The Handwritten Newspapers Project

Countless kind people–historians, librarians, archivists, colleagues, friends and family members–assisted me with this project. This bibliography and collection would not have been possible without them and is the better because of their assistance and advice.

There are too many to thank by name, but I owe a special debt of gratitude to the archivists and librarians at the State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, for introducing me to handwritten newspapers (notably the Quarterly Visitor) and helping me with my initial research into this fascinating cultural phenomenon; to Dr. Carolyn S. Dyer and Dr. John Erickson, professors emeritus/a, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa, for their guidance and encouragement in my initial studies of handwritten papers as a graduate student under their direction; to the literally hundreds of archivists across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, a who gave of their time and expertise to help locate and identify manuscript newspapers in their collections; to daughter Hannah Grieser for carefully logging much of the raw material I had collected into its present annotated bibliographic form; to Dr. Michael Ray Smith for his own research into handwritten newspapers in North Carolina, published in Free Press in Freehand, his enthusiasm for the genre, and for prodding me to get back to this project (after many years of neglect and administrative diversions); to many of my former colleagues and friends at Nehemiah Gateway University, New Saint Andrews College, University of Idaho, Gonzaga University, North West University (South Africa), and elsewhere, who have helped and encouraged me more than they will ever know; and most of all to my wife and dearest friend Beverlee for her years of encouragement and great patience while I rummaged through countless haystacks looking for these rare journalistic needles around the world.

Funding and Support

Financial, staff, and resource support for this project has been generously provided by the following organizations over the years:

The John Calhoun Smith Memorial Fund of the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho USA, which funded several grants (1988, 1990, and 1994) to support this project’s archival search at libraries across North America, historical and contextual research, and cataloging and documentary analysis

The Canadian Consulate for a Faculty Enrichment Grant, 1988, for the study of Canadian media in Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA USA, for a John F. Murray Travel Grant and a John F. Murray Award for Excellence in Teaching and Research, 1980

The School of Communication of the University of Idaho, Moscow, ID USA, which provided staff assistance for the many mailings, hours of indexing and cataloging, and general support of my research from 1984-2000

The State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City, IA USA, for introducing me to their handwritten newspapers and helping with my research which was published, in part, in Journalism History. Thanks too for SHSI’s invitation to present my earliest newspaper research in a keynote address “Old News: Using Newspapers in Pursuit of the Past” to the Iowa Newspaper Project Conference: Pilot Project for the National Newspaper Preservation Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Des Moines, IA, 1984

The Kosciuszko Foundation, New York, NY USA, for funding my media research travel to East Central Europe in 1995 that gave me access to state and university archives with handwritten newspapers in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, and

New Saint Andrews College, Moscow, ID USA, for providing a supportive environment from 2000-2015 in which to work and allowing time away from my administrative duties to work on this bibliography and web site.

Thanks to all.