Diamond days
Editor's POV, November-December edition
Your community newspaper is celebrating a major milestone in 2024. This year is the Manor Park Chronicle‘s 75th anniversary. That first issue, January 1949, was mimeographed at the local one-room schoolhouse.
It was launched with a rough sketch of a neighbourhood street and a few typewritten pages. The editor, Mr. J. Willard, admits somewhat sheepishly in the text that the edition was assembled “hurriedly and cheaply”. (Is there another way of doing it?)
Yet the edition also opens with a simple but bold mission statement: “This paper is being published in hopes that it may bring to your knowledge the work and business being accomplished by each organization now formed in Manor Park. It may also show you where you can lend a helping hand in making Manor Park one of the finest villages in our country.”
(That first edition, and much of the Chronicle’s archive, is viewable as an electronic PDF file through the paper’s website. Visit the Manor Park Community Association (MPCA)’s online archive. More recent editions can be found here.)
The Chronicle‘s 75th anniversary, marking three quarters of a century, is a big deal for any organization, particularly a community newspaper.
This is especially true against a severe media landscape. Local news-gathering agencies are facing increasing pressures. Consequently, the perspectives they offer are becoming increasingly rare.
Photos and memories
To commemorate the Chronicle’s 75th anniversary, we’ll be drawing on the resources and memories of the community. This includes many people who have edited, written and delivered the newspaper in recent times.
We’d also like to hear from readers! Please send us photos and remembrances not just of the Chronicle but the community and how it’s changes to editor@manorparkchronicle.com.
We will endeavor to type out and mimeograph an edition worthy of the milestone.
And, we hope, help propel us onward for another 75 years!
