Latest news with #Route66-themed
Chicago Tribune
24-06-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Route 66: Print day at a 145-year-old Kansas newspaper
GALENA, Kan. — She wrote front-page stories about changes to the city's animal ordinance and the county's efforts to clean up an illegal dumping site. She laid out the rest of the week's 10-page paper: Obituaries on page two. Columns from local contributors on pages three and four. School news on five. Classifieds on eight. A back-page photo spread on three-dimensional Route 66-themed chalk art in a park along the historic road in nearby Joplin, Missouri. By 4 p.m. that day, Machelle Smith moved to her next task. Seated at her cluttered desk inside the Galena Sentinel-Times newspaper's office on Route 66 near the Missouri border, she converted each page of the upcoming issue to PDFs to send to the printer before the 5 p.m. deadline. The paper's masthead lists Smith as the operations manager. The 58-year-old Galena native calls herself its 'jack of all trades.' 'I've done everything,' she said above the crackle of a nearby police scanner. The newspaper has existed in one form or another in this part of southeastern Kansas since 1880, three years after the town was founded around the discovery of lead in the area. Its current iteration is the result of a 1945 merger between The Galena Times Republican and The Galena Sentinel. Eighteen years ago, Smith was working at an area restaurant when a friend asked if she was interested in a career change. The friend's brother owned the newspaper, then called the Sentinel-Times, and needed to replace the departing editor. She had no journalism experience. Still, she took the job. 'For the first few months it was me by myself trying to figure out how to do everything,' she said. Eventually, she learned how to put the paper together and how to operate the newspaper's print shop in the rear of the newsroom — its services include business cards, invitations, stickers, banners, posters, fliers and the like. For the last three years, the paper has printed posters for the town's birthday festival (called Galena Days) and donated 10 subscriptions as door prizes. Last December, the newspaper's longtime publisher, David Nelson, died at 72. An engineer by trade, his obituary says he bought the paper in 1977, in part, 'so people at least had a place to publish an obituary free of charge' (they're still published free of charge). Local business owner Brian Jordan purchased the paper from Nelson's widow. Jordan, said Smith, 'believes if the newspaper dies, the town dies.' More than 3,200 U.S. newspapers have folded in the last 20 years, according to a study from Northwestern University's Medill Local News Initiative. At least 3.5 million people live in counties the study called news deserts, places with 'no local news outlet consistently producing original content.' The Galena paper is, of course, not immune to the pressures facing news outlets across the country. The staff size has remained virtually unchanged since Smith joined. There's proofreader Tia Day, who recently moved to St. Louis and works remotely. Webmaster Shayla Sturgis was once an intern who also works for a Native American tribe in northeast Oklahoma. Advertising director Aniston Johnson, 22, joined the paper 10 months ago. Sometimes, she'll grab a stack of papers and head to businesses in surrounding communities to see if they'll buy an ad. 'It's a little difficult,' she said. Like Smith, she multitasks. Last month, she wrote about a state award for a school kitchen manager. 'That one was a tough one for me, because it was my first time doing that,' she said. 'It was a little nerve-wracking.' She also pens — literally — articles on historical events. At her desk, she has a handwritten draft of an article on an early 16th-century 'dancing plague' in an area of what is now France. The paper has two freelance journalists who cover sports, Smith said, with plans to add more. They're also planning to devote the middle four pages to more Route 66 coverage as next year's centennial approaches. Kansas has by far the shortest segment of the route of all eight states at 13.2 miles, and two associations dedicated to route preservation: Kansas Historic Route 66 Association and Route 66 Association of Kansas (Smith sits on the latter's board). Having finished uploading the PDFs of the latest issue, Smith closed the office for the day. The paper, once printed in Joplin, is now printed about 120 miles east near Branson, Missouri. About 1,200 copies were delivered to the newsroom before 6:30 a.m. Thursday, when Smith arrived. On her to-do list that morning: Take 594 copies to the post office to mail to subscribers and the rest to newspaper racks around town.
Los Angeles Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
New exhibit at Newport Beach Library showcases local artist's depictions of Route 66 and coastal Orange County
Joan Gladstone showed enough promise as a painter to get accepted into the Boston University College of Fine Arts. It wasn't long after she arrived on campus that she found herself grappling with a question countless other talented 18-year-olds standing on the verge of the rest of their lives have asked themselves. 'In my freshman year I thought, 'How will I ever make a living as an oil painter?'' said Gladstone, who now resides in Laguna Beach. 'And I didn't have the confidence back then to stick with it.' She switched her major to journalism. That led her to a successful career running her own public relations firm. Gladstone said she never lost her passion for the visual arts and visited exhibits as often as she could. She tried to keep her skills sharp by taking classes offered by the city of Laguna Beach beginning in 2007. But she just couldn't afford to make art her priority, given her other responsibilities. 'After dabbling in classes, I'd do a painting and I'd feel a month or two would go by and I'm starting all over again,' Gladstone said. 'I'm kind of going backwards; I'm not progressing because I'm not investing the time in it.' She described painting as a dormant 'seed.' And it wasn't until she started to step away from her first career that she began finding time to truly nourish and cultivate her latent talents. 'We have to be realistic about not trying to do too much at the same time, and that was my problem,' Gladstone said. 'I was trying to run a business. We had huge, important clients and [I was] taking art classes at the same time. And it just didn't work. I think we need to give ourselves permission to say we may have to do things in stages.' Looking, back, Gladstone said she's grateful opportunities life offered eventually led her to a point where she could fully dedicate herself to art. Her work, much of which offers a local's perspective of the sights and culture of coastal Orange County, has been displayed at John Wayne Airport as well as art shows in Huntington Beach; she's planning another show for Los Angeles in September. Earlier this month she debuted the first five of a new series of paintings she has been working on, inspired by trips with her husband across iconic Route 66 in 2009 and 2024. Those, as well as six of her paintings showcasing life and landmarks in Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, are on display at the Newport Beach Central Library through Aug. 31. Her Route 66-themed series, with a nod to its upcoming 100th year, evokes 20th century Americana with depictions of signage travelers may have spotted along the 2,448-mile 'Mother Road' from Chicago to Santa Monica. In her pieces Gladstone casts the signs and billboards in the bold, primary colors they would have brandished when they were new, rather than the faded shades they grew into after decades bleaching in the sun. The addition of subtle lighting effects with precisely blended paint adds a layer of depth, instilling a shimmering, lifelike quality to much of her work. For many travelers, the signs in Gladstone's work served as either beacons offering respite or landmarks guiding their progress. Several library visitors who stopped to chat with the artist as her pieces were installed recounted the first time they saw the exact same scenes she had painted. Many of those signs had been either destroyed or removed by the time she made her second trip across Route 66. Her latest work is partly an effort to catalog and preserve these artifacts. And 10% of proceeds from sales of prints and originals from the series will benefit the Route 66 Centennial Commission. Other pieces she has on display at the library celebrate the culture and mood of coastal Orange County. These include depictions of the Main Beach lifeguard tower in Laguna Beach, the Balboa Fun Zone's Ferris wheel, a stack of surfboards on the sand and more. Prints in a variety of sizes, as well as a limited collection of original paintings, are available through her website. She also invites patrons to stop by her booth and connect at the upcoming Sawdust Art Festival, which runs from June 27 through Aug. 31. 'I meet so many people at the Sawdust who are retired, and they're blossoming because they've gone back to music or art or writing or some creative pursuit that they just did not have time to do when they were working and raising a family,' Gladstone said.
