![]() ![]() ![]() Pictures of wrecked cars appeared every third or fourth day. There were too many vehicle crashes with more people injured and killed per capita than today. Growth dominated the local news, and life here seemed to be much harder than it is today. And then there were human interest pieces from all over. Trains wrecked, planes crashed and workers went on strike. Actress Grace Kelly was engaged to Monaco’s Prince Rainier, and the nuptuals were planned for the following June. News items nationally included President Eisenhower’s recovery from his heart attack the previous September and whether or not he’d go for a second term. Nailing the première of “Quickie Quiz” to 7:50 on the morning of Monday January 9, 1956, I quickly became enmeshed in what was really going on 53 years ago. My recent exercise became addictive in a thousand-and-one ways as I turned page after page of the Missourian and Tribune on microfilm. This means news items without the reporter’s personal bias or opinion and editorials on pages traditionally reserved for that purpose. An amazing concept: a return to the traditional core values and practice of journalism. Let’s bulletin a headlong plunge into super-serving the community. Perhaps the whining about its diminishment within the Fourth Estate could be reversed if the press returned to its simple, basic raison d’être. There was a “society” page that included photos of area children, a weekly page devoted to homebuilding and a “home of the week.” Dozens of smaller local – some would say “filler” – pieces rounding out each day’s chronicle, giving me a sense of what life in Columbia was like at the time. There were stories about courthouse activities, including the daily traffic court, police and fire news from reporters on the “fires and wrecks” beat. Healthy competition back then between both afternoon dailies (the Missourian became a morning paper in 1968) wonderfully chronicled the events of this growing city in a way that I’m afraid will never return.īoth dailies’ front pages overflowed with a dozen or more individual news items. These days, regretfully, in my opinion, journalism has diminished. Journalism was practiced so much differently half a century ago. We have been assured much more accurate information buttresses the boldness of Columbia’s passage into the six-figure realm. An estimate gone wild, because the official census figure for 1960 was only 36,650.Ī few weeks ago, the Tribune’s 100,000 population headline used a typeface significantly less bold and was spread over only two columns of a significantly narrower front page. There it was on the Tribune’s front page for future generations to read on microfilm. With Columbia’s 1950 population just over the 31,000 mark according to the official federal census, the folks from Polk were really going out on a limb. They began with an estimate of 45,000 inhabitants and then added another two thousand or so they expected to add if more than 2,000 acres of territory was annexed to the city in a special election a few weeks later, which in fact did occur. The story under the headline, “Columbia Population is Nearing 50,000,” was based on information gleaned from surveyors canvassing the city for listings in the R.L. One headline sprayed across eight columns of the Tribune’s front page on the afternoon of January 4, 1956, underscoring the ebullient feeling people in general felt about Columbia both at the time and for the years to come. Journeying through newspaper files more than a half-century old brought forth an overloading amount of detail about local people, places, events and simply life hereabouts in general. Gathering history can become a dangerous addiction. The mission was successful, but it also sprung a trap. The answer came after rolling through microfilm copies of both Columbia daily newspapers in the superb newspaper library at the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia. A listener wanted to know when KFRU’s daily “Quickie Quiz” feature first aired, and Lile asked me if I could come up with the date. ![]() It began with a call from David Lile, host of the Morning Show on News Talk 1400. Al Germond is the host of the "Sunday Morning Roundtable" every Sunday at 8:15 a.m. ![]()
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