Speaker 1: Guess what game. So do you know there's a newspaper
Speaker 1: in India that's actually handwritten every single day, handwritten seriously,
Speaker 1: like they don't type any of it out. No. I
Speaker 1: mean the paper is called the Musliman, which means Muslim,
Speaker 1: and it's about a hundred years old and the whole
Speaker 1: paper is only about four pages long, but it's written
Speaker 1: in Urdu and this like beautiful handwritten calligraphy, and the
Speaker 1: subscribers love it. They're about, i want to say, like
Speaker 1: twenty copies of the paper that get delivered across India,
Speaker 1: and The Musliman receives more than like twenty notes today,
Speaker 1: just thanking the newspaper for the service. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the owner thinks that if he and his seven employees,
Speaker 1: who he actually considers family, like, if they stopped handwriting
Speaker 1: the paper, it would lose all of its charm. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's actually really sweet. And I mean I'm guessing
Speaker 1: the subscribers read it because they feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a more personal paper, right yeah. And also it's
Speaker 1: really cheap, which also helps. But that's the first of
Speaker 1: nine facts we've got about newspapers on TODA is nine things.
Speaker 1: So let's dive in y Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome
Speaker 1: to part time Genius. I'm longas articular. Will Pearson is
Speaker 1: out today on vacation, but I've got a good friend
Speaker 1: and researcher gave Louisier on the horn with me today
Speaker 1: and sitting behind that stack of funny pages, just catching
Speaker 1: up on last week's Hagar the Horrible cartoons. That's our
Speaker 1: pal and producer Tristan McNeil so gave. Today's show is
Speaker 1: all about journalism and papers, and I was curious, did
Speaker 1: you guys get a newspaper as a kid. Yeah, we did. Actually,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Maryland, so we got the Washington
Speaker 1: Post every Sunday, which you know was super important to
Speaker 1: me for the comics section. Yeah, you know, my my
Speaker 1: parents actually used to have a fight about which paper
Speaker 1: to Like my mom got the New York Times because
Speaker 1: she liked cross words, and my dad got the local
Speaker 1: news journal which was in Delaware and that had comics.
Speaker 1: And so we always had too many papers on our
Speaker 1: kidschenp table. But I was curious too, like, did you
Speaker 1: ever do any sort of journalism in school? Did did
Speaker 1: you do like the high school paper or anything like that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. I was. I was actually the editor at
Speaker 1: our really yeah. I mean, you know, it looked great
Speaker 1: on paper for like college applications and stuff, but in reality,
Speaker 1: you know, I attended like the super small private school,
Speaker 1: so they were only about a hundred kids in the
Speaker 1: whole high school. Like my graduating class was twelve people,
Speaker 1: so our readership, you know, it was it was pretty tiny.
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you about the paper I started
Speaker 1: as a kid? No, So, I mean I was on
Speaker 1: my high school paper to it's kind of what led
Speaker 1: to Metal Flaws. But um, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: when I was like eight or nine, I started this
Speaker 1: paper in my neighborhood called Dogs of my Neighborhood. And
Speaker 1: it was with my best friend at the time, and
Speaker 1: and you know, the whole idea was that we'd report
Speaker 1: on all the funny stories about the dogs in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And I drew some cartoons, and like my friend and
Speaker 1: I like we thought we were gonna make a killing.
Speaker 1: And then we got basically like no subscribers, and we
Speaker 1: had to put the paper down after the first issue.
Speaker 1: But I definitely want to talk about more niche newspapers
Speaker 1: and newspaper facts, so I started with that story of
Speaker 1: the Mussliman, the handwritten one in India. But what do
Speaker 1: you have up your sleeves? Sure? So, like, here's what
Speaker 1: I like. And have you ever heard of the Nome Nugget.
Speaker 1: It's this paper from Nome, Alaska, and it's actually Alaska's
Speaker 1: oldest newspaper. It comes out once a week. And anyway,
Speaker 1: this is a story from town and country. But back
Speaker 1: in seven there was this group called the Alaska Newspapers Incorporated,
Speaker 1: and they had spent a few years trying to buy
Speaker 1: the Nome Nugget. You know, they wanted to consolidate it
Speaker 1: into their newspaper group, but the feisty Nugget wouldn't have it.
