Lafayette Jeff Booster looks to digitize newspaper, school history

Fundraising starts for project that will make more than 100 years of Lafayette Jeff newspaper searchable

Dec 24, 2023

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A few notes on this Christmas Eve morning …

LAFAYETTE JEFF BOOSTER’S DIGITIZING PROJECT: There have been a few occasions when I’ve had to swing by Chuck Herber’s classroom at Lafayette Jeff and dust off a particularly ancient edition of the Jefferson Booster. In one case, in 2017, I pored over pages in hardbound collections for evidence of the original story about the school’s mascot and why there’s an “H” in Bronchos. (Via the J&C archives: What the H? How Lafayette Jeff became the Bronchos.)

Now, Herber, other LSC teachers and students are working to get more than a century’s worth of high school news and reporting digitized so it can be hosted in searchable form for everyone via The Hoosier Chronicles, a repository run by the Indiana State Library.

The project is in the middle of a crowdfunding effort to cover the costs.

Herber said Lafayette Jeff’s newspapers date to 1913, at first called The Monitor before being renamed The Booster in 1922.

“Generation after generation has attended Jeff, and this is a wonderful opportunity to point to grandparents and great-grandparents and their achievements at Jeff,” Herber, who has been teaching for 57 years, said. “The project will digitalize the history of the paper since 1913, covering an expanse of over 8,400 pages or more. That alone should leave one gasping for air. Just in my classroom, my students consistently go back five to eight years to review how issues were expressed. It helps them to light their way. Now, it will all be at their fingertips. This past with help give light to the present and future.”

Chuck Herber works with students in the Booster class. (Photo: Andy Dooley)

Andy Dooley, a Lafayette Jeff teacher, has been helping to coordinate the effort, with students taking inventory of each edition, the stories in them and the range of advertising published through the decades.

“I've learned a lot of Lafayette history by going through the collection,” Dooley said. “The ads are amazing to anyone trying to piece together what buildings used to be. There's also the entire history of the Radio TV program, the life of the Ninth Street building – including over a decade of calls for a proper gym – all the schools that were built while (Russell) Hiatt was superintendent.”

Once done, anyone will be able to search the Booster archives for events and names. Dooley also is working to preserve the physical copies, which are aging.

A GoFundMe campaign arranged by Lindsey Sickler – a teacher at Sunnyside Intermediate School and co-editor in chief of the Booster in 2004 – is looking to raise $12,000 for the digitizing project.

See the GoFundMe at: Preserving the Legacy of the Booster.
Donations by check may be sent to Lafayette Jeff, c/o Booster Newspaper, 1801 S. 18^th St., Lafayette, IN 47905. Make checks out to Jefferson High School with the memo “Booster Major Projects.”

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CHRISTMAS MEALS: The Friends of Downtown will host its annual Community Christmas Day Dinner with carryout service from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday, Dec. 25, at Lafayette Jefferson High School, 1801 S. 18^th St. Use the south entrance to the high school. There’s no inside dining, but meals will be available for all who come.

OTHER READS/OTHER LISTENS …

Full disclosure: I’m not allowed to talk at our house, our extended families’ homes or just about anywhere else when a Hallmark Christmas movie is playing. No one needs any of your snark in the middle of the predictable, rom-com drama. But I feel seen on this Christmas Eve with this piece from New York Times reporter Alicia Parlapiano – along with research by a handful of other NYT staffers. Parlapiano and crew took on the holiday franchise that, while enduringly popular, “also have something of a reputation for following a very specific story line: A recently dumped, high-powered female executive from the city finds new love, purpose and appreciation for Christmas in a small town with the help of a handsome local fellow.” They’re question: “But how much does that formula hold up across the hundreds of holiday movies released since 2017 by Hallmark and Lifetime?” The answer is in here. Just shut up and read: “Just How Formulaic Are Hallmark and Lifetime Holiday Movies? We (Over)analyzed 424 of Them.”
(Via the New York Times. Click to read it all.)
I also never got around to making a Christmas playlist from Based in Lafayette friends, near and far. (My favorites: Christmas adjacent songs, as in Lou Reed’s “New Sensations,” where he tells about “two years ago today I was arrested on Christmas Eve.”) The great Greg Kot, former music critic at the Chicago Tribune and cohost of the show Sound Opinions, has this one, if you’re looking for a few oddball entries. Next year, we’ll build one of our own …