In anticipation of the United States’ 250th birthday this July 4th, Editor & Publisher asked our readers from around the country to share with us their plans for marking the occasion. They wrote to us from newsrooms big and small — from for-profits and nonprofits — from across the country, each excited to tell us about their special editions, videos series, in-person community events and other celebrations to come.
The end of a war, the beginning of a nation
For Elsa Cooke Verbyla, publisher of the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal, the newspaper is both family business and a civic responsibility. The local independently owned paper dates back to 1937, when the Gloucester Gazette and the Mathews Journal merged. In the early 1950s, John Warren Cooke — Elsa’s father — first served as vice president and then became president and publisher. When he passed away in 2009, his daughter transitioned from her role as editor-in-chief to publisher.
Today, the weekly is read by residents of Gloucester and Mathews counties, in Virginia’s Tidewater region.
Verbyla wears “all the hats” — serving as publisher and writer, while overseeing a newsroom team of four, one intern and three ad reps. “Our readership is probably a little older, like most papers,” she said. And it’s an engaged audience — engaged in their communities and in the pages of the paper. “We have vigorous participation in letters to the editor. We had to put some rules in place because letters were getting so long and so frequent. We apply them fairly, to get ‘both sides’ represented equally.”
The paper has a circulation of 9,000. It’s still printed on an in-house press that’s “cranky at times,” but gets the job done every Wednesday, in anticipation of Thursday distribution. That press is also used to produce commercial jobs.
“We’re on the Chesapeake Bay, surrounded by water, very close to Williamsburg and Yorktown,” Verbyla said. It’s a part of the country rich in Revolutionary War history, she explained. “Williamsburg is 40 minutes away. Yorktown is 20 minutes away, where the surrender was. We’ve got history underfoot everywhere.”
The paper is recounting the region’s history in a special full-color July 2nd section, and thanks to an abundance of advertising support, it will be more pages than the paper’s in-house press can handle, so they’re outsourcing it to a Lee Enterprises plant in Richmond. Advertisers range from local small businesses — some that have been staples in the community for more than 100 years — to local churches and civic groups. Verbyla would like the advertising, as well as the editorial content, to be a reflection of their communities’ past and present.
There will be two parts to the section. The first part will be about local history.
“We had a battle in what’s now Matthews County in 1776, driving away the last royal governor of Virginia,” she said. “It was a fantastic battle toward the end of the war.”
The special section will also feature local coverage of the region’s Civil Rights history and the local families who lived it firsthand. And there will be reporting on local architecture and old buildings that have stood the test of time.
For $5, the public is invited to submit their signatures, which will be printed in running banners across the pages. Verbyla would like the community to consider it a keepsake. She considers it a blessing to still publish the paper in this day and age, when news media “face a lot of adverse economic winds.”
“We fight for that circulation,” she said. “I’m trying to come up with an [house] ad about how we stand on the First Amendment. We wouldn’t be here without that.”
A new ‘newspaper march’
Over the course of 250 years, the United States has made a tremendous contribution to the world’s music catalog. And so, it’s fitting that music be part of the 250th celebrations.
Jim Beckerman is a veteran reporter with The Record and NorthJersey.com, part of Gannett’s USA TODAY Network. He was writing about “The Washington Post March,” composed in 1889 by John Philip Sousa, when he got the idea to compose a modern march — a score he titled “The USA TODAY March.”
Beckerman and his colleague Liz Johnson — senior director, entertainment for USA TODAY Network — were guests on E&P Publisher Mike Blinder’s vodcast, E&P Reports. During their conversation, Beckerman recalled listening to an untold number of marches. His research revealed more than 500 newspaper marches composed since 1860. Typically, these musical compositions were created by newspaper “fans.” They were band leaders and piano teachers, he explained. They wrote the Sousa-style marches in homage to newspapers as a patriotic symbol.
Back in May, Beckerman stood in as conductor with the New Jersey Wind Symphony for a premiere performance of “The USA TODAY March.” Another live performance is planned for July 4th on the outdoor stage at Overpeck Park in Bergen County, New Jersey.
“I think it’s really important for people to understand that journalism is patriotic,” Beckerman told Blinder. “Newspapers have an important role to play — and a patriotic role to play — maybe now more than ever.”
A star-spangled beacon from home
There is a misconception that Stars and Stripes has a narrow audience representing people in military service, but as Engagement Editor Chris Verigan explained to E&P, the audience is quite vast, made up of active-duty military, veterans, their families, civilians working at the Department of Defense, and members of the general public who simply have an interest in military affairs.
Stars and Stripes is a multiplatform title, still with a print edition. Print has great value, he said, particularly for readers who are in parts of the world where they have limited or poor access to the internet.
To honor the United States’ first 250 years — as well as those who served the nation in uniform — Stars and Stripes planned a number of creative experiences, which include an interactive timeline and map of Revolutionary War battles; a children’s activity book, a bound coffee-table book on American military history, and so much more.