Speaker 1: They wanted to stay independent. And A and I was,
Speaker 1: you know a little bit here about this. So they
Speaker 1: actually and I started a competing paper, the Bearing Straight Record,
Speaker 1: And so immediately this rivalry began. The Bearing Straight Record
Speaker 1: was well funded, but you know, people continued to rally
Speaker 1: around the tiny Nome Nugget, you know, because they love
Speaker 1: their local paper. And it's like the little paper that
Speaker 1: could you know. Anyway, when the A and I folks
Speaker 1: decided to fold the Bearing Straight Record two years later,
Speaker 1: somehow the Nome Nuggeters found out, and just as the
Speaker 1: executive walked in to break the news, the Nome Nugget
Speaker 1: through the Bearing Straight this big surprise party in their
Speaker 1: offices for their second anniversary. They had cake and drinks
Speaker 1: and you know, obviously the A and I folks were
Speaker 1: not happy about this. But anyway, today there's actually a
Speaker 1: copy of the final Bearing Straight record that's framed and
Speaker 1: it hangs in the Nome Nugget office. Is still man,
Speaker 1: they sound feisty, so you know, I I love that
Speaker 1: you don't mess with the little guys. And I've actually
Speaker 1: got a tell you about this paper that I read about.
Speaker 1: It's the Orange Street News, which is sometimes printed as
Speaker 1: a four page digest that's distributed to about like two
Speaker 1: neighbors and local businesses, but it's also an online site.
Speaker 1: And what makes it so special is that it's actually
Speaker 1: run by a nine year old named Hilde Kate Lysiac.
Speaker 1: And it isn't just some like cuty neighborhood paper like
Speaker 1: covering neighborhood dogs. Her paper actually scooped the local news
Speaker 1: about a murder in the neighborhood. It's not crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So she she got this tip from a source,
Speaker 1: and as she put it, then she saw like cops
Speaker 1: swarming a house. So she just went up and like
Speaker 1: she's plucky and interviewed them and also got the takes
Speaker 1: of some neighbors and then she like rushed her story
Speaker 1: online under the headline quote exclusive murder on Ninth Street.
Speaker 1: And I guess it's amazing because like her, her dad
Speaker 1: is a beat reporter and has taken her to the
Speaker 1: office of their newspaper and uh. And she was actually
Speaker 1: interviewed about her scoop and you know, because she beat
Speaker 1: all the local newspapers to it, they were asking like,
Speaker 1: how did you do it? And she responded, look, I
Speaker 1: got a good tip and I was able to confirm it.
Speaker 1: Like she talks like a reporter and she like checks
Speaker 1: off on her sources. It's amazing. And apparently her favorite
Speaker 1: stories to cover are all the crime ones. She's also
Speaker 1: covered a vandal in the neighborhood who has been damaging
Speaker 1: plants around the town and uh, and all these other
Speaker 1: I guess petty crime stories. It's it's pretty great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I mean if people embraced her or that
Speaker 1: they kind of you know, told her that she's too
Speaker 1: young to be reporting on this kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: I looked into this too. It's a little of both,
Speaker 1: Like when she got a ton of coverage and she
Speaker 1: got covered in like Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review all
Speaker 1: for that murder scoop. Like, people gone on Facebook and
Speaker 1: started criticizing her. But her response was great, like let
Speaker 1: me find this quote. She said, uh quote, If you
Speaker 1: want me to stop covering news, then you get off
Speaker 1: your computers and do something about the news. There is
Speaker 1: that cute enough for you? I guess she got tired
Speaker 1: of people calling her cute, which is amazing because she's
Speaker 1: a little complate. But all right, here's a quick one
Speaker 1: for you. And by quick, you know, I actually mean tiny.
Speaker 1: Because on February, the Terra No strip paper from Portugal
Speaker 1: they published a super slim edition that was get this,
Speaker 1: eighteen by twenty five millimeters tall and weighed only a
Speaker 1: single graham. So what was this like an edited down
Speaker 1: paper or was it like a full paper? What? What
Speaker 1: was it? Yeah? It was an exact copy of the
Speaker 1: normal edition, but it it came with a magnifying glass
Speaker 1: so you can actually, you know, read the thing and
Speaker 1: the paper It's sold about three thousand copies that edition,
Speaker 1: and it's now in the Guinness Book of Records as
Speaker 1: the world's smallest newspaper. That's pretty cool. So I actually
Speaker 1: have a quick one for you too. But uh, and this,
Speaker 1: this is like something I've been thinking about a lot,
Speaker 1: is how the city of Cleveland was originally incorporated with
Speaker 1: a different spelling. It was originally spelled c L E
Speaker 1: A V E l A N D, like there was
Speaker 1: this extra A in there and are now it doesn't
Speaker 1: have it. And the whole reason is because of a
Speaker 1: local newspaper. So I've actually heard this a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was because the Plain Dealer, but
Speaker 1: apparently it was from the Cleveland Advertiser, this short lived paper,
Speaker 1: and basically they couldn't fit all those letters on the masthead,
Speaker 1: so they just chopped off the A to fit all
Speaker 1: the words on top, and the spelling for the city stuck.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, I've got a fact about a paper
Speaker 1: that I would love to get my hands on. It's
Speaker 1: called The Meat Eater and it was produced from eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two eight one at the Alabama Insane Hospital. And
Speaker 1: that's their name, not mine, but so this came out
Speaker 1: at a time after Dorothea Dix worked so hard to
Speaker 1: move mentally ill people from jails into asylums. But apparently
Speaker 1: the paper was really good, Like according to The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: it had columns on Darwinism, concert reviews, marriage and death notices.
Speaker 1: There were updates about the goings on at the hospital,
Speaker 1: you know, including who was being too loud. And there
Speaker 1: was this also this little odds and ends section in
Speaker 1: the Meteor called Meteoric Dust. But the really interesting thing
Speaker 1: is that even though the paper came out with some frequency,
Speaker 1: the editors stayed anonymous the whole time, like nobody knows
Speaker 1: who was behind this. That's amazing and it almost feels
Speaker 1: like a movie, right, you can kind of picture that
Speaker 1: with like a little bit of mystery. I actually really
Speaker 1: like that. So here's a little paper our researcher, Eaves,
Speaker 1: tipped me off on, and I had no idea about it.
Speaker 1: It's also historical and it's called The South Polar Times
Speaker 1: and it was produced by Robert Scott's men on his
Speaker 1: two journeys to Antarctica. Apparently it was a really good
Speaker 1: diversion for them just to keep their mind off the cold,
Speaker 1: and they brought these massive typewriters with them and reams
Speaker 1: of paper and each edition was about thirty to fifty
Speaker 1: pages long. Wow, So how many issues did they put out? So?
Speaker 1: I think they put out eight issues from the first
Speaker 1: voyage and four from the next. But the writing is
Speaker 1: supposed to be really really funny, and it's got like characters,
Speaker 1: the officer cartoons, watercolors, weather reports. It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: really lively like. They also wrote parodies and uh rewrote
Speaker 1: lyrics to popular bar songs about their journey. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and even the last edition, which you know must have
Speaker 1: been horrific because that expedition didn't end well. The writers
Speaker 1: knew their colleagues had run out of supplies and they
Speaker 1: were lost in the wild. Even that edition is filled
Speaker 1: with jokes that supposedly run a little flat, but they tried.
Speaker 1: And uh, Anyway, I just heard about the South Poler
Speaker 1: Times this week, But now I feel like I need
Speaker 1: to go get a copy of them collected because they
Speaker 1: really sound amazing. Yeah, it does. And I know We've
Speaker 1: got two more newspaper facts to cover before we choose
Speaker 1: a winner here, But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part time genius, where today's topic is
Speaker 1: little known newspaper facts. So, Gabe, I I think you're up.
Speaker 1: What's your last act? Uh? Yeah? So this is another
Speaker 1: defunct paper, but like the South Polar Times you mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's particularly interesting as a historic document. It's called the
Speaker 1: Prison Times, and you know there there have been a
Speaker 1: lot of inmate papers, but this one's especially interesting to
Speaker 1: me because it comes from Confederate prisoners that were held
Speaker 1: at Fort Delaware. I feel like you're just buttering me
Speaker 1: up here by throwing in the word Delaware, but but
Speaker 1: I do want to hear this story, baby a little
Speaker 1: h The particularly interesting thing is that the paper tried
Speaker 1: to stay really objective. So uh. They had this statement
Speaker 1: in one of the papers that read, in presenting to
Speaker 1: the public the first edition of the Prison Times, we
Speaker 1: are aware that there will be many criticisms. Nothing political
Speaker 1: will be indulged in it. So basically instead they focused
Speaker 1: on fine arts literature. They had the section called our
Speaker 1: prison World, which talking about things like how to mend
Speaker 1: a torn uniform or you know, tips on how to
Speaker 1: get a slightly larger portion of rations. Um. That's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing. This might be the most interesting point because
Speaker 1: the editors wrote in the paper that they intended to
Speaker 1: collect stories from celebrated male and female authors, and I
Speaker 1: mean that was super rare for that time period, right like,
Speaker 1: and pretty progressive for really any soldiers, let alone Confederates.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately there was only one edition of the paper
Speaker 1: that's been found so far, so you know, maybe a
Speaker 1: little too ahead of its time. That's pretty great, and
Speaker 1: it actually reminds me of one story that I read
Speaker 1: a long time ago, and we should talk about in
Speaker 1: future episodes to get more into the depth of it.
Speaker 1: But there's this publisher, I want to say, in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: who found a plate for Confederate money and then he
Speaker 1: printed out the bills in his paper and and so
Speaker 1: that people could just like cut him out of the
Speaker 1: paper and use them, and it totally deflated the Confederate currency,
Speaker 1: which is just an amazing story. But there's so many
Speaker 1: good real newspapers to talk about, Like there's, um, there's
Speaker 1: a paper in India, uh I pulled up for this
Speaker 1: research that's written exclusively by women and produced by women,
Speaker 1: and it tackles all these amazing village stories that most
Speaker 1: papers don't get to write about. There's a there's another
Speaker 1: paper that comes out and article that deserves mentioned. But
Speaker 1: instead I'm gonna use or waste my last fact on
Speaker 1: a fake paper that's been circulating for over fifty years now.
Speaker 1: And it's the dummy paper you might see on TV
Speaker 1: shows from Modern Family or the seventies show. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: also in like um movies like Ten Things I Hate
Speaker 1: About You or No Country for Old Men. It's really
Speaker 1: everywhere and once you spot it, you're going to see
Speaker 1: it everywhere. It's apparently produced by a company called the
Speaker 1: Earl Hayes Press. And the advantage of this fake paper
Speaker 1: is that there aren't any legal hurdles with using you
Speaker 1: know this uh, this fake brand. Otherwise, like you know,
Speaker 1: companies would have to pay the New York Times or
Speaker 1: whoever for licensing fees. But if you look at the
Speaker 1: headlines closely, they are so weird, like there's there's a
Speaker 1: picture of this woman and it says, uh, she's third
Speaker 1: brightest but hard alta see, which which makes no sense.
Speaker 1: And then there are all these like other super vanilla
Speaker 1: or nonsensical headlines like uh, Valley area records record growth,
Speaker 1: like none of these are articles you want to read.
Speaker 1: And I mean yet it's it's got to be one
Speaker 1: of the most successful papers out there, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess so. Well, you know, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: niche papers we've covered today. I think I was really
Speaker 1: taking with um the nine year old story, like, I
Speaker 1: think that one's amazing. But I also appreciated your use
Speaker 1: of the word Delaware and the Confederate Confederate prisoners papers.
Speaker 1: So I think I'm gonna have to give you this one.
Speaker 1: Well I knew that would work. Well, Thank you so much. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it for today's nine Things. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: a full length episode of Part Time Genius tomorrow. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius as a production of how stuff works and wouldn't
Speaker 1: be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
Speaker 1: things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does
Speaker 1: the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
Speaker 1: does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
Speaker 1: exact producer thing. Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support
Speaker 1: from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Speaker 1: Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to
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Speaker 1: for us. Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who