Newspapers on Microfilm

Ever since I could read, I've been a reader of newspapers. Of course, at the beginning, I was basically reading the comics, when back in those days (the early 1960's) they were actually intended for children. When I became more sophisticated in my reading abilities and interests, I still wasn't one for reading all of the articles in depth, just the headlines and maybe a few lines in the articles (unless one grabbed my attention, of course). Starting in the summer of 1964, I became particularly interested in the hurricane season when Hurricane Cleo began its approach to Cuba and South Florida. The act of flipping pages in each edition of the newspaper (we took the Miami News, an evening paper then in competition with the morning Miami Herald) to find a little article here and there about where the latest hurricane was had a side benefit: I became exposed to the scope of the news as it was being reported then. When I was a student at the University of Florida here in Gainesville, I found that one of the main libraries had a microfilm reading room with extensive archives of U.S. and world newspapers. In my spare time, I sometimes would go down there and pick a year that I wanted to explore. It was very interesting to relive history as it was being reported, and sometimes I would discover something that either explained a mystery or contradicted a commonly-held belief. Let me give a couple of examples.

In 1965, Hurricane Betsy surprised all of the experts by making two loops in the western Atlantic before swinging southwestward to hit the southern end of Florida. But that wasn't all: like Katrina in 2005 (but not as severely), it swung through the Gulf of Mexico and hit New Orleans. Then (or so I thought), it went inland, dumped a lot a rain, and eventually died out. Now fast forward eight years to 1973. I was in high school talking with a friend when the conversation drifted to hurricanes. I mentioned that I was disappointed that no hurricanes had hit us since Betsy in 1965 (and hence got no time off from school). My friend responded by saying that Betsy was the strangest hurricane there was because after it hit New Orleans, it went through the U.S., came out into the Atlantic Ocean, and went clear across and hit England! I thought my friend was exaggerating a bit, but I let it go. Years later, I was reading in the UF microfilm library in a newspaper that followed Betsy's rampage through Florida and Louisiana along with its aftermath. On page 2 of one the editions, an article's headline read "London hit hard by Betsy". Did Betsy actually do as my friend said? No, it was Lloyd's, the huge shipping insurance company based in London, that had been hit hard by Betsy (due to the claims from storm damage). Apparently, my high school friend had just read this headline back then and drew a mistaken conclusion from it. It goes to show you how misinformation can easily be picked up and spread.

One another occasion, I was perusing the microfilm for the events leading up to the June 1968 California Democratic Presidential Primary. Back then, whoever won a plurality in that primary, no matter how small, automatically won all of that state's delegates to the nominating convention. Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy were slugging it out, debating and campaigning hard to see who could win it. But where was front-running Hubert Humphrey? As a pre-primary article preserved in microfilm pointed out, Humphrey bypassed the California Primary because he had already amassed enough committed delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. California was basically a contest at the end of the primary season to see who would be the leading opposition candidate and also to send more delegates to write an anti-war platform at the convention. As it turned out, RFK won the primary narrowly over McCarthy and was shortly afterwards tragically assassinated. But nowadays, if you tune in to the History Channel, you're told that Kennedy, by winning California, had sewn up the nomination and probably would have been elected president! So, reading the old newspapers also helps to deflate revisionism caused by myth-making as well as clear up mysteries caused by innocent misinformation.

Aside from following historical events as they happened, by examining old newspapers through microfilm, you can get a pulse on opinions about the issues, not just from the professional editors and columnists, but also from the letters to the editor. If you're a sports fan, you can start at the beginning of any season you want and follow your favorite team's progress through the season, game-by-game. Even if all you want to do is revert to early childhood and read the comics, then that's an option as well (although the Sunday comics usually aren't on microfilm, for some reason). What I like to do is "sneak up" on an important event in history, starting a few days earlier than the event, and see how the event unfolds and is reported from day to day. Just doing this can arm you against revisionists who base their conclusions on faulty information.