This year marks the 150th anniversary of North Carolina’s most determined journalist. John McLean Harrington (1839-1887) produced 299 newspapers in his lifetime, all by hand. The Harnett County journalist worked near Broadway, about 20 miles south of Raleigh, and could have used printing presses in nearby Fayetteville, but this innovative publisher choose to write his work in longhand and copied it for his subscription list that numbered up to 100. “I think Harrington deserves the title of the most determined editor in North Carolina history,” noted scholar Robert G. Anthony Jr. of UNC-Chapel Hill in a Sept. 26, 2003, speech at Campbell University. Harrington’s characteristic of perseverance in the face of adversity as much as any may explain this editor’s motivation for launching his six handwritten newspapers. Harrington began in 1858 first with the Young American, a literary journal that included news and by mid-year, added, The Nation, a stridently pro-Democrat periodical that also featured lighter fare such as jokes and marriage announcements. The handwritten newspapers included paid advertisements and local, state, and national news. In successive years, he started and stopped other weekly newspapers.
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Dr. Michael Ray Smith, professor of mass communication at Campbell U Where is Harnett County? Listing of newspapers published by Harrington
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niversity, is working on a book about the remarkable newspaper career of John McLean Harrington, but he’s using a laptop rather than pen and paper. If you know of any others who handwrote newspapers, please drop him a line electronically at