Contact: Sammy McDavid
The official records of the Mississippi Press Association will be opened Friday [March 24] during a 3 p.m. public program at Mississippi State University.
MPA President Lisa Denley McNeese of Bruce, National Newspaper Association President Dan Phillips of Oxford and MSU President Malcolm Portera will be among officials taking part in the ceremony at the John Grisham Room of Mitchell Memorial Library. A reception, also in the Grisham Room, will follow.
Denley is associate publisher of the Calhoun County Journal. Phillips, a former MPA president, is assistant publisher of the Oxford Eagle.
The press association--the sixth oldest of its kind in the nation and one of Mississippi's oldest professional bodies--first began sending its papers to the library's special collections department in 1993. Since then, more than 40 cubic feet of material have been added, including photographs, correspondence, contest and awards materials, historic issues, and other memorabilia.
MSU Dean of Libraries Frances Coleman said the records "best document the time period from 1970 to the present, the period of the association's greatest growth." Also included are proceedings, photographs, histories, and various documents from its early history, she added.
In national journalism circles, Mitchell Memorial Library holds a special honor. Since the 1986 opening of the papers of MSU alumnus and former New York Times executive editor Turner Catledge, it has carried a Society of Professional Journalists designation as an Historic Site in American Journalism.
Coleman will join Denley, Phillips and Portera on the program, as will Scott County Times editor and publisher Sid Salter; Gale Denley, McNeese's father and Calhoun County Journal publisher; and Marian Huttenstine, head of MSU's communication department. Salter and Gale Denley also are former MPA presidents.
Led since 1985 by executive director Carolyn Wilson, the press association provides essential services for 111 member papers. It also has 83 associate members representing the state's mass media, advertising and public relations firms, as well as communication professionals and educators.
The MPA records are part of an extensive Mississippi journalistic collection housed at MSU. In addition to the papers of Catledge and Sid Salter, the library holds the collections of Norman and Frances Bradley, Hodding and Betty Carter, John Oliver Emmerich Sr., Charles J. Faulk, Norma Fields, Henry F. Meyer, Willie Miller, Wilson F. "Bill" Minor, Clayton Rand, Hazel Brannon Smith, Kenneth Toler, and Wayne Weidie, among others.
During the 1990s, the editorial cartoon collections of Mark Bolton and Clay Jones added a new dimension. These two will be joined later this year by the collection of Marshall Ramsey.
Other mass media collections include those of WLBT-TV in Jackson, the Howard Langifitt "Farm Family of the Week" Television Program, Godwin Advertising Co., and the papers of periodical publishers Eugene Butler and Cully Cobb.
Last year, Mitchell Memorial received the papers of Mississippi native and National Geographic magazine editor Carolyn Bennett Patterson.
Also opening on Friday will be month-long exhibits of materials from the MPA Collection in the library's second- and third-floor atriums.