In the spirit of March Madness, they created a military-battle bracket, and welcomed readers to vote on the most consequential battles in U.S. history; Verigan reported that Yorktown took the crown (pardon the pun).
The publication also produced a series of social videos, featuring interviews with service members stationed abroad. “We asked them a variety of questions — things like, what do you miss most about American culture while living overseas? We even spoke with some of their children, asking things like, if a bald eagle had a best friend, who would it be? We’ll be releasing a few of those videos each week up until July 4th,” Verigan said.
“It is always rewarding when we hear from readers who say things like, ‘While I was over in Afghanistan, when Stars and Stripes showed up, it made our day.’ That’s why we do it,” he added.
In service to a grateful nation
Bob Bonnar is the publisher of the News Letter Journal in Newcastle, Wyoming.
“We’re a 135+-year-old newspaper, established in 1889 — one of those western newspapers that actually predates the incorporation of the town,” Bonnar said. “We’re a very typical newspaper. We’re struggling, like others are. We became a struggling community, like a lot of small towns in rural America.
“We’ve seen our retail sector completely disappear. A number of our cornerstone industries have gone away. The town is aging considerably, which is great for my print subscriptions, but not real good for any kind of long-term sustainability. The News Letter Journal is just like every other small newspaper in the country. We’re trying to figure out how to keep going.”
But Bonnar isn’t sitting on his hands. He’s gone to work finding solutions. He launched a nonprofit, the Unabridged Fund, to help sustain the newsroom. The paper also received a $100,000 grant from Press Forward and tapped into its resources and workshops. Bonnar said that’s been “huge.”
To honor the nation’s birthday, the News Letter Journal applied to have the traveling Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, known as “the Moving Wall,” displayed in Newcastle this summer. It’ll be installed at a major intersection on the edge of town, where the community plans to erect its own Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial one day. A nonprofit has been spearheading the fundraising efforts.
The location places the Moving Wall and the eventual permanent memorial in the path of people traveling to the big motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. The installation coincides with the event this year. Bonnar hopes that it will create goodwill and commerce for the town and for the newspaper.
To Bonnar’s family — as with so many other American families touched by the war — the Vietnam era is personal and solemn. When he was born, his father was in Vietnam, serving in the Marine Corps. “It was a point of pride for my dad, his service in Vietnam. Being in the Marine Corps was his identity, his whole life,” Bonnar said.
It cost $8,000 to bring the Moving Wall to town, and fortunately Bonnar received a state grant of $10,000 — given to recipients for 250th projects.
He is also helping to create a Vietnam Film Festival that same week in the local historic movie theater. “And that week’s newspaper will have a special section devoted entirely to these events,” he explained. “We’ll also have stories about local Vietnam veterans and about the permanent Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.”
An engaged, informed citizenry
Southern Newspapers Inc. publishes 14 newspapers in Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma. Leonard Woolsey, Southern Newspapers’ president, told E&P that the titles are autonomous, each planning to celebrate the USA at 250 in a different way. Some of the newsrooms produce monthly magazines; they’ll mark the occasion in their July editions. One of the dailies plans to print and distribute a pull-out flag. Another is giving away 250th merch — things like umbrellas and yard flags.
Michelle Robinson is the publisher of Southern Newspapers’ Galveston County Daily News in Galveston, Texas. Under her direction, the paper produced a months-long editorial series, with topics like the U.S. Constitution and profiles of Founding Fathers and historic figures. The Daily News also produced a documentary video about a local ship, the Elissa, which set sail for New York City to lead a historic fleet of ships in honor of the July 4th holiday.
Known for his insightful, often thought-provoking columns, Southern’s president, Leonard Woolsey, offered some reflections on the nation, the free press and lessons from mom: “I’ve never felt that working in this profession was a job, but rather a calling of sorts. Not to be overly romantic, but a free press and an engaged, informed citizenry are critical to our democratic republic. We are not selling chicken sandwiches. If a newspaper disappears, a community fundamentally changes, as there is no longer a group of people keeping a watchful eye on the people’s business and holding governmental entities and actions accountable.”
“I am first-generation American, and my mother burned into me the blessing the United States was for her after growing up during World War II and a lack of economic opportunity in Europe,” Woolsey recalled. “The freedom, the chance to reinvent yourself, to be the designer of your life — these were things that motivated her at the age of 21 to buy a one-way ticket across the Atlantic, sail into New York, and figure it out from there. She wanted her children to be Americans and live under a democratic government. And she never waivered. Each morning, she read the newspaper aloud at the kitchen table — Vietnam, Watergate and the breakup of the Beatles. She was my Edward R. Murrow, only with a thick, rolling Scottish accent. To her, a free press and her ability to participate in elections were the greatest tools against tyranny.”
Gretchen A. Peck is E&P’s editor-in-chief. She welcomes your emails at editor@editorandpublisher.com.
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