From the pages of history: 185 things you may have not known about The Telegraph and Macon

The Telegraph is the third-largest newspaper in Georgia, after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Augusta Chronicle. Its daily print circulation is 45,081. Its Sunday circulation figure is 66,344.

The first cartoon appeared on Sept. 22, 1840. It was a drawing of a log cabin in the shape of a ship. It exhorted readers to vote with the caption: “Democrats Don’t Give Up the Ship.’’ It would be 47 years before the Telegraph published another cartoon.

The Telegraph’s first photograph was published on Oct. 21, 1875. It was two pages of photos of buildings under construction for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

In January 1875, the Telegraph recognized the talents of a young Macon poet and brought his work to the attention of its readers. His name was Sidney Lanier. The paper lauded Lanier’s poem “Corn,” which had been published in Lippincott’s magazine and said it had been written “with the skill of a true artist.’’

Actress Brett Butler was the Telegraph’s circulation district manager in the late 1970s, the first woman ever hired for that position. She later starred in the TV comedy “Grace Under Fire’’ and is now a stand-up comedian.

When the newspaper office on Broadway opened in 1961, Peyton Anderson, owner and publisher of The Macon Telegraph and The Macon News, had a helicopter pad built on the roof. The News, the afternoon paper, experimented with delivering papers by helicopter, but the idea was eventually dropped.

Peyton Anderson sold the papers to Knight Newspapers in 1969. The Knights were descendents of Charles L. Knight of Milledgeville.

Anderson invested proceeds from the sale of the Telegraph and News and today, that money makes up the Peyton Anderson Foundation, one of the city’s major charitable foundations. Anderson instructed his directors to “give the money to good-doers, not do-gooders.’’ The Peyton Anderson Community Services Center opened in November 1995 at the corner of Mulberry Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to form Knight-Ridder, which became the largest newspaper chain in the nation in terms of circulation. The McClatchy Co. bought it in 2006.

The News had a larger circulation than the rival Telegraph until 1921. It didn’t help its cause in 1928 when it endorsed Republican Herbert Hoover for President over Al Smith, a Democrat who had campaigned to end Prohibition. That angered many News subscribers. The start of the Great Depression the following year made economic matters worse.

The Sunday papers of the Telegraph and News were combined in 1947. The Saturday editions were combined in 1974. In 1980, the staffs of the sports and feature departments combined. On Labor Day -- Sept. 6, 1983 -- the two papers were joined in holy matrimony.

On Nov. 11, 1990, the “News” was dropped from the masthead, and the paper changed back to The Macon Telegraph. “Macon” was dropped from the name in 2005, with the new mast, The Telegraph, reflecting more of an emphasis on a regional newspaper.

On Aug. 17, 1977, the News published a special street edition after the death of Elvis Presley. The “Elvis Edition” included a full-page picture of Elvis under the headline: The King Is Dead. There would not be another special street edition of the newspaper until the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

Harley Bowers, one of the deans of Georgia sportswriters, wrote more than 11,000 columns for the Telegraph sports pages from 1959 until his retirement in 1996. His journalism career spanned 54 years at five newspapers. He was responsible for helping bring the 43,000-square-foot Georgia Sports Hall of Fame -- the largest state sports hall of fame in the country -- to Macon in 1999.

Photographer Freddie Bentley was the first black professional hired in the newsroom in 1971. A black sports reporter, Mike Sheftall, was also hired that year. Tethel White became the first black to hold a key newsroom management position when she was named features editor in 1980. In 1982, Kaijer Lee became the first black division director, in charge of circulation.

In December 2000, Sherrie Marshall became the first woman and first black manager to be named executive editor of the Telegraph. Marshall was honored for her commitment to diversity efforts at the newspaper in September 2011, when she was a co-recipient of the 10th annual Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership.

A newsroom library opened Oct. 1, 1935. It was started by Julia Anderson Northrop, the sister of the Anderson brothers. Although the Telegraph began electronically archiving its stories in 1994, the library is still used as a repository by Telegraph reporters and editors doing research for stories. A newspaper library is often called a “morgue.’’

Until 1972, writers and reporters wrote their stories on Royal typewriters. The editors used pencils to make their editing marks, and they were set into lead type onto heavy printing plates by linotype operators.

The Telegraph began operating with Optical Character Readers in 1972. The new devices could “read” typewritten copy and transfer it to punched tape fed into automatic typesetting equipment. The “cold type” process replaced the use of hot metal type and lead printing plates in 1974. Reporters wrote their stories on IBM Selectric typewriters, and the copy was scanned.

In 1978, reporters and writers began working on VDTs (video display terminals) connected to a main-frame computer and sent by wire to automatic typesetters. The newspaper began receiving wire copy by satellite in January 1981. A 10-foot dish antenna was mounted onto the roof, making the Telegraph & News one of the first newspapers to receive stories on The Associated Press microwave transmission system, which would eventually serve about 900 newspapers.

Beverly Olson, an incoming Macon city councilwoman, is a descendent of the Knight family. Her husband, Ed, was publisher of the Telegraph and News from 1983-95. From 2001-06, the Olsons owned an Arena League football franchise in Macon that was nicknamed, not coincidentally, the Macon Knights.

In June 1930, the Andersons bought The Macon News for $200,000. The News didn’t have to move very far. The Telegraph offices were a few doors up on Cherry Street. The News had been located in what is now the Hummingbird Stage and Tap Room (next door to Theatre Macon.) The Telegraph offices were next to Joseph N. Neel department store, across the alley from what is now Lemongrass Bistro.

The Telegraph acquired its first full-color press in 1969, the year Knight Newspapers purchased the newspaper. The first color image printed was an artist’s rendering of the Apollo 11 moon landing in July.

In accordance with Georgia law, the Telegraph began publishing legal notices and photographs of three-time DUI offenders in August 1991.

According to current readership surveys, the median age of the average weekday reader is 50 years old. The average Sunday reader is 48 years old.

In 2008, the Telegraph news staff received the McClatchy President’s Award for its in-depth coverage of the 2008 Mother’s Day tornadoes that hit Middle Georgia.

Former Telegraph reporters Randall Savage and Jackie Crosby won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for their 18-story investigation of the way that programs at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech handled scholarship athletes’ academic shortcomings. Savage is now a special assignment editor for WMAZ’s Eyewitness News and the host of “Close-up,” a public affairs and issues program. Crosby is a health writer for The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis.

The first “Fifty Years Ago” feature was compiled by Cecil Bentley in the News on Oct. 21, 1980. Bentley went on to become the newspaper’s executive editor in 1996.

The Telegraph & News published a 28-page special section after Executive Editor Don Carter was one of 22 American journalists to make an unprecedented tour of the People’s Republic of China in September and October 1972. Carter, the first cousin of former President Jimmy Carter, recounted the experience in stories and photographs and compared the country to the way it was when he was there as an Army officer before the Communist revolution. Carter later served as publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader and was with the corporate office of Knight-Ridder in Miami. He once said he became interested in a career in newspapers as a young man after hearing a speech by former Telegraph owner W.T. Anderson.

The Telegraph received some late-night TV exposure in May 2002 from talk show host Jay Leno. The comedian, who often poked fun at newspaper headlines on “The Tonight Show,’’ selected a headline that read: “Butts man guilty of dealing crack.’’

This story was originally published November 2, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "From the pages of history: 185 things you may have not known about The Telegraph and Macon."