Print Over Time

In today’s world, with younger generations getting most of their news online or reading from ebooks, some might argue that the newsprint industry is a dying one. While sales and subscriptions may be declining, it is inarguable that newspapers, books and magazines had a lively past, and are not dying—just transitioning.

Regina says newsprint was important to her family. “My father was an editor for a small newspaper in Greenridge, Missouri called the Green Ridge Herald,” she says, a town that today has a population of 476. When she was about 4, the press was later bought out and absorbed by a surrounding city and changed its name. 

Location of Green Ridge, MO

“Small town newspapers were how news got out in those days. A lot of towns had two, even three publications that competed [with each other], and the best one stuck around.” Newspapers were delivered in the mornings by—you guessed it, paper boys—and daily publications were not printed in color until the 1970s. “The [black and white] made the images very dull,” she remembers, but those were still her favorite part. Along with photographs, comics drew attention from the younger crowd. Popular comic strips she remembers are Popeye, Peanuts, Archie and Superman.

Like newspapers, magazines featured large print and photographs—except they were in color long before newsprint. Glossy covers drew shoppers at newsstands and grocery stores, geared to an audience that didn’t have as much time to sit down and read a newspaper. “Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, the Reader’s Digest, Life” are some of the few she recalls her mother—and later herself—reading. “They told you how to dress, cook, and behave around men,” she says. “They were much more glamourous, and had less words on the front.”

 

Around Christmas, she remembers looking at the toy section the Sears Roebuck catalogue. In her youth, she remembers, she wasn’t as drawn to magazines, but rather comic books. “Girls read comic books too,” she says.  

As for books, she says they were her most favorite thing to read, spending hours with a book at a time. In her youth, her favorite series was Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie novels and other mystery novels. She remembers that the “fifties and sixties were a controversial time for books”—The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, On the Road, To Kill a Mockingbird were just a few titles released in that time she remembers “caused a stir.” Today, these books have been removed and placed on banned books lists and remain classics for their touchy themes. While he was not mentioned, Vonnegut especially played with themes deemed violent so his work was looked down upon. She got her books by saving her money, from the library, or borrowed from friends.

Today, Regina still likes to read books, magazines and newspapers in her free time, and mentions that she is excited to see how print has transformed over time.