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Aug 23, 2009 10:47 pm US/Central
Finding Minnesota: Newsprint History At The Fair
FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. (WCCO) ―
This year's Minnesota State Fair kicks off on Thursday. With so much food out there, it's always good to have a plan for how you'll spend your time between feedings.
We can help you with that. In this week's Finding Minnesota, we have a tour of a hidden treasure out at the State Fairgrounds: the Minnesota Newspaper Museum.
You know there was a time when the typewriter ruled. One character at a time, stories in the newspaper took shape.
That place and time still thrives at the Minnesota Newspaper Museum. It's been open since the mid-1980s in Heritage Square.
The machines you can see there are the real tools that were used to print the Maynard News in western Minnesota back in the early 1900s.
Bob Shaw, now retired, once worked as a writer for the Associated Press and later as an editor at the Forest Lake Times.
Today he is one of nearly 70 volunteers who give tours of the newspaper museum.
"The idea is to show the living history, to show the actual conditions and the actual equipment that people used for about 75-80 years to print newspapers," he said.
During the State Fair, volunteers work in shifts to show curious fairgoers how newspapers came together back in the day.
"It was a lot of awfully hard work," he said. "It was work in the presence of equipment which now we think is very slow and ponderous. Some of this equipment is dangerous, too. It had to be handled with great respect."
An example of that equipment is the linotype machine, which used hot lead to make little tablets called slugs that contain characters. If the machine wasn't kept incredibly clean, every now and then it would squirt out melted lead that would hit the operator.
"That metal, when it comes out of there, is 525 degrees. And if it lands on your arm, you have to grab it and twist it, get the hair off, and throw it away," said Shaw. "I used to see linotype operators who had little scars from squirts. That was one of the incentives to keep this machine clean."
During the run of the State Fair, the museum typically sees a steady stream of visitors. In fact, one year they kept count of the number of folks who came through. They were shocked to find out they had 65,000 visitors.
But like many other places, the Newspaper Museum and the foundation that runs it are now dealing with money problems. This year, for the first time ever, Shaw and his friends had to ask for donations to help cover the operating expenses.
The future of the place that captures an important part of Minnesota history is uncertain. So, as you stroll down the State Fairgrounds later this week or next, consider taking a walk down memory lane.
The Minnesota Newspaper Museum is located in Heritage Square, just west of the Grandstand at the state fairgrounds. Volunteers will be giving tours each day of the fair from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
And new this year, editors from newspapers around the state will be on hand to answer questions about the industry.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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