Portrait of a weekly newspaper in the small town of Julian, California, circulation in the hundreds, founded in 1985, owned and run since 2004 by Michael Hart, now 67 years old, and his wife Michele Harvey, 69.
Small Julian newspaper is all about community, by J. Harry Jones at the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Just once, Michael Hart and his bride of 17 years, Michele Harvey, took a few days off to stay at an inn at Joshua Tree.
“It was sort of our honeymoon years after we got married,” Hart, 67, said.
“Just once we took off three days in a row,” Harvey said. “Those three days and two nights were really all we could stand to be away.”
Since the summer of 2004, Hart and Harvey, 69, have been putting out the weekly Julian News. The newspaper was established in 1985 and had a handful of owners before they purchased the business for $200,000.
“He puts in 70 to 90 hours a week,” Harvey said of her husband. “Make that 65 to 70,” said Hart.
The writers are colorful characters. One “was obsessed about the size of his byline.”
“He wanted his byline to be bigger than the headline of his stories,” Harvey said. He would bring into the office many examples of bylines from newspapers around the country.
And then there was a contributor who didn’t know how to replace the ribbon on her typewriter so instead she would put carbon paper between two white sheets of paper and then write her column even though she couldn’t see what it was she was composing. She’d then give the carbon copy of the column to the paper to let them try to figure out what it said.