By Staff
Newsprint doesn't hold up too well. It yellows and turns brittle, sending up clouds of dust when you turn the pages of a bound volume holding a year's worth of issues.
Some of what's printed on the pages doesn't last long either - old Ford Model Ts for just a few hundred dollars; editorials that don't quite match public opinion anymore.
But however brittle they become, newspapers remain a record of our history - good and bad, joys and sorrows.
This year makes the 100th that The Brewton Standard has been delivering news under that name, derived not only from the railroad that was such an important part of our early history but also from the community itself.
The new publishers in 1906 wanted to make sure they highlighted their community's name in the banner across the front page; focusing on &#8220Brewton” was important to them and to the newspaper.
That commitment has not wavered over the past century.
Our mission is to deliver the community's news to our readers without bias, and our goal is to cover every aspect of our community - not only the public meetings and natural disasters and crime stories but also the weddings and births and obituaries and school field days and everything in between.
In preparing the special section you'll find inside today, I spent several weeks flipping through bound volumes of the newspaper. Features writer Lydia Grimes and I strained our eyes over a few afternoons to read the earliest issues of The Brewton Standard on microfilm at Jefferson Davis Community College.
What we found is an amazing record of our community's history, its personality, its culture over 100 years of newspapers.
Perusing a century's worth of newspapers, I saw family names repeated through the years, watched many readers grow up and learned about the events that shaped our community.
To celebrate that legacy - as well as The Brewton Standard's new look that greeted you today - we will hold a reception from 7:30 to 10 a.m. Stop by on your way to work for a cup of coffee and a donut, or take a break during the morning to say hello. We'll have refreshments and copies of the newspaper and the special centennial section.
I hope you enjoy our new look - and enjoy taking a look back at our history.
Kerry Whipple Bean is publisher of The Brewton Standard. She can be reached at 867-4876 or by e-mail at kerry.bean@brewtonstandard.com.