Isaac's Press

First of all, I’m delighted the Herald will be getting a complete redesign effective with the April issue, as touted in this news release on the Community of Christ Web site. It’s something that Jim Hannah (my immediate predecessor as Herald editor) and I, along with graphic-arts director Jack Martin, pushed for year after year without success. But I can’t help but be curious regarding the lead sentence in the statement:

“For more than 157 years, the Herald has been sharing stories that emphasize the church’s mission and message.”

As I previously mentioned in a ForeWords blog posting, January 2010 marked the sesquicentennial of the magazine, originally known as The True Latter Day Saints’ Herald, and published by editor Isaac Sheen in Cincinnati, Ohio, beginning in January 1860. I’m no great mathematician, but I’m quite sure that’s 150 years, not 157.

Perhaps somebody at International Headquarters has been listening to that old Cher song, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” because they’ve somehow managed to add seven years to the publication’s already long and illustrious history.

Or, maybe it just goes to show you the value of editors and proofreaders after all. (By the way: This year’s Heralds are listed as Volume 157 because the periodical came out more often than monthly in the early twentieth century, so some volumes contained less than a full year’s worth of issues.)

3/1/2010 update: The church’s Web site has now been corrected.

3/2/2010 update: The printed Herald for March not only includes the same inaccurate press release as appeared on the church Web site identifying the Herald as being 157 years old, it actually compounds the error inside. A photo caption on page 27 reads: “This building in Plano, