Back in the early days of the Mathews Journal, in 1913, a community correspondent sent in the news from his neighborhood, but said (poetically) that he was running out of supplies:
My pencil’s worn down to a shank,My ink bottle dry as a bone,My purse is as flat as a plank,And my stamped envelopes are all gone.
He meant: “If you want to get my news, please send supplies.” He also received a complimentary subscription ($1 a year) to the Journal.
Once his news arrived at the Journal, it was set by hand, letter by letter, into a page form along with news from other neighborhoods and whatever headlined stories the editor, more or less a one-man band, wrote for that week’s issue.
Hand-set type. Papers printed off one at a time on a flatbed press. No electricity: a gasoline engine powered the press.
News gathering and distribution has come a long way since those days, but the ambition remains the same: get the news, get it right, and get it out to the consumers.
Today, in a...
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