My Newspaper & Magazine Collection

My collection spans 1945 to present day. My grandmother started the collection in 1962 with U.S. Scores Triumph In Space With World-Circling Flight. She and my dad added to the collection for the next 15 years. The last newspaper they collected was in 1977, commemorating Elvis’ death. In those 15 years they collected history — the assassinations of 2 Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr; Nixon’s resignation; man’s first step on the moon; and the death of a King (Elvis).

My first newspaper was U.S. Bombs Baghdad in 1991, when I was 12 years old. I’ve collected the vast majority of what’s catalogued here in real time, capturing moments that were historically significant, or just historically significant to me.

In recent years, I’ve purchased newspapers and magazines to fill in other important moments.

1945-1960

The TIME Magazine “X” Series

TIME Magazine has placed a large red X over a person or thing the U.S. was glad to be rid of. The list includes dictators, fascists, terrorists, and the year 2020. The first time was on May 7, 1945, with Adolf Hitler. The second time was on August 20, 1945, when they placed a black X over the Japanese flag. This is the only one I don’t have. The third time wasn’t until April, 2003. The following X issues were in 2006, 2011, and finally 2020.

1960’s

why I started collecting newspapers & magazines

Newspapers are printed on newsprint paper, which is cheap, thin, and disposable by design. The stories printed in newspapers are only meant to be relevant for 24 hours, to be replaced by tomorrow’s headlines. But every now and then, a story is more important than that. It’s only a snapshot, but eventually with greater context it’ll live on in books, films and taught in schools. But nothing can replace the way a story is told in the first 24 hours after something happens. Magazines give additional context over a week or month. If newspapers capture the facts, then magazines capture the emotion of a moment in time.

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After seeing Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK” I became obsessed with Kennedy’s assassination. I was 12 years old, and I started reading books — 6 in total — about the odd people and mysterious occurrences surrounding the event, and the many conspiracy theories that came from them. It was around that time that my dad said to me, “you know, I think Grandma still has a box of some old newspapers.”

We found her collection, and that was when I started mine.

I loved that she had captured history in these boxes. And not a filtered, watered-down history — the actual historical moment. The knowns and the unknowns. The snapshots of a developing story.

I loved the different styles of headlines, and seeing how newspapers and magazines would change their standard design templates to emphasize the importance of certain events.

1963: Kennedy Assassination

Three Historic Covers

LEFT The Dallas Fort Worth paper is from the day Kennedy was assassinated. MIDDLE The LIFE magazine for Kennedy’s assassination was only time, to the best of my knowledge, that LIFE changed their logo from red to black. RIGHT And, if you’ve seen the film “JFK,” you’ll recognize the LIFE magazine featuring Lee Harvey Oswald.

All of these were in my grandmother’s collection.

1965: Watts Riots

1968: bobby kennedy & Martin luther king, Jr. Assassinated

All of these were saved by my dad, who was a big admirer of these men

My dad lived in Austin at the time, and collected this student newspaper from the University of Texas.

Caring for newspapers

Caring for newspapers involves keeping them out of direct sunlight from the moment they’re printed, and away from moisture, humidity and extreme temperatures. They also yellow and age if they touch other paper or material that isn’t acid-free. Today, I keep my collection in individual archival Polypropylene sleeves, in drawers lined with acid-free foam board and protected from dust by a sheet of plexi glass in each drawer.

Unfortunately, but understandably, that’s not how my grandmother’s collection was stored. They were in cardboard moving boxes in a garage in hot and humid areas like South Carolina, Texas, and Southern California. Cardboard is not at all acid-free. The fact that they’re not completely brittle and falling apart can only be attributed to the fact they stayed in those boxes and weren’t handled for decades.

1969: Moon Landing

1970’s

I purchased these two LIFE magazines from eBay. I think of these two moments as the official end of the 1960’s – when protesting college students were struck down by National Guards’ bullets, and when Vietnam finally unravelled and became un-winnable and hopeless. Another, which I don’t have, is when the Hell’s Angels murdered someone at the Altamont Speedway Free Concert while the Rolling Stones played, just months after Woodstock.

1973-74: Nixon’s Unraveling

1975: Vietnam’s Unraveling

1977 - 1979: The Death of Elvis, the beginning of Cable TV

1980’s

My grandmother stopped collecting newspapers and magazines after Elvis’ death in 1977, and I was too young in the ‘80’s to collect anything. But I’ve purchased a few magazines covering a couple key topics from eBay.

1990’s

The first newspapers I collected covered the bombing of Iraq in 1991. It was the same year Magic Johnson, my favorite Laker, contracted HIV.

1992: LA Riots

I grew up in L.A., but we lived in Cathedral City, CA, from ‘91 - ‘92. My sister was in school at UCLA, and all of my childhood friends were telling me about the smoke, the tension, the chaos and the curfews.

1993-1996

1997 - 1999: The End of the 20th Century

The Columbine shooting was a world-changing event. I had graduated from High School two years earlier, but close enough to think “that could’ve been my school.” I thought back to kids in my school who were isolated or teased. It’s the only school shooting newspaper I have. Sadly, over the next two decades they became too frequent and stopped dominating headlines and front pages.

2000’s

closest election in history

Historic Moments When Everyone Becomes a Collector

Below is one of those newspapers — one of those moments in history — that even non-collectors felt compelled to hold on to. I’ve come across friends and acquaintances who had this newspaper stuffed away in a drawer. Sometimes it seemed as though they weren’t sure why they were holding on to it. It’s proof that they were alive when something important happened — something bigger than themselves. Or it just felt wrong to discard it.

