The Picture in the San Bernardino Sun Telegram

Jennifer Bilek

MCOM 100W

Research Project

October 29, 2008

My Journey to Track down a Picture

My first step when trying to track down a picture that ran in the San Bernardino Sun Telegram was to call the newspaper. I went onto their website and found the number for their customer service line. I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I waited on the phone for close to fifteen minutes until a woman answered my call. I told her that I was looking for a picture that ran in the 1960s about a band called “Fly by Night Company.” She told me in a very confused voice that the San Bernardino Sun does not keep a record of newspapers that old. She told me the next thing I needed to do was to go down to my local library and have a librarian pull up the microfilms.

I wrote an e-mail to Paul Kauppila, the librarian for our department who did a presentation during one of our classes. I wrote him a very lengthy e-mail describing the assignment and asking him what my next step should be. He e-mailed me back with loads of complicated information. This is what he wrote.

-To look at the microfilm, you will most likely have to travel to a place that has it or request it through Interlibrary Services. You will need to be very specific about the dates you want. Details are below, including some important details about the newspaper:

-UC Berkeley has the Sun from 1966-1974. During the 1966-1974 period it was simply called The Sun, according to WorldCat.

-It gets even more confusing - there was an afternoon paper (remember those?) called the San Bernardino Evening Telegram, and according to the record, on holidays and Sundays the two papers printed a joint edition called the Sun-Telegram. So it’s possible that your article is in the Sun-Telegram and not the Sun - but only if it was a Sunday or a holiday. Unfortunately, the Sun-Telegram from those dates is only at CSU San Bernardino and at California State Library.

-I found out that in 1968, the National Orange Show ran from March 7th through March 17th. That narrows the dates down for you - at least, assuming the article was published in 1968, which we are still not absolutely sure of.

-But at this point, my next move would be to search the Sun microfilm for those dates. You could go to Berkeley or you can check with our Interlibrary Services people to see if they can borrow the microfilm from another library.

At this point Loa Phan found the image that ran in the San Bernardino Sun Telegram. I decided to try looking online for more information on the National Orange Show. I found their website and I looked through the different links to help me find any information about any previous shows. However, I could not find anything of value.

Next I went looked for some records on the Doors and who played with them. I found a DVD that has clips and segments of many of the performances they did during 1968 and it said in the description that it featured their performance at the Orange National Show. It did not mention anything about “Fly by Night Company.” It is selling for $14.88 on Amazon.com as of October 27, 2008.

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