How to celebrate the paper's 150th anniversary?

Our paper turned 140 last year and we celebrated quite a bit, but it was more of an in-house deal with community leaders.

This year, Fort Collins (the city) turns 150 and we've been getting some great reader response from the weekly retrospective content we've been publishing. Don't know if this will help you at all, but take a look if you need some ideas. Don't make it so much about the paper, make it about the city and the people who read your paper.

http://www.coloradoan.com/news/fort-collins-150th-anniversary/

 

DUDE ....


NSFW.

 

I worked at a paper that did its 100th anniversary a few years ago and we found the longest continuous subscriber to our paper. Sounds lame, but it ended up being a fun story on someone who had seen a lot of community history.

And the guy's name was Charles Barkley. For real.

 

Did you ask him to bobble?

 

Along these same lines, look at the history of baseball in your community. In our state, there were a number of semi-pro teams who played in a league in the first half of the 20th century -- each town of any size seemed to have one -- and I'd bet other states were pretty similar. With some luck, you might be able to find a few people who played on one.

 

Interview people age 70 and up, and ask them which decade of America they liked best. Get them to tell you why.

 

Any chance your paper can do a comprehensive investigation of just how many people it cost scholarships by not running full JV sports agate?