Fit to Print

– Cat Phan: Hey, Nick, I got a question for you.

– Nick Hoffman: Yeah, Cat, what’s up?

– Did you ever wonder how people kept in touch before social media?

– Like writing letters?

– Yeah, sure, but more than that.

I mean, was there something similar to social media before social media?

I mean, these days we got Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, MySpace.

– MySpace?

– Yeah.

I mean, was there something similar for kids before phones and computers?

– I wonder what the UW Libraries might have.

We can ask a librarian there in special collections.

I know they have a lot of old things.

Maybe there’s an answer.

– Yes, let’s tweet them a DM on TikTok.

– All right, what if we try email instead?

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [television static] – David Pavelich: Welcome to the Department of Special Collections.

So we’re at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This is our home for rare books and manuscripts.

– Very cool, I heard you might have some things for us to look at that helps answer our question.

– I do, yeah.

We got out some amateur journalism newspapers.

We can go take a look.

– Nick: Cool, all right.

– Let’s go this way.

– Nick: All right.

– Ooh!

– Wow, all right.

I love that, love a chance to look in the archives and see… – Yeah.

– …some glimpses of the past.

So this one’s really interesting.

We’ve got this bound volume of issues.

There’s New York, Appleton.

So this must be an example of how somebody was collecting different issues.

– Yeah, that’s a good point.

They didn’t start out as books, right?

– Right, right.

Yeah, so this is The Appleton Amateur from 1877.

– Cat: Yeah.

– Nick: That’s really cool.

– And these are also from the 1870s.

– Coming from the 1870s, it was such an exciting time in the city.

This is just one year before someone named Erich Weisz moved to the city.

He later became known as Harry Houdini.

And it’s right in that time of two decades of really big growth for the city’s population and just on the verge of becoming one of the first electric cities in the nation.

– Ooh.

– So it’s really cool to see what young people were thinking about in Appleton.

– Let’s see this one over here.

Here’s more Appleton Amateur.

And they’re all different sizes, too, but look, there are tiny ones, there are ones that are huge.

– Nick: Yeah.

– These have poems on the cover.

How many times have you seen a poem on the cover of newsletter?

– Nick: Right?

That’s fantastic.

– I wonder how, if you wanted to get started in this, how would you learn how to do this sort of thing?

You know what, I think someone here could put us in touch with someone who specializes in this sort of thing.

– That sounds great.

It’d be good to talk to an expert.

– I’ve got so many more questions.

– Hey Jessica, thanks for joining us.

We have a lot of questions about the amateur press.

We’ve been fascinated by it.

– So what can you tell us about why these newspapers were so popular, especially with young people?

– Jessica Isaac: It was a really interesting time to be growing up, if you think about the 1870s because before that, the more traditional way of growing up, you sort of, you learned a trade or very elite people would go to college, you know, in their teens sometimes.

But in the 1870s, industrialization was starting, people were entering careers a little bit later in life, schooling was lasting a little bit longer.

– Okay, so part of the context of when these newspapers were first being made is industrialization.

Context just means the stuff that was going on around this time.

Industrialization was a period of big changes.

A lot of new factories were being built and lots of people were working in them.

But more factories meant fewer young people were doing apprenticeships, which is when you learn a job directly from someone who’s an expert.

Some kids went to work in factories, but for young people who didn’t work in factories, there was suddenly this gap in between primary education and when they would start working.

– But a lot of kids couldn’t afford to go to school.

It was mostly private high schools at that point.

And they needed something to do to kind of educate themselves to grow into adulthood, to prepare for careers.

But also, they really were hungry to connect with each other and to think about, you know, what it meant to be young at the time that they were young and, you know, explore their identity.

So the other piece of it is that small presses were developed.

Printing presses were huge initially, and they got smaller and smaller, just like any technological innovation.

– If you are like, “What the heck’s a printing press?”

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

This is part of the production of these newspapers.

A printing press was a machine that printed documents like books and newspapers with movable type.

These printing presses had been around for hundreds of years.

– Printing presses were usually ginormous, but the Civil War created demand for smaller presses that could be used close to the front lines of battle.

These were later marketed as hobby presses to young people, and they were much smaller, cheaper, and easier to use.

– And so these young people kind of took those presses and ran with them, and turned it into this little world of their own.

– I’m wondering if you can tell us more about how they decided what to put in the papers, what things became more popular in the papers as they developed more.

– Initially, the earliest ones seemed to be modeled on contemporary magazines that were published for young people at the time.

But then the editorials became even more important and the sense that we’re writing back and forth to each other and we’re having really important debates.

And they would debate issues that were really important in the adult public sphere at that time, like issues about race and gender, and who should be included in the amateur newspaper organizations.

I think as individual papers got bigger, they would include more advertisements, which are really fun to look at ’cause they usually have images of the things that they’re selling, and we can kind of get a window into, like, what were people buying and what were people selling?

– Amateur newspapers served a variety of purposes.

Young people used them to develop their writing skills, to prepare for when they would start working, and to have conversations with other young people.

They sent copies to their peers and received others in return.

And sometimes, they would write articles that were like discussions or debates with other newspaper writers.

It was like an old school version of a group chat.

– Can you tell us a little more exactly how the papers were made?

– It’s an art, it’s a craft, it’s a profession.

It’s something you really have to learn how to do.

You have to set each individual piece of type by hand in a composing stick and lay each line in a tray.

You set it in furniture, which are these pieces that go around it.

And then there are these rollers.

You put your ink up on a flat piece on the top and the rollers roll over the ink, and then they roll down the type, and then the paper presses on to make the impression and get your page.

And then you pull that page off manually and put another piece of paper on and pull the handle down, which sends the roller up, and down and press, and… – That’s incredible, especially just the amount of work to get your ideas out into the world and share them with other amateur presses.

– It’s an enormous amount of work.

And in their papers, they talk about it a lot.

Like, “Oh, I was up late last night, printing the last pages.”

And you’re like, “I get it.

That was [laughs] really hard work.”

– So in all of your research, did you find any famous people of the time period participating in the amateur press?

– So some of the famous people, like Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, had one when he was a teenager.

Abraham Lincoln’s son, Tad Lincoln, had one.

So I’m certain that there are more.

– Thank you so much, Jessica; I learned so much.

It was very nice talking to you.

So Nick, what’d you think of The Appleton Amateur and the other amateur newspapers?

– The technology of it was fascinating, but I think what I really appreciated was that it was an opportunity for so many young people to share their ideas across the United States and even out to the world.

– Yeah.

The Appleton Amateur and other papers like it were examples of young people writing, editing, printing, and sharing their own newspapers.

Have you ever thought about making your own newspaper?

Try it out and see if you can get some friends to make one, too.

And then share your papers with each other.

You’ll be continuing a tradition started by young people just like you over 150 years ago.

Did I get those right?

[laughs] Yeah, okay.

– Nick: I think we were pretty close.

– Producer: We got those.

– Nick: Okay.

We’re gonna send them a bunch of emails and they’re gonna hate us and we’re gonna be that annoying patron.

[upbeat music] [all laughing]