Close to Nowhere

There’s a show on the Science Channel I believe — “How It’s Made.” I love to watch it and see how easy it is to make everything.

I’m guessing it’s not as easy as they make it look, building Airstream trailers and making Fig Newton cookies. But it is fascinating.

I was particulary interested by a segment that was on Sunday — all about how to make up a newspaper.

They were using British newspapers, because they are the oldest. The  British began with town criers, since about the 1400s, who read the news to the massed crowds in town squares.

Britain can trace its press history back more than 300 years, to the time of William of Orange. Berrow’s Worcester Journal, which started life as the Worcester Postman in 1690 and was published regularly from 1709, is believed to be the oldest surviving English newspaper.

William Caxton introduced the first English printing press in 1476 and, by the early 16th century, the first ‘news papers’ were seen in Britain. They were  slow to evolve, with the largely illiterate population relying on town criers for news.

Between 1640 and the Restoration, around 30,000 ‘news letters’ and ‘news papers’ were printed, many of which can be seen today in the British Museum.

The first regular English daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, was launched with the reign of Queen Anne in 1702.

The South and The  Reporter, both Civil War-era newspapers, began in 1865. They merged into The South Reporter that you’re reading today.

A while back I went to the Mississippi Archives in Jackson to research our old newspapers. It was fascinating. I think Lincoln Martin, who at one time ran the print shop for The South Reporter and now runs his own print shop, has some of the old linotype used to print the papers.

A couple of the funny things on the “How It’s Made” program were the computers and how they laid out the newspaper for printing. This segment of the show must have been filmed a long time ago, as the news editor who was laying out the pages, was using those old fat MacIntosh’s — looked like they were from the 1980s or ’90s.

I’m sitting here now, typing this on a sleek, skinny Mac and doing much more than the news editor on the TV show.

I wonder in 50 or 100 years how will it be done?

And will I still be sitting at this desk doing it?