One of the hardest lessons I learned as a graduate student was about newspapers. Small town newspapers provide a wealth of knowledge about community life and shared stories, sometimes providing the only existing source about events and relationships. The importance of these papers as sources to local historians cannot be underestimated. While other sources are often only glimpses of a fragmented past, newspapers appear on their surface to narrate in vivid detail the challenges and achievements of small towns and their citizens. Steeped in local lore and idiosyncratic vocabulary, these papers sometimes have a dialect all their own.
It's not surprising, then, that many community historians and archivists lament the demise of these papers over the last generation. Many small towns have lost their own papers, with some absorbed into larger metropolitan or regional papers and most disappearing altogether. Some archivists have wondered -- in scholarship and out load -- whether there will be another source that will replace local papers.
Small town newspapers are complicated (and often under-estimated) sources; when viewed as artifacts, a small town paper can be the heart of a complex story of power and interpersonal relationships in itself, regardless of the print lingering on its pages. Still, local newspapers must also be viewed with caution at first pass. Scholars involved in community studies must learn how to read papers as sources that often reify the past, justifying a shared memory that otherwise cannot be corroborated.
One of the papers I rely on in my research, the Glendora Press-Gleaner, has a convoluted, fractured history. I found myself spending more time piecing together this history than actually reading it as a source. Like other scholars of small town life, I discovered that local newspapers were less important as a record of the past -- of WHAT actually happened -- and far more as a snapshot of HOW that place functioned. Newspapers, I discovered, told me much more about what people were supposed to believe rather than what they actually believed.
The Press-Gleaner is an object lesson in this approach to small town papers. A locally owned publication, the Press-Gleaner focused mostly on life in town, with national and international stories. Though most of the people that might consider Glendora their home lived outside of the town's limits, the paper was only concerned with life in the city limits and as such, reflected an intensely narrow view of life in the community. In the 1920s, as the region's fortunes rose with the expansion of citrus culture and a growing non-white population of laborers in the San Gabriel Valley, the Press-Gleaner focused on town affairs, punctuated with warnings against "cosmopolitanism" threatening the borders of their so-called "home city." Glendora's business leaders, heavily invested in local real estate, used the paper as a cudgel to fight for whiteness with words in a manner parallel to numerous small towns throughout rural California. The Press-Gleaner was their paper, but when read closely, it also tells us about some of the needs, values, and anxieties of everyday townspeople and provides clues to their stories.
Some key questions to ask as you begin to look at a small town newspaper for the first time:
It's not surprising, then, that many community historians and archivists lament the demise of these papers over the last generation. Many small towns have lost their own papers, with some absorbed into larger metropolitan or regional papers and most disappearing altogether. Some archivists have wondered -- in scholarship and out load -- whether there will be another source that will replace local papers.
Small town newspapers are complicated (and often under-estimated) sources; when viewed as artifacts, a small town paper can be the heart of a complex story of power and interpersonal relationships in itself, regardless of the print lingering on its pages. Still, local newspapers must also be viewed with caution at first pass. Scholars involved in community studies must learn how to read papers as sources that often reify the past, justifying a shared memory that otherwise cannot be corroborated.
One of the papers I rely on in my research, the Glendora Press-Gleaner, has a convoluted, fractured history. I found myself spending more time piecing together this history than actually reading it as a source. Like other scholars of small town life, I discovered that local newspapers were less important as a record of the past -- of WHAT actually happened -- and far more as a snapshot of HOW that place functioned. Newspapers, I discovered, told me much more about what people were supposed to believe rather than what they actually believed.
The Press-Gleaner is an object lesson in this approach to small town papers. A locally owned publication, the Press-Gleaner focused mostly on life in town, with national and international stories. Though most of the people that might consider Glendora their home lived outside of the town's limits, the paper was only concerned with life in the city limits and as such, reflected an intensely narrow view of life in the community. In the 1920s, as the region's fortunes rose with the expansion of citrus culture and a growing non-white population of laborers in the San Gabriel Valley, the Press-Gleaner focused on town affairs, punctuated with warnings against "cosmopolitanism" threatening the borders of their so-called "home city." Glendora's business leaders, heavily invested in local real estate, used the paper as a cudgel to fight for whiteness with words in a manner parallel to numerous small towns throughout rural California. The Press-Gleaner was their paper, but when read closely, it also tells us about some of the needs, values, and anxieties of everyday townspeople and provides clues to their stories.
Some key questions to ask as you begin to look at a small town newspaper for the first time:
- What can you discover about the history of the paper? How long did it run? Who founded the paper (and what circumstances led to its founding)? To answer these questions, look for clues in the early issues of the paper as well as other regional publications (the image used above announcing the re-birth of the Glendora Gleaner was published in the Los Angeles Times)
- Who owns the paper -- or the printing press in town? What do you know about this person or their family?
- What is the circulation of the paper?
- How long was the paper in print?
- Does the paper have a political affiliation?
- Who wrote for the paper? What do you know about their individual pasts and relationships with the community?
- Did the paper rely on syndicated publications from other papers (regional or national)? What kinds of articles did they choose?
- What was the structure of a typical issue? How did it change over time?
- What kinds of stories were most common in the paper? What issues were of most concern to the publisher -- and to the readers?
- How did readers interface with the paper? Were letters to the editor published? What did they say?
- How were advertisements placed in the paper? What products or businesses were most common? Did advertisements changes over time? Are their any clues to the nature of local commerce from these ads?
- What in the newspaper seems odd or out of place when compared to collective memory of the past? Are their stories or individuals mentioned that are not part of local lore?
- How are typically marginalized populations represented in the paper, if at all? What clues do you find about their experiences?
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