Old-time newspaper buffs were around long before email and the rest of today's electronic media came along with their paperless, tasteless, odorless product. Some newspapers, like the one you may be lucky enough to be holding in your hands right now, perhaps folded with a satisfying rustle over your morning coffee, still come the old-fashioned way. And there's nothing quite like its sound and feel for pure satisfaction--and for generating topics of conversation around the breakfast table or at your favorite coffee shop. Such as: How do newspapers get their names?
It's clear enough how this daily got its name. For it's the result of a merger between two papers after a bitter newspaper war that pitted the rival papers, the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette, against each other in a fight to the death. But before hostilities had ended, that rivalry gave the state's readers a choice, not an echo. Echo, by the way, is also a favorite name for newspapers, as in campus papers like the one put out by the University of Central Arkansas at Conway.
Behind every newspaper's name there lies a story, even a saga. Or maybe a book. And with luck the name may raise enough questions to get a curious columnist searching for some answers. Jim Bernhard, who put together Porcupine, Picayune, & Post, a book of picturesque appellations for newspapers, began it with a true-to-life anecdote, a standard way to bring newspaper copy to life.
"It all began," he begins, "with the Jimplecute. A few years ago while wandering around the northeast Texas town of Jefferson--I do a lot of wandering when I travel--I noticed someone reading what looked like a newspaper with the word Jimplecute in large letters across the top of the page. I am shy around strangers, so I didn't have the nerve to just walk up to the person and ask directly, 'What's a Jimplecute?' A question like that might get your face slapped, or worse."
Finally our hero and author came across a whole stack of these newspapers, and then an office with the name The Jefferson Jimplecute above the door, and all began to fall into place. A word that might mean anything from a cute facial feature to a small insect could actually be the name of the local paper. And so it was, unlikely as that had seemed at first.
To this date the origin of the name Jimplecute remains a mystery to be solved by researchers, historians and the simply curious. If you know, by all means let this puzzled columnist and amateur sleuth know. All leads are welcome.
The legendary American poet Walt Whitman took note of peculiar names for newspapers in an essay in which he noted, like a zoologist classifying a strange species of bug: "Among the far-west have been, or are, the Fairplay (Col.) Flume, the Tombstone Epitaph of Nevada [though it's actually in Arizona], the Jimplecute of Texas, and the Bazoo of Missouri." Imagine picking up your copy of the Bazoo to see what's going on in town. That's how to start the day with a bang, if not a whole band.
And so a book was born full of journalistic curiosities, though you may have to be a newspaper buff like me to stay curious about this topic. Back in my college days at Centenary in Shreveport, I edited the student newspaper called the Conglomerate, which was a fair enough description of its jumbled contents since it leaned heavily toward strong opinions by students eager to present their solutions to all the world's problems.
When those opinions displeased the bullies on campus, Centenary also offered an education in how an editor could stand his ground and face them down. It's an education I'd like think has stood me in good stead over these many years, for it's kept me in trouble.
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 10/04/2017