This Georgia Museum Preserves The Golden Age Of Small Town Newspapers

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Stacks of old newsprint line the walls of the Georgia Weekly Newspaper Musuem in Homer.

Publishing news these days is as easy as sending a tweet. Not so in the early 1900s, when it could take days just turn out a newspaper. You can relive this era in the Banks County town of Homer, where printing presses and other technology from the time are preserved in a museum. 

Mike Buffington walks through the museum.

The Georgia Weekly Newspaper Museum is in the former home of the Banks County Journal, first published in 1897.

"This shop...published a newspaper, but they were really printers," says Mike Buffington. He founded the museum and is co-publisher of six papers in northeast Georgia. "They did commercial printing off these other little, small presses for the courthouse across the street. They would print envelopes and letterheads for businesses and community people around town. And that's kind of how they made their money, through job printing. The didn't make much money from the newspaper." 

"Our joke is, when the zombie apocalypse comes, we can still put out a newspaper, no electricity needed," Buffington says. "All we need is paper and ink and we can do it all by hand right here, like they did in the 1800s."

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The musuem is housed in the former home of the Banks County Journal.

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The musuem's Campbell press is one of two in the U.S. still in working condition. It was used to print the Banks County Journal for almost 70 years.

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This automated press was used for larger jobs.

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Before the rise of offset printing in the mid 20th century, print shops composed newspapers by hand. Capital letters were kept in the upper cases, while small letters were stored below. Hence the terms "upper case" and "lower case."

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Printing plate for the Banks County Journal.

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Wallace Harden became publisher of the Journal shortly after its launch in 1897.