Newspaper content is important to family history

     Every week, the Express offers a look back at Monticello and Jones County history through “Years Gone By” in our Lifestyles section. The feature goes back in history five, 20, 50, even 100 years ago.

     We included Years Gone By in our Lifestyles section a few years ago when we were seeing a decrease in content.

     Every week, Jill Cigrand, our production designer, searches the Express archives for the perfect tidbits of news to include in Years Gone By. It’s a nice reminder of what has come and gone in Monticello.

     Not a week goes by that I don’t refer to our online digital archives to research an article I’m working on. And while looking for a specific topic, I end up spending way too much time perusing the archives because I inevitably find something just as interesting.

     While looking through the archives, I notice that our Express Lifestyles pages used to be full of great, local content that people just don’t submit anymore. To give some examples of current and past submissions:

     • Engagements

     • Wedding announcements

     • Baby announcements

     • College news (graduations, scholarships, dean’s list, high honors, etc.)

     • Anniversaries

     • School honor roll

     • Recipes

     • Military news

     • Senior Dining menu

     • Monticello schools breakfast and lunch menu

     • Uplifting Moments

     • Community calendar

     • Club news

     • Town news

     At one time, there were four or five Lifestyles pages in the Express on a weekly basis. Now, we’re lucky to have two pages.

     Granted, some content isn’t relevant anymore such as recipes, which used to be submitted by Kris Jenson. She started submitting recipes in 1988 and quit shortly after I started with the Express in 2010. Her recipe column was titled “Kookin’ with Kris.” In 2002, she had a book made with all the recipes she had published in the Express up until that point.

     In the age of the internet, Google, and smartphones, publishing recipes in the newspaper isn’t very productive anymore. But if someone wanted to take on this role, we would gladly publish them.

     College news tends to come to us directly from the colleges and universities. However, parents and students have to know in advance to direct the schools to send such information to their hometown newspaper. Some schools no longer have someone designated to send such information out, so, at times, parents and grandparents have submitted that news directly to us.

     Years before I started here, the Express was publishing correspondence designated to each small town around us: Scotch Grove, Langworthy, Sand Springs. Again, shortly after I started, Scotch Grove was the last remaining town we published news for.

     Military news was much more prevalent when young men and women were serving overseas during Vietnam and Dessert Storm, as well as combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. I couldn’t tell you the last time we published updates on Monticello service members.

     With Senior Dining opening once again in Monticello on Dec. 1, we should hopefully see the return of their weekly menu and calendar of activities. This will be a welcome sight again in Lifestyles.

     Uplifting Moments is a column submitted by the various clergy who are part of the Monticello Ministerial Association. We leave it up to them as to whether they want to submit that column at their leisure.

     Club news is also something that, sadly, has gone away. The last remaining club to submit news was the Garden Club. I speak for myself when I say it’d be nice to hear from our community clubs and organizations again…

     This leads to my point… With the advent of social media, not to mention email and texting, we just do not see the content we used to on our Lifestyles pages. People are sharing births, engagements, wedding announcements, etc. outside of the newspaper. But here’s why that type of content should be published…

     My grandfather researched our family’s history and genealogy back numerous decades, on both his side and my grandmother’s side. He even wrote books about those histories and ancestors. His research would not have been possible without the ability to fact-check names, dates, places, etc. in obituaries, wedding announcements, engagements, birth announcements and more. If those articles had not been published, think how hard it would be to accurately keep track of genealogy.

     Posting that stuff on social media can’t be researched, unless you’re “friends” with those who are posting it.

     Fifty years, even a century from now, hopefully newspapers will still be an important part of our society. If your grandkids or great grandkids embark on a mission to research your family history, they would only be able to go so far before they hit a brick wall because important information and details stopped appearing in local newspapers…

 correspondence