• Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Events
  • Photo Gallery
  • Blog
  • Contact

A Joyful Noise

Digital Archives

Thankful Thursday: Digital Archivists and Classified Ads

April 6, 2017 by Melodye Shore

Before Twitter, Instagram and Facebook existed, faith-healing evangelists used to announce their comings and goings in the local newspapers. And now, thanks to the digital archivists who preserved those records, I’m able to retrace my father’s footsteps along the Sawdust Trail.

Newspapers were king at the time–king-makers, too, as my father’s college classmate, Billy Graham, would later attest. Via the Los Angeles Times:

Evangelist Billy Graham recalls in his new book the pivotal point in his young ministry when, during a 1949 Los Angeles crusade, a two-word directive from publisher William Randolph Hearst to “puff Graham” made him an instant celebrity nationwide.

The sudden front-page coverage showered on Graham by Hearst newspapers in mid-October (after three weeks of little notice) was quickly matched by other newspapers and newsmagazines–literally a media circus descending on his rallies under a big tent.

My father never achieved Graham’s status, of course, but his promo pieces were printed alongside the greats. It’s like scrolling through a social media feed, but more meaningful, somehow.

 

Posted in: Billy Graham, classified ads, Digital Archives, family archives, LA Times, Los Angeles Times, newspaper, Pentecostal Preacher, Pentecostal Tent Revivals, revival meetings, sawdust trail, tent revival, Thankful Thursday, writing Tagged: billy graham, can i get a witness, classified ads, family archives, memoir writing, tent revival, thankful thursday

Topics

ab 2165 beach billy graham birds can i get a witness christmas dear bully family archives flowers freckles garden gardening harbor seals hope hummingbird hummingbird hatchlings hummingbird nest 2015 hummingbirds jeannine atkins joy joyful noise laguna beach land of medicine buddha memoir memoir writing monarch butterfly nana nancy drew new year's eve ocean orange county peace photography poetry rosa resolution rose sara seals tent revival thankful thursday thanksgiving the author's tent throwback thursday wordless wednesday writing

Recent Posts

  • International Day of the Seal
  • My uncouth neighbors: A murder of crows
  • Smitten with Kittens, by Florence and Wendell Minor
  • Happy Valentine’s Day!
  • Happy New Year, 2022
  • The Badlands
  • TINY BIRD: A Hummingbird’s Amazing Journey

Archives

Copyright © 2023 .

Omega WordPress Theme by ThemeHall