It’s easy to take the phenomenon of the Sunday paper for granted. Until just recently, the idea of a metro Sunday newspaper complete with color comics, special supplements and inserts landing on your porch with a resounding thud was the way of the world.
While the devastating decline in the nation’s newspaper industry has suddenly made us conscious that the world may not always have newspapers to sort through on a Sunday (or on any other day for that matter), Paul Moore and Sandra Gabriele have written “The Sunday Paper: A Media History” to provide a vivid account on how one of the most successful media stories—from both an artistic and business viewpoint—came to be.
Transcending the constraints of newsprint while facing competition from other media, Sunday editions borrowed forms from and eventually partnered with magazines, film and radio, inviting people to not only read but watch and listen.
“When we started in 2007, we would never have guessed how newspapers would be a thing of the past by the time we finished (“The Sunday Paper” was published last year by the University of Illinois Press), including the great American Sunday paper. But we already knew the art, fiction and fun of Sunday papers had always been precarious and ephemeral,” Moore and Gabriele wrote.
In their interview with Steve Tarter, the authors relate how syndication efforts that started late in the 19th century played a part in making the Sunday paper special. It wasn’t just about news, the very lifeblood of the newspaper, that made the Sunday effort outstanding, “the Sunday paper structured a different relationship between its world and public,” Moore and Gabriele noted.
“From the society and fashion pages to sporting and business reports, theater reviews, and listings, and feature stories about contemporary culture, Sunday supplements took advantage of a day of leisure to reflect upon pastimes and amusements,” the authors stated.
The death of newsprint is also part of the story here as newspapers, displaced first by “breaking news” broadcasts on radio and TV and then by Twitter and other social media, no longer own the public stage. Can a Sunday paper succeed in a digital world? Moore suggests that it would be an effort in nostalgia to try and reinstate a printed journal since our whole concept of a day of leisure has changed along with our media choices.
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