Welcome to the Newsroom History Project

Since the mid-1990s, journalism and the organizations that created and distributed the news have undergone a seismic upheaval.  That turmoil, and the media industry’s response, is well documented elsewhere.  We have a different mission.  The goal of Newsroom History is to make a connection to our collective past and celebrate our history.

Because we live in a visual society, much of what we show will be visual.  However, we also hope to capture some of your stories of what it was like to work in newsroom.  We want to see the pictures, read the funny and the poignant tales of toiling in the newsroom, print, broadcast, wire service or whatever.

This is an important time for capturing journalism’s history.  The generation of journalists who witnessed the transformation from analog to digital are retiring or have left the industry.  We need to capture their stories before it is too late.

Design of Design Feb. 10The original Day of Design logo. Created in 1993 by Deborah Withey

To ‘seed’ this venture, I will share many of my front page collected during my career as a graphics and picture editor, a newsroom leader, consultant and teacher.  Before the Newseum was created and newspapers electronically shared PDFs of their daily front pages, the only way journalists could see what other papers were doing was to head to the library.  Or watch a presentation by a speaker who collected those pages.  That’s what I did.  As did lots of other folks, especially in the early days of organizations like the Society of New Design.

It is time to give those pages a new life.

This project is also driven by a deadline.  In 1993 I collected more than 150 front pages from around the world for a single day: Wednesday, Feb. 10.  With the 20th anniversary of that date looming, I figured it was time to create this site.

Let’s celebrate what was done to create good journalism.  Let’s celebrate the fun we had in newsrooms by telling stories and tall tales.  Let’s celebrate that there will always be a need for good journalism, even if the newsroom evolves along with the tools and platform the journalist uses.

— Howard Finberg

As you can see, we have just started the building process for the site.  If you have ideas, send me an email: hfinberg@newsroomhistory.com.

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