Month: March 2012

“Printer’s devil” was the name given to an apprentice in a newspaper’s print room. Tasks ranged from preparing the ink, paper and type for the presses, to cleaning the machines, and running any other errands delegated by the printer. Many printer’s devils worked their way up to become master printers; others went even further and became editors or publishers. Former printer’s devils here in Tennessee include Adolph Ochs and William Rule.

“Printer’s Devil” is also the title of an excellent Twilight Zone episode (starring Burgess Meredith) set in a small town newspaper office.

In Tuesday’s post, I mentioned that the latest Tennessee batch to be included in Chronicling America was named homer. NDNP guidelines require each batch to be identified with a unique name. Awardees are given free rein to name them, so usually have some fun with it. You can check out other awardees’ batch names here in Chronicling America (click on “batches”).

Here’s a list of batch names for Tennessee. See if you can guess what we’ve named them after. There are a few that will probably give it away …

archie, bonnielou, chet, dolly, elvis, furry, grady, homer, isaac, jethro, kitty, luke, monroe

If you still haven’t guessed it, here are some visual clues:

Answer: They’re all Tennessee musicians.

This eye-catching new project from the New York Times covers a more recent time period than the newspapers we’re digitizing for Chronicling America, but is well worth a look for anyone interested in newspaper history; particularly photography.

The paper plans to publish several photographs online each week from its vast archive (“morgue”). To give you an idea of just how vast the archive is, the website states, “If we posted 10 new archival pictures every weekday on Tumblr, just from our print collection, we wouldn’t have the whole thing online until the year 3935.”

Perhaps even more intriguing than the photographs themselves, is the information written and printed on the reverse of each print. This information provides an invaluable insight into the editing and publishing process.

 

Tennessee’s 8th batch of digitized historical newspapers – batch homer – was added to Chronicling America over the weekend, bringing our state’s total to 66,743 pages. The latest titles to appear are: the Athens Post, the Clarksville Chronicle, the Columbia Herald, and the Fayetteville Observer.

This copy of the Athens Post appears to have belonged to Isaac T. Lenoir, local politician and founder of the nearby town of Sweetwater, Tenn. At the time of this newspaper, Sweetwater had only recently been established and was not incorporated until seven years later.