Monday Memory: When the News Traveled by Snail Mail
Today Bluecoats can notify their members, fans and the entire activity in moments by simply dropping a Social Media post. Between text, social media, e-mail and the website, you are never far from fresh information. But that’s not always been so. Keeping the members, parents and activity notified of Bloo news was a bigger chore “back in the day” and relied upon Director Messages and then later the Blue Review.
In the 1970s and early 80s, Director Tom Jakmides would take to the typewriter to author a communication to the corps, then photo copy it and stuff it into envelopes and drop it off at the U.S. Post Office. Ted Swaldo turned to a different format in the mid 1980s and early 1990s: the Newsletter. It was packed with more information than just a director message and included images. Originally titled The Shield, it was rebranded the Blue Review after a member survey in 1989. At its height, the Blue Review hit mailboxes six times a year.
By early 2000s the internet had made the communication via newsletter as efficient as the Pony Express would have been two decades earlier. While it’s nice to get instant information you can read on your computer (in the early 2000s) and then on your phone (2010s), it’s a little hard to look back into the archives when they are digital.
So enjoy a little look at the way we used to communicate “back in the day” on this Monday.
