Tuesday, December 11, 2012

New Haven history: We're pretty proud of our 200th anniversary project--and I'm thankful for the help

 










By Ed Stannard, Community Engagement Editor

Hi all,

Apologies to all for the lack of activity on this blog and on my Twitter account as well as the Your Open Newsroom account.

As I hope you've seen, we've just finished publishing a nine-part special section series about the Register's 200th anniversary, much of which we've posted on a Rebel Mouse site. Most of the labor has been for print, and when print deadlines loom, it's hard to focus on much else.

If you get the paper daily, you have the complete collection. We've traced the history of New Haven over the last 200 years, as well as the Register's, with photos of New Haven locations in the past and how they look today.

I also was a panelist on WNPR's "Where We Live" last week with the inestimable New Haven historians Jim Campbell of the New Haven Museum and city historian Judith Schiff of Yale. They are amazing people who know so much about this city. Unfortunately for us, Jim is retiring at the end of January, as Randy Beach wrote Sunday.

If you'd like to order a set, they cost $18.12 if you pick them up at the Register. Or you can have them shipped for a fee. Call 888-453-9995.

There were so many people who helped put this project together, including reporter Joe Amarante, who wrote several lead stories. Jim Campbell helped as well, especially with old photos, as did Allison Botelho of the New Haven Free Public Library. Both of those are celebrating anniversaries this year too: the museum is 150 and the library is 125!

Without two people, however, the project would never have gotten done with anywhere near the professionalism. For all I know, it wouldn't have gotten done at all! First, I have to thank our librarian, Angel Diggs (left), who spent hours in several libraries finding images of our front pages--no easy task for that early Columbian Register--as well as photos of our 200 prominent people. She is a total professional, but she went above and beyond on this project.

The other is Ann Dallas (below), one of our designers, who designed all 54 of the editorial pages. She's another totally wonderful person and it was great to work more closely with her on this.

Don't worry the project isn't over. We still have many of our 200 people to write about, and there's still a lot of New Haven history we haven't touched on. (If there's something you think we missed, let me know.) So keep in touch, watch this space, and let's get a start on another 200 years!



0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are held for review before posting, per our Online Comments Policy, which you can read at http://bit.ly/nhronlinecomments. If you believe your comment was wrongly removed or not approved, email voices@nhregister.com

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home