American Centinel: The first newspaper in Pittsfield, Mass.

For newspaper history buffs: Over on the blog of Pittsfield's Monday Evening Club, I've posted a 2003 presentation to the Club detailing the history of the first newspaper in Pittsfield, the American Centinel, of which only one copy is known to survive.

Ruminations on newspapers and communities

My friend Richard Floyd keeps a blog called Retired Pastor Ruminates. He is a fellow member of the Monday Evening Club of Pittsfield, Mass., to which I presented a paper, previously mentioned here, on the future of newspapers.

Floyd has now conducted and posted an e-mail interview following up on the paper, in which he pursues, and I attempt to answer, a line of inquiry relating to the function of newspapers in holding together communities, and whether the decline of newspapers will have an effect on the well-being of communities.