York County newspaper gets new wardrobe, some nips and tucks
A copy of the York (Pa.) Daily Record front page from almost 37 years ago tells about Tropical Storm Agnes’ fury. The newspapers look, or design, has changed dramatically since then. (To get a look at the new look to be unveiled Thursday, see photo below.) Background posts: This all appeared in The (York, Pa.) Gazette and Daily on June 1, 1949 and In the shadow of disaster: York County and its newspaper tested 30 years ago and Suicide story: York hotel proprietor ‘found a package that had contained about a quarter of a pound of Paris green’.
A newspaper’s appearance can go out of style, just like clothes.
So about once a decade, as it turns out, the York Daily Record has made style changes, called a redesign.
The newspaper will make such a change in Thursday’s edition, as I explain in a York Daily Record/Sunday News column today. That column begins: … .
A prototype of a redesigned front page of the York Daily Record/Sunday News.
The York Daily Record’s East King Street office was undoubtedly in disarray in October 1973.
Just months before, the newspaper had shut down its unprofitable Sunday publication.
Now, new owner Jimmy D. Scoggins was moving the newspaper from its 72-year home in York’s downtown to a new plant at 1750 Industrial Highway in Springettsbury Township.
There, a new offset printing press awaited.
“We leave it with fond memories, but with open arms and jubilation for the new,” an unnamed columnist wrote. “Farewell, old friend. Farewell.”
That press would be put to immediate use soon after the moving vans pulled up.
Writing in these new digs one week later, the columnist foreshadowed more changes: “And speaking of gowns, reminds us that the Record will have a new look on Monday. So just like the wife when she gets a new dress, we’re anxious to see how we look. See you then.”
The Daily Record came out on Monday, Oct. 23, in a full-size format, abandoning the distinctive tabloid size used since those days of paper shortages in World War II.
Its front page was marked with a large four-color photo printed on that new press.
It was the first color photograph published on the Daily Record’s, or its predecessor Gazette and Daily’s, front page.
Such use of color photos only occasionally appeared on the newspaper’s front page until the 1990s.
To read more, click here.
Related posts: Newspaper’s founding date hard to pin down and 1874 York Daily: Is it worth anything? and York cartoonist’s work helps celebrate peace activism.
