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Lumberjack Centennial Postcard

For one hundred years The Lumberjack has been the student newspaper of Northern Arizona University. In honor of its centennial, every found issue has been digitally archived at the Cline Library’s special collections. Arizona Public Radio’s Justin Regan talked to some of the people who worked for The Lumberjack in its century of publication and submitted this audio postcard.

Hello my name is George Adams I attended Northern Arizona University from 1973 in the fall, graduated in December 1974, worked on The Lumberjack newspaper for that entire time.

Contrary to popular opinion in 1974 we did have automobiles, we did have lights, we obviously typed on manual Smith-Corona typewriters. Then we’d actually have to literally take a razor blade knife out and cut and paste the articles into the columns and actually cut and paste onto the newspaper with articles, advertisements and other things like that.

We had a streaking incident at Northern Arizona, in the fall of ’74 that we covered. What we decided we were going to do as a staff, and we all got together and voted on it, the night that it was all going on, was we would run the picture and obviously block out anything that we thought might be offensive on the picture. And at the time that it was going downtown to the commercial newspaper to be printed, one of our professors pulled the picture and in reaction, Keith Klingenberg picked up a pencil and wrote across the top ‘censored’ across there, and the paper ran with this blank section that showed ‘censored’ across the front page of The Lumberjack. Being young and energetic and journalists, we felt we were being censored by the college we were trying to represent and learn from.

Hi my name is Steve Saville currently I’m the executive director of the Flagstaff Family Food Center, Food Bank and Kitchen. I worked at The Lumberjack from 1981 to 1985, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

The biggest on campus issues were food, to be honest with you. We only had four places you could eat on campus. So the issues we were facing editorially were, we didn’t take anything on regionally or nationally or even state-wide as much as we took on ‘where can I find the best happy hour?’ or ‘where can I find the best food deals?’. I’ll never forget Ned Dale wrote a column about how to find the best happy hour places in town and the art of stacking a plate as high as you can.

My favorite memories I can’t share on media I’m sure, but we had a different culture back then, it was more about having fun.

My name is Jordan Emerson I’m a NAU graduate of 2003, I’m currently an assistant Attorney General in the criminal division in Tucson, Arizona and I went to NAU from 1999 to 2003. I was working at The Lumberjack in some facet during all of those years.

I was editor in chief during 9/11, and I just remember running into the office and everybody was kind of trickling in. We had people trying to figure out what was going on, cover it from a news standpoint. I remember I actually contacted a young woman whose uncle had passed away and she found that out that day, I wrote a story about that and her experience.

I remember that day approaching it from a very news standpoint I wanted to get the story, I wanted to report the story, I wanted to share her experiences with everybody. In hindsight, maybe looking at it years later I feel bad that I went and talked to her and tried to interview her that day, in such a personal and devastating moment for her. I think it turned in to a good story and hopefully got her some support from her friends and family. I think in general it was good, I definitely think back on it and wonder if it was the right thing to do talking to her at such an emotional time.

Hello my name is Bree Purdy and I’m the current editor-in-chief of The Lumberjack. I’ve been working here for this is my, three and a half years.

So over here is all the computers where we do our production, so on Tuesday nights, the editors come in and get their pages ready for their designers to come in and begin laying it out, so they’re going to come in and place the story, place the bi-lines, photos as well as cut-lines. The designer is going to come in and make it look pretty for the page, ready to print, make sure everything is going to print properly on the newsprint and in addition.

So Tuesday nights are a little crazy. I myself get here on 9 AM on Tuesdays and I’m here until about, anywhere from 11 to 1 AM. A lot of meals are consumed here, I eat my three meals here on Tuesday as does a lot of the staff, so there’s a lot of food around, a lot of candy around. It becomes home for Tuesday night.

Every day when I come here and I think ‘oh, this is so amazing’ and then I remember that my work here is maybe one percent of The Lumberjack’s history. And there’s been so many people before me. And it serves as an amazing history book of sorts, of both the University’s history as well as the student culture of the time.

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