By Bill Spiegel, Byline Editor
“Mrs Will Spiegel entertained with a party in the primary room Monday afternoon, February 4, from two-thirty until four, in honor of her little daughter, Ann Elizabeth, who was celebrating her sixth birthday. A white birthday cake with pink and white frosting and six glowing pink and white candles as the center of attraction. It was served to each guest, besides Eskimo Pies and popcorn balls. A grab box was placed in front of the room. Each one grabbed a favor when opening it they found paper caps, metal toys, which were hung around their necks, and strips of paper that would pop when they were pulled. This caused much excitement. Various games were played.”
The preceding paragraph is from a February 1929 edition of the Randall Rural Record, the student-led newspaper from what was then the Randall (Kansas) Rural High School. In the last few weeks, I’ve been sorting through some new-to-me family history, socked away in boxes and envelopes that have taken up space in storage.
It was the first time I’d ever seen this newspaper, still intact after all these years. I recognized names of people who were old when I was a kid: Gerald Cash, the Sunday School teacher whom I admired; Maxine Applebee Anderson, who was my next-door neighbor when I was editor of Kansas Farmer magazine and lived in the tiny town of Randall.
And the piece about Mrs Will Spiegel, my grandmother, whom I never knew. She was the town doctor (Another blurb in the same newspaper said the chemistry class went to her office in downtown Randall to look at slides under her microscope). That vivid description of the sixth birthday of her firstborn daughter, Ann Elizabeth, is so descriptive, so vivid – I feel like I was at her birthday party.
Print journalism has taken a beating the last month. First, the announcement in January that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, after 240 years in print, would cease operations, effective May 3. Earlier this month, the Washington Post laid off some 300 journalists, including its entire sports department and – shockingly for a newspaper in our nation’s capital – several foreign bureaus.
I get it. Journalism, specifically print journalism, is a tough business. The Post-Gazette is said to have lost $350 million over the last two decades. The Post didn’t specify financial reasons, but a statement from the newspaper indicated decreasing ad revenue, declining subscriptions, and a drop in web traffic are to blame.
As a journalist who grew up consuming print, these developments sadden me. I’m clearly not objective in my opinion that print journalism is a unique and necessary component to lifelong learning, staying abreast of current local, national and international news, and heck – even entertainment. Print also captures a snapshot in time, one that would otherwise be lost to history. The lead story in this student newspaper was that of the county-wide boys and girls basketball tournament to be held in Randall. Eight schools were expected to compete.
Tucked in between the front page headlines was this tidbit:
“‘Beware of scarlet fever’ is the motto of Randall High School students. Scarlet fever is in neighboring towns and surrounding territories. All students have been urged to be careful about communities where the fever is getting a foothold in order to keep it out of the Randall schools.”
I can imagine the fear running rampant in Randall during this public health crisis. Antibiotic treatments were not widely available; quarantine was the most logical way to stem the spread of disease.
Reading a newspaper or magazine takes commitment and patience. Digital’s power to tell stories through print, photos, video and audio is engaging, but also distracting. Research from Switzerland shows that the average attention span for online news is 47 seconds, down from 2 minutes in 2004.
And yet, that ability to measure data is a major reason why digital works. Advertisers, marketers, and heck, even publishers, want to know which stories/videos/online features most engage consumers.
I’ll argue print has staying power that digital media does not. A 2021 article from Columbia Journalism Review shows “the fragility of the web” means…lost reference materials, negative SEO impacts and malicious hijacking of valuable outlinks are adverse effects of a broken URL.” Linkrot, the CJR calls it, is common. A study the outfit did with the New York Times indicated 72% of “deep links,” or a path to a specific page, were rotted.
Digital was supposed to be permanent…yet how many of us can link to the first articles we wrote that appeared on the Internet?
Print journalism may be dying as a business model, but its impact on history is immeasurable. None of those students could have imagined that 97 years later, someone would stumble upon their work, but here it sits on my office desk.
For those of us in ag communications, this matters. We cover markets, policy and news. But we also document rural America. Stories about Master Farmers, organization leaders, and early adopters of technology are living history. Those of us in ag communications are uniquely positioned to tell those stories.
I get it. Print’s commercial allure is fading, and it’s not coming back. The high cost of paper and an ever-fragile and unreliable postal system don’t help.
But man, there is something wholesome about print journalism. People frame magazine covers. They clip newspaper articles and pictures to put in scrapbooks. Family history is passed through generations via the local news.
As I sort through these delicate pages, each clipping adds layers to my own family’s colorful history, including a little insight into little Ann Elizabeth Spiegel, who would have been my aunt. I never knew her. She died in October 1929, eight months after her birthday party…from scarlet fever.
-Spiegel writes for JB Spiegel Inc.