Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

“With this issue of RECORD, we commence the publication of the first newspaper ever printed in Renovo.”
With these words, the Record began a century and a half ago this month.

It was several months ago when I got a slightly panicked call from Chris Miller, asking me when the Record had been founded. “We know it was in 1871,” he said,”But we can’t remember which month. Did we miss our 150th anniversary?”

“Nah,” I assured him. “That’s not until December. Come on, man. Pay attention to what you’re doing.”

So, of course, we have to recognize the 150th anniversary of Clinton County’s oldest active newspaper. I myself have been writing for it for over ten years, which is eight or so longer than Chris Miller has. The first issue of the Record was published on December 21, 1871, with some difficulty. I started looking through the microfilm, almost immediately leaving something of a mess by the filing cabinets.

“Who keeps leaving the microfilm laying around?” asked one of my co-workers.

“The Record is having an anniversary,” I said. “I’ll have a talk with this Miller person and tell him to clean up after himself.”

Originally, the Record was published from 300 Erie Avenue in Renovo, created by John Upton Shaffer. The first issue was published against remarkable odds; the word “fiasco” comes to mind.

“Owing to our failure to receive all of the newspaper material from Messrs. Haga & Co., type founders, New York, we are obliged to issue but a half sheet for our first number,” Shaffer stated apologetically in the first issue.

They’d had some supply and delivery problems, which almost led to a disaster.

The typesetting stuff—The printing material and the letters needed to print the newspaper—Had only partially arrived. The Record office first received only half the alphabet, the other half coming in days later. So the first issue of the Record came very close to only including the letters A through M, which would have been a phrasing nightmare. (Someone suggested that I write this column using only those letters out of solidarity, which gave me a headache just thinking about it.)

Due to this, the initial issue of the Record was published late in the day, for which Shaffer apologized, but it did come out on the scheduled day. And that first issue was something of a wonder. You know how the newspapers tend to be organized, with the obits on page three, and opinions on page four, and so on? That sort of organization didn’t begin until around World War II. As far back as the 1800s, articles were just thrown in wherever, in a mishmash of pages.

The first page of the Record ever, for instance, began with poetry. The poems “A Mother’s Song” and “Feeding The Cow” were featured prominently in the first column. The front page also contained a piece on old superstitions, a story about a funeral for a dog, and instructions on how to hunt wild bees. By the second page, they got around to some editorials—Most of which involved explaining why the newspaper was a few hours late—And all the local news, including a recent murder to the north. You had to really work to find your news in those days, is what I am saying here.

Within the first year, the Record offices moved next door. A few years later, Shaffer was elected as a State Representative, and his son took over the newspaper. When Shaffer died in 1902, his son continued to run the Record, with assistance from his brother.

And with this, at a hundred and fifty years old, I’m proud to have taken a small part in this legacy. I’d like to wish the Record a happy anniversary—Or, as the first issue almost put it, _A___ 150_H __ _HE _EC__D!