The News-Press of Fort Myers celebrated its 130th birthday on Nov. 22 — Saturday before last.
Michael Babin, Florida design team leader for the Gannett Design Studio in Nashville, tells us the anniversary paper…
…featured a commemorative 4-page wrap around the regular newspaper, featuring an alternate front page produced to mimic the look and feel of the very first paper (published as a weekly under the name The Fort Myers Press back in 1884).
A sampling of stories was pulled from that day’s main run paper and the front page was designed circa 1884, complete with ink smudges and many of the features presses of that day would have yielded.
On the left, below, is an actual page from 1884.
Michael tells us:
It was a team effort, as the newsroom partnered with the advertising department and text-only classified ads were sold down the left-had rail of the page, some even sold from the very same business addresses that were featured in the first issue 130 years ago.
But, in fact, that was just one component of the commemoration by the News Press and deigned by the studio. Thinks kicked off back in August with a Sunday centerpiece story on the history of the paper and how it’s tied in to the history of Fort Myers.
The jump pages contained a detailed timeline history of the paper…
…and a look at noteworthy headlines from the ages. The sidebar here focuses on one of the several owners the paper has had over the past 130 years: Car manufacturer Henry Ford.
Here the third and last inside page from Aug. 24.
Michael writes:
Starting this past summer and running every day for 130 consecutive days, the News Press has run a feature on page 2 called “Celebrating 130 Years”, where it looks back at each year of its existence with notable features such as top headlines, local news, a person of influence, facts about the paper and a trivia question.
This was the first installment of the series, on that Sunday, Aug. 24.
This was the second one, the next day. Note the helpful label at the upper right of each page, to help readers keep these in order.
The 33rd in the series ran Sept. 25.
By Oct. 24, the series had grown up to No. 62: 1945.
And this one — No. 91, covering 1974 — ran Saturday, Nov. 22.
Michael tells us:
Each day’s page is devoted to a year of the paper’s rich history and it runs chronologically every day through the end of this year.
They’ve been a huge hit with readers.
That brings us up to that retro-styled wrap on Nov. 22. The usual page one was inside, of course.
Michael tells us:
Fort Myers took things a few steps further by hosting an open house on its birthday to showcase the work its journalists and other staff members are doing today.
The paper covered that as well. This ran the next day on the paper’s local news page.
The jump featured a few more pictures of readers touring the printing facility.
Michael tells us:
Project editor Andrew Jarosh led things from Fort Myers. Senior designer Phonethip Liu Hobson handled much of the design for 130th pages throughout this series. I handled planning and on-deadline execution of the commemorative “old-style” cover.
Find all the News-Press‘ 130th anniversary stories online here.
Average daily circulation for the Fort Myers News-Press is 54,761.
