Editor & Publisher ®

by: Heidi Kulicke

Every once in a while, a rare and historically significant find surfaces online. Such was the case in Dallas-Fort Worth this summer when a resident of Red Oak, Texas, offered for sale the printing plate from The Dallas Morning News front page announcing John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Reporting for the Dallas Observer, Robert Wilonsky called the seller to find out more about the plate. The unnamed man had acquired the plate from Robert Jealouse, a former Texas judge who died in July 1999.

According to his obituary in the Morning News, Jealouse was a newspaperman before his involvement with the judicial system. His career dated back to the 1950s and included stints at the San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, and the Dallas Morning News. It was in Dallas where he joined the production staff before eventually working his way up to assistant production manager and platemaking superintendent.

When the seller decided he no longer wanted the plate, he advertised it on Craigslist for $1,000. The post is no longer online, so presumably another newspaper buff is the happy owner of a piece of history.

Comments

Just saw that thing!

Forrest | Sunday, July 8, 2012

I just saw that thing in a thrift / specialty store in deep elum on or around 6/1/12 I took a picture of it

Rare? Yes. Used in production that day? Unlikely

John Zavinski | Tuesday, December 13, 2011

If this was billed as an original printing plate used that day (which is what the article implies), it was misleading. This looks flat, unlike an actual metal, rotary-letterpress plate.
The blue color makes it more likely to be a zinc engraving or flat, lead casting made from the cardboard mat (although that would have had to have been touched up by a brayer of blue ink when black would make more sense).
In some cases zinc engravings were made from cold-type pasteup via a negative (mostly ads), which was then rolled and turned into a (curved) stereotype plate. I doubt dallas was using cold type for straight matter (news type) that early. Most letterpress users eventually turned to flexible plastic plates that could look like this, but i don't believe that would have been common in 1963, either.
Looks more to me like a keepsake made at the time but not an actual production artifact.

Too bad he didn't know about Ebay

Jim Hart | Friday, December 9, 2011

He must have had some urgency to get rid of this. I'm betting an auction would have brought in much more.

Add Comment