You Can't Line a Trunk with HTML

300 years of newspapers in this country, give or take a few, and I get to try to answer the question “what’s the historic value of newspapers?”

Good grief.

Historically speaking, of course, newspapers were the wellspring of community and national unity for the centuries before tv, radio and the internet became commonplace. Common reading material lead to common knowledge and then to common opinion, and as such, newspapers really shaped the nation. Additionally, hard copy newspapers are today invaluable windows into history – How often do we hear of someone renovating his living room to find his walls stuffed with newspapers trumpeting Lincoln’s shocking 1864 upset or some other such historical episode? Forgotten insights are recovered; we are reminded of public opinion of the time, and history takes on new contexts. Nobody’s ever going to find a website tucked away in an attic telling them a hundred years from now how Americans felt about the dearth of port-o-johns at the inauguration.

Cheers!