I have been sorting through all the files and drawers in the office I work from that used to be where former editor Rosemary Otzman sat.
There are old papers, old agendas from school board and city council meetings, and all the various forms and documents you’d expect.
But Rosemary also appeared to be deeply interested in newspaper history in our area, and I wanted to share some of the artifacts I found.
The first one I think is interesting is the Enterprise-Roman from 1946. It’s one of those huge old papers that inspired the term “broadsheet.” The front page is crammed with news story and only features a skinny one-column photo. And there are classified ads on the front page, an interesting choice!
The fact that it was published just after the end of World War II is evident in the piece on victory gardens and blood donations as well as the illustration of U.S. War Bonds.
Additionally, there’s an article on the front page about Belleville, Romulus, and New Boston agreeing to stay on “war time,” an earlier version of Daylight Savings Time, even though the Michigan Legislature approved a time change.
I found this issue to be absolutely fascinating, but the 1955 issue was also a stunner. For its 50th anniversary, the paper re-printed the front page from its very first issue in 1905, with the current 1955 “front” page printed on page 3. Instead.
In history a little bit closer to current times, I also found the very last edition of The View newspaper, published in April of 2014.
That was a bittersweet find since my first professional full-time job was as a reporter and then later editor of The view, from 1999-2004.
The issue has a “goodbye, this is the last issue” notice on the front page, and inside, reporter Jerry LaVaute says his goodbyes as well. He notes that he had a “10-year relationship” with the View. That started in 2004 when I hired him as a freelancer and he went on to become a reporter and regular columnist for the paper until it ceased publication.
While I found Rosemary’s stash of old papers to be fascinating and surprising, what wasn’t surprising was her fascination with papers of all kinds, not just the Independent.
I’ve been fascinated by newspapers my whole life as well. I often say my career started at the Escanaba Area High School when I was on my newspaper as a reporter my junior year and then editor of The Escanaban my senior year.
But it really goes back earlier than that. I wrote a “neighborhood newspaper” that was just a 4- or 6-page newsletter about neighborhood gossip, local Vacation Bible School offerings, and things of that sort. One year, my friend Chris joined me and helped create a cartoon page for the paper as well.
My dad worked at Escanaba City Hall and would use an old mimeograph machine (who remembers those?!) to run copies of my paper that I sold for 5 cents each.
In college, I got the Sunday edition of the local paper and subscribed to Newsweek.
When I worked at The View, we got a subscription to the Ann Arbor News, and I read it cover-to-cover (except the sports page, which I’m pretty indifferent to) every day for the five and a half years I worked there.
After spending the last 21 years writing primarily for online news media and very little for print, I’m really excited to be back to publishing in print, though of course we’re adapting to the times by putting some of our content online as well.
It seems like our readers really love the newspaper, too, from how it’s been flying off the newsstand everywhere we deliver. Thanks for reading.
(And, by the way, if anyone would like to inspect these old newspapers, feel free to stop by my office to look them over!)