Sunday, December 31, 1922. New Year's Eve.

It was New Year's Eve, 1922.

That meant a lot of parties.  Parties occurring during Prohibition.  A fair number of them were dry, but a fair number were not.

French Prime Minister Raymond Poincare rejected German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno's proposal for a non-aggression pact with Germany, which would have replaced French troops in the Rhineland with an international disinterested force.

Frankly, were I Poincare, I would have rejected it also.  What international force, following the Great War, would have even qualified as disinterested?

We mentioned Cuno here the other day, he was an economist.  Of some interest, he was born in 1876 and would die in 1933.  Poincare was born in 1860, and would outlive him, dying in 1934.

The Nine Power Treaty went into effect.  We've run the text of the treaty, signed by the U.S. France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and China previously.

United States Supreme Court Justice Mahlon Pitney retired following his having suffered a stroke.

Justice Pitney.

Pitney was conservative, but also a libertarian, and has received praise in the modern era for being consistently libertarian.  He hailed from New Jersey, where his family had been located since colonial times, and only served for ten years before his stroke idled him.  He died in 1924 at age 66.

The Casper Daily Tribune had a cartoon on the cover regarding the Hays of the Hays Production Code, which we just discussed.


Friday, December 9, 2022

New York Times staff walks out.


They're on a 24-hour walk out, complaining that the Times isn't negotiating in good faith with its staff.

It'll be interesting to see how this goes.  Newspapers are in real trouble, and perhaps not too surprisingly this has expressed itself with discontented staff in recent years, which interestingly for a group that's fairly liberal as a rule, uses the term "guild" for its unions.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Thursday, December 7, 1922. Coal, Boats, and Killings.

 


The Parliament of Northern Ireland voted unanimously to remain in the United Kingdom.  The Army of the Irish Free State severs communications with units based in Northern Ireland. Irish Parliamentarians and former members of the IRA Sean Hales of Cork and Padraig O'Maile of Mayo emerged from lunch at a hotel on Ormonde Quay in Dublin and were shot in revenge for the execution of IRA members earlier that week.  Hales was killed and O'Maile severely wounded.

The Northern Irish Parliament would govern Ulster on a home rule basis until 1972, when it was suspended due to its inability to address The Troubles.

The President's yacht was hit.


The public in Wyoming was apparently following the sensational trial of the Governor of Missippii and the results of a murder trail in Casper where the convicted assailant was a woman.


Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Monday, November 2, 1942. Stars and Stripes reborn.

Stars and Stripes, which had its birth as an Army newspaper during World War One, was reborn.

US made 105mm Self Propelled gun in British service, November 2, 1942.

Phase Four of the Second Battle of El Alamein, Operation Supercharge, commenced.  Rommel, back in command of the Afrika Korps, cabeled Hitler, stating:

The army's strength was so exhausted after its ten days of battle that it was not now capable of offering any effective opposition to the enemy's next break-through attempt ... With our great shortage of vehicles an orderly withdrawal of the non-motorised forces appeared impossible ... In these circumstances we had to reckon, at the least, with the gradual destruction of the army.

Hitler replied:

It is with trusting confidence in your leadership and the courage of the German-Italian troops under your command that the German people and I are following the heroic struggle in Egypt. In the situation which you find yourself there can be no other thought but to stand fast, yield not a yard of ground and throw every gun and every man into the battle. Considerable air force reinforcements are being sent to C.-in-C South. The Duce and the Comando Supremo are also making the utmost efforts to send you the means to continue the fight. Your enemy, despite his superiority, must also be at the end of his strength. It would not be the first time in history that a strong will has triumphed over the bigger battalions. As to your troops, you can show them no other road than that to victory or death. Adolf Hitler.

The Australians captured Kokoda.

The BBC began French language broadcasts to Quebec.