How things have changed....

[ocvictor]

I work in newspapers -- have done for some time now. At the moment, I work at a mainstream, relatively conservative daily paper. Note, I said relatively. I've always felt that center-right is a perfectly respectable place for a mainstream newspaper to be, especially when it tries hard to be objective.


I have, over the years, seen much worse, including my old hometownpaper, the Orange County Register, which often makes FOX news look like the liberal media.

However, the Reg turns 100 this year, and my sometimes employers, OC Weekly, have taken this opportunity to dredge up honest to goodness relics from their past, and none of them have made me so happy about the state of modern journalism as this:




According to OCW, this This editorial layout appeared on Aug. 10, 1956.

So just remember kids ... it can always be worse.

Comments

[radioactiveart.livejournal.com]

MOM!!!!!!

[cindywrites.livejournal.com]

I have images turned off on my journal, so I don't see them, unless I click them, or enter a post to comment.

I can honestly say that was probably the last thing I expected to see.

[ocvictor.livejournal.com]

It's neither the Klan social news, nor the fishing column that truly makes it, but the juxtaposition.

[ocvictor.livejournal.com]

Same here -- I wrote a couple stories for the Reg's features department on poetry. Actually some pretty nice folks there, but the editorial climate? Little scary.

At one point, an editor there asked me to be their Latino culture reporter. I pointed out to him that I wasn't Latino. He said that didn't matter.

Really, really bizarre.

[grayarcadian.livejournal.com]

::boggle::

[lysana.livejournal.com]

It's darkly fascinating to be reminded how much racism was considered downright normal not so long ago.

[ocvictor.livejournal.com]

Some of these "OC Weekly Celebrates 100 Years of OC Register History" bits have been darkly hysterical. For example:

Jan. 26, 1910: WIVES FOR MEN ON MANITOBA PLAINS: “Salvation Army Plans to Reduce Surplus of Women in Great Britain”

“Hundreds of settlers on the prairies of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta will be supplied with wives, if the efforts of the Salvation Army of Canada are successful. . . . Officers of the Salvation Army of Great Britain are engaging young women to emigrate, ostensibly to become servants, but really to become wives of the lonely farmers. . . . The girls will be given employment by the married settlers, but soon will find husbands.”