NATIONAL NEWSPAPER WEEK
National Newspaper Week, beginning the first Sunday in October recognizes the service of newspapers and their employees across North America.
“…Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government,
I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
–Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America, 1787
Newspapers record current events and are the first rough draft of history. Even small-town weekly publications are essential. The information they print archives local events and everything in those pages is necessary to someone.
Did you know:
- Some of the earliest newspaper publishers had a second job as postmasters?
- Oldest continually published newspaper began in 1764, the Hartford Currant
- Before daily newspapers, printers published weeklies and monthlies. They became dailies in the 1790s.
- Sensationalized newspaper reporting is called “yellow journalism.”
- Newspapers reported biasedly and opinionatedly until about 1923. At that time, the American Society of Newspaper Editors adopted the primary rules of journalism: “news reports should be free of opinion or bias of any kind.”
HOW TO OBSERVE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER WEEK
Send a thank-you to the publisher, editor, reporters, and columnists. Write a Letter to the Editor on a local issue that matters to you. Purchase a subscription to show your community pride. Invite the local editor or publisher to speak at your service club or brown bag lunch.
Follow on social media with #NewspapersMatter or with #NationalNewspaperWeek
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER WEEK HISTORY
Newspaper Association Managers sponsor the week.
It began as an annual observance in 1940, building on California’s Newspaper Appreciation Week. An early proclamation declared “This love of freedom was brought to America by its settlers and instilled in the voice of its first newspaper, the Boston News Letter, published by John Campbell in 1704. The Freedom of the press in America did not go unchallenged and was not established permanently in the expression of popular rights until…1733.” The Coolidge Examiner, Coolidge Arizona, October 3, 1941.
Since 1940, Newspaper Association Managers has sponsored and supported National Newspaper Week, a week-long promotion of the newspaper industry in the United States. Much of the early emphasis focused on the dangers of the loss of a free press under expanding Nazi oppression in Europe.
“The American people should feel proud of their press, where we find accurate reporting. It is free and independent press not subject to the censorship of dictators.” Oct 8, 1940, Washington DC Evening Star.
