KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

There’s just something about older pieces of media that will always be fascinating and nostalgic to me, especially with this past week being National Newspaper Week.

Now, of course for me, and my generation if you want, older media for us growing up was the classics like VHS tapes, the VCR (which can be stupid expensive to buy nowadays if you were curious), cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, video game cartridges and so on. Yet, the piece of media I am writing about today is actually what you are most likely holding as you read this: the newspaper.

Recently, my family has been making our way of going through my grandparents’ things, on my father’s side, and we found a few bags filled with newspapers going back decades. Within these newspapers was something rare and unique: a copy of the 50^th anniversary edition of the Chattanooga News-Free Press, or now known today as the Chattanooga Times Free Press. What was cool about it was that it was still in its original plastic bag and has been well preserved, unlike some of its other paper contemporaries. With no place to go I decided to take it to the office and show it to both the Tullahoma News’ editor Duane Sherrill, who readers may remember used to write weekly columns as “That New Guy”, and Publisher Keith Ponder. Both lit up when they saw it, especially with how large it was at the time of publication. I can definitely say that the good news is that edition will be going to a good place where it will be taken care of as I thought it would be a waste to throw it away.

This wasn’t the only edition of the Chattanooga News-Free Press in their house, as there were other editions alongside other newspapers like The Nashville Tennessean, now The Tennessean, The Dunlap Tribune, TODAY, a newspaper from Florida, and the Manchester Times.

Now, I do wonder how some of these newspapers were acquired over the years, mainly the Florida newspapers, but the Chattanooga newspapers not so much as I have family ties to the paper, thanks to my great uncle T.L., what my Granny always called him, who worked there as a reporter. And of course there’s always being a subscriber.

While there isn’t stacks and stacks of newspapers scattered across the house, the ones in question do pertain to certain key moments in history that were incredible to discover and I wanted to share a few favorites. The two oldest papers in this collection are two editions of the Chattanooga News-Free Press from 1938 and 1940, respectively. My family and I were amazed when we found these two editions, and while there is some age to them, especially the 1940 paper, they are in better shape than one would have guessed. With that said, given their age, I didn’t feel it was safe to look through them properly as I didn’t want to damage them further.

Following those editions were three consecutive editions of Chattanooga News-Free Press and Nashville Tennessean editions coverage the JKF assassination from Nov. 22 to Nov. 24, 1963. It was interesting to see the three-day coverage across the two newspapers just to get the latest information on what was happening in such an historic event. Following the same line, there were also two special editions from the News-Free Press that were all about Elvis Presley just over a week after he died in 1977.

The last papers I will highlight is the two copies of the Manchester Times from 1986. From what I can tell, these papers feature coverage from the 1986 Coffee County and Manchester Homecoming, as well as a special insert celebrating the occasion. While it may not have the national headlines it was still cool to see some of the local stories at the time.

As I said in the beginning, this past week was National Newspaper Week, a week to recognize the newspaper industry in the United States and Canada. With seeing these old newspapers from as far back as the late 1930’s, it’s a good reminder that newspapers really give snapshot what is happening now, and  help tell a story later on.