2001

2002-2003

2003 - 2005: U.S.-led war on iraq

2005: Hurricane Katrina

2008: A Decision Between Two Historic Candidates

A New Form Of Visual Storytelling

Below is the first newspaper in my collection that doesn’t use a photograph to tell the story. Sometimes nothing tells a story better than data — seeing the sudden plunge of the stock market can be more universally stunning and personal than a photograph of a suited-up Wall Street trader in agony.

There are more examples to come where the Paper of Record uses a piece of data or a clipping of a document to communicate the biggest story of the day.

Economic plunge upends race … and future races to come

pivotal moment

The 2008 crash, and resulting corporate bailouts, resulted in working class Americans feeling forgotten and economically crushed.
In 2015, Trump would harness this anger and win the Presidency.

Hope wins. Racial barrier falls.

Another historic moment people felt compelled to collect — this one for a very different reason than on 9/11. This was a moment of hope and inspiration — of a better future.

I was living in New York when Obama was elected. Luke and I walked through the city that night and came across spontaneous celebrations in every neighborhood, including Black kids in Harlem dancing around chanting “Our President is Black! Our President is Black!"

I was working at The New York Times. I remember coming to work on Wednesday morning and they had brought a stack of newspapers to the lobby desk because passersby kept walking into the building looking for a copy. Everyone was grabbing a newspaper that morning. Everyone wanted a piece of history.

Magazine Cover Revival

Around 2008 or 2010, I noticed that magazine covers started to get more visually interesting. Instead of the bad photoshop mashups of the 90’s and early 2000’s, magazine covers started taking on a minimalist aesthetic.

A single compelling image or illustration told a multi-layered story. Typography became bolder. Headlines got more concise. A few words, or no words at all, painted a powerful picture of what was happening at the time.

2009: King of Pop dies

2010’s

Some promising progress in the beginning of the decade

2011: Retribution, and the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

2011-2012: Obama leads a liberal wave in America

2012: Climate Change Hits New York City

TIME Magazine “Framed Silhouette” Series

2012: Obama’s Second Term

Above, two versions of the same paper from the same day.

2015

Luke and I were in France for our wedding anniversary when the news came through that the U.S. Supreme Court had voted to legalize same sex marriage nationwide. The quote of the day was “Equal Dignity” and it certainly felt like that moment had finally come.

three powerful covers

The first, for Charlie Hebdo, a french satyrical publication, was published a week after the January 7th terrorist attack in their headquarters. “Je Suis Charlie” became a national slogan for unity. My Parisian friend Vincent sent this to me.

The second takes a classic desert cliche, and uses it to express the very dry future of the state with the 5th largest economy in the world, if it were a country. Being a major producer of the country’s fruits and vegetables, it’s a startling thought.

The third is one of my favorite magazine covers because it’s simple and powerful. A young black man is running away from an army of police with a crossed out “1968” and handwritten “2015.” It reminds everyone that despite some progress being made, we still have a long way to go.

2016

Things began to slide backwards. While another historic nominee was celebrated on front pages, and her opponent’s chaotic campaign was depicted as a “Total Meltdown,” we still knew nothing was guaranteed — anything can happen. And even after the progress the U.S. had made toward equal dignity, one of many mass shootings in the country rose to the level of headline-worthy when 50 were killed in a gay nightclub.

Shock and rage

A shocking election result, visualized on front pages through data, in the form of an electoral map of the U.S. Here data was used to visualize the sweeping rejection of a liberal movement that seemed to be moving too fast. This is the post-truth era and the crushing of decades of American norms.

TIME Magazing “Orange” Series

Minimalist drawings with only 3-4 colors to illustrate Trump’s mental state.

The Resistance Rises

2017

Trump & Russia

2018

TIME Magazine’s “Oval Office” Series

A series of covers showing the situations surrounding the President.

anonymous op-ed

An anonymous Op-Ed in the NYTimes attempted to comfort the country that, if it weren’t for “the Quiet Resistance,” President Trump could be much more dangerous and reckless.
Maybe they shouldn’t have been so quiet.

2019

TIME Magazine’s “ENOUGH” series

Powerful magazine covers calling out every mass shooting in the country by name, and showing the young faces effected by one of these shootings — all with one prominent word: “ENOUGH”

2020’s

COVID-19 leads to a global shutdown

Police brutality

The continuous killing of un-armed Black men, in particular George Floyd, causes national protests & riots

Trump gets COVID

Time’s “Vote” issue

For the first time in the Magazine’s history, TIME changed their masthead. They changed it to “VOTE” to encourage voter turnout.

A massive get-out-the-vote campaign, plus greater accessibility to voting because of the pandemic (not to mention four years of tweets, lies, protests, riots, chaos, investigations, and an impeachment) led to the highest voter turnout in history.

Time “X” series

Previously used for fascists, dictators and terrorists, TIME Magazine continued its “X” series for the year 2020.

January, 2021

the big lie

For the first time in American history, a sitting president rejected a peaceful transfer of power and tried every possible option to reverse the election results, including provoking his supporters to storm the Capital to try to stop or stall the confirmation of Biden as the next President of the United States.
This image pops off the page, as the insurrectionists climb over the text and masthead.

simplicity in repetion

Three words that start with the letter I were used to describe three consecutive Wednesdays that kicked off 2021.

2021 - 2022

2022: Trump’s three Supreme Court Justices help overturn Roe V. Wade

New York Magazine draws a strong reference to feminist artist Barbara Kruger while asking a very provocative, but very legitimate question for a Post-Roe era.