Print Media

The first interview I conducted with my grandmother, Linda, was about her experience with print media. Growing up in Macon on a farm outside of town, her family, especially her parents, relied heavily on newspapers and magazines for their news. She remembers always having the Macon Chronicle-Harold in the house. The paper came six days a week with the mail and made it to the house at noon, despite it being the morning paper. Sunday was the only day in which the paper was not delivered. I found this interesting because it was the exact opposite of when I grew up and my family would only get the paper from the store on Sundays.

The cover of the Macon Chronicle-Herald the year Linda was born
Source: https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/MaconCH/id/46103/rec/5

The Harold was shared amongst her two parents, three siblings, and herself. She reminisced fondly of the Peanuts and Dagwood, her mom checking the Cardinals' scores, and her dad reading the paper cover to cover after work. When I asked if there was ever a fight over the paper she laughed.

"We never fought over the paper. Everybody had it at a different time, it seemed like. It had all the sections, a sports section and everything. Mom would always tell us if there was anything we needed to know, like if anyone had died. The kids never bothered with the news." 

Her parents were the most devoted to the paper, so much so, that they continued to read it long after they moved from Macon to Kansas City. The Macon Chronicle-Herald could always be found sitting next to her dad's chair at the retirement home.

We then talked briefly about magazines and books. She remembered Better Homes and Gardens, Readers' Digest, and the TV Guide always being in the house. Subscriptions that her mother continued receiving after leaving Macon. Linda explained how the TV Guide would come separately from the newspaper in a booklet with different TV stars on it each week. She particularly remembers "I Love Lucy" star Lucille Ball on the cover.

Cover of the TV Guide in 1954
Source: https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/lucy-tv-guide-1953-2013/

She found it particularly funny when asked if there were any magazines that she was not allowed to read or were scandalous.

"Oh sure! There was Playboy always! Playboy has been around all the time. But I never had any interest in them. My male cousins would get them at Taylor's Bookstore. They weren't as bad as they are now. You didn't have to put a brown cover on them." 

When we moved onto books, I was shocked to learn that there were no banned books at her school or in her house, despite being from a small town. Linda chalked it up to people not being that sensitive to the material in the books and not caring as much. She recalled reading "Huckleberry Finn", "Gone with the Wind", and "Little Women" in school. She enjoyed all the assigned readings that were given, expect "Little Women", which she found too long! Recently, she enjoys reading biographies and non-fiction books, especially those that are about the Mob. 

We ended our interview by talking about her experiences with print media today. Linda prefers to read a physical book and does not use any form of E-Readers. However, she does enjoy using the News app on her iPhone, which neatly condenses multiple news outlets to a single app and allows her to see the top news stories quickly.

Features of the Apple News app on Apple products, which make it appealing for Linda to use as her news source.
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2018/05/15/google-news-for-ios/

She mostly sees the effects of internet on the Newspaper industry. She explained how the Kansas City Star used to be long and thick, but has slowly dwindled down. The Macon Chronicle-Harold was also reduced in size. Linda remembers the paper being about eight pages long, then only covering two pages, before it stopped publishing altogether in 2014. Today, Linda never buys a paper because she has little need for it as she uses her phone and TV to get any information she needs, both locally and nationally. Our discussion ended with her suddenly remembering the green books she used when shopping in Kansas City. The green books were blank booklets where customers collected stamps with every purchase they made. Customers were then mailed catalogues from which they could chose items to exchange their stamps. In 1972, my grandma picked out a small wooden table and two chairs for her daughter, which then found a home in my room for my entire childhood.

Green Stamps Booklet
Source: https://doyouremember.com/15931/ritual-sh-green-stamps