![thedailywhat:
How About That of the Day: La Bougie du Sapeur (Sapper’s Candle) — named after a French comic-book character born on Leap Day — is a satirical newspaper founded in 1980 which is published only once every four years, on February 29th.
Jean d’Indy, editor of the quadrennial newspaper, says he and his writers gather at a restaurant ahead of Leap Day, and down a bottle of bubbly before getting down to brass tacks.
“We try not to be naughty; we just try to be funny,” d’Indy says. “But we are not funny. Life is funny. So, it’s the way of seeing life which is funny.”
Whatever that means.
The paper sells for $5 a copy, and all proceeds go to benefit charities. With a circulation of 150,000, La Bougie du Sapeur easily outsells all other French papers published today.
D’Indy says at one point he considered offering subscriptions, but dropped the idea when he realized it would too difficult to track down subscribers every four years.
[npr.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m060xhafhr1qzpwi0o1_1280.jpg)
How About That of the Day: La Bougie du Sapeur (Sapper’s Candle) — named after a French comic-book character born on Leap Day — is a satirical newspaper founded in 1980 which is published only once every four years, on February 29th.
Jean d’Indy, editor of the quadrennial newspaper, says he and his writers gather at a restaurant ahead of Leap Day, and down a bottle of bubbly before getting down to brass tacks.
“We try not to be naughty; we just try to be funny,” d’Indy says. “But we are not funny. Life is funny. So, it’s the way of seeing life which is funny.”
Whatever that means.
The paper sells for $5 a copy, and all proceeds go to benefit charities. With a circulation of 150,000, La Bougie du Sapeur easily outsells all other French papers published today.
D’Indy says at one point he considered offering subscriptions, but dropped the idea when he realized it would too difficult to track down subscribers every four years.
[npr.]
Bicycle advertisements; Newspaperdom, July 30 (Keating) and August 13 (Columbia), 1896.
In the 1890s, in the midst of America’s “bike boom,” newspaper managers encouraged their reporters to use the machines as a way to crisscross congested cities quickly and easily. Ads for bicycle companies started showing up in the journalism trade press during this period, as did articles noting the steady rise in the number of female journalists.
Newspaperdom, December 26, 1895.
Same as it ever was? Same as it ever was.
Advertisement, Newspaperdom, March, 1894.
Makers of Linotype: The Film announced yesterday that they’re in the final stages of editing in preparation for their world premiere on February 3, 2012 in New York City.
The film is all about the most revolutionary innovation in mass communication technology that you’ve never heard of. We here at practical obscurity* have been excited about this film since May! Here’s hoping for a Twin Cities screening!
The tune for “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” comes from a song Felix Mendelssohn wrote in 1840 to honor Johann Gutenberg and the bicentennial of the invention of the printing press.
Thanks to my big sister Erin for tossing this little knowledge nugget my way after church this morning.
Advertisement, Printer’s Ink, June 24, 1903.
Printer’s Ink was a bi-weekly trade magazine for the publishing industry that ran from 1888 to 1967.
The Minneapolis Journal ran from 1888 to 1939, when it was purchased by, and merged with, the Minneapolis Star.
Peterson v. Western Union Tel. Co., 65 Minn. 18; 67 N.W. 646 (1896)
Minnesota Supreme Court rules that a telegraph message reading “Slippery Sam, your name is pants,” sent to State Senator Samuel Peterson (New Ulm) is libelous on its face.
(Later, in Peterson v. Western Union Tel. Co., 75 Minn. 368; 77 N.W. 985 (1899), the court ruled that the award of $2,000 was excessive and ordered a new trial unless Peterson agreed to take $1,000 instead.)
Cranks, Crack-pots, and Martians
On October 30, 1938, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) broadcast an adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. The hour-long radio program began with an announcer introducing a musical performance and moments later interrupting with a special news bulletin describing the landing of Martians in New Jersey and their subsequent attacks with death rays. Although CBS made four announcements during the broadcast identifying it as a dramatic performance, millions of Americans who heard it were scared into some sort of action, many wrote letters. The newly created Federal Communications Commission received more than 600 letters about the broadcast, including the one featured here.
I love the underlining. I did not jump out of the window.
The War of the Worlds “panic” is one of several media myths that media historian W. Joseph Campbell has sought to debunk. He says that one reason the War of the Worlds panic story is so persistent is that the tale is “almost too good, too delicious not to be true.”
Moreover, the “panic broadcast” myth endures because it evokes the latent power of media content: Media messages have the potential to produce effects that are unpredictable, wide-ranging, and even dangerous.
The myth also lives on because it offers implicit reassurance for contemporary media audiences: It reminds and reassures them of their comparative sophistication. Back then, back in the 1930s, media audiences were pretty gullible, as the panicked reactions to The War of the Worlds suggest. But that’s not so much the case today, this line of thinking goes (which overlooks such recent stunts as the Colorado balloon boy and the TV report of the breakup of Belgium).
The story also fed the growing legend of wunderkind Orson Welles, and Welles himself wasn’t shy about helping it along. In an interview later on in his career with biographer Peter Bogdanovich, Welles described the response to his broadcast thusly:
“Houses were emptying, churches were filling up; from Nashville to Minneapolis, there was wailing in the street and the rending of garments.”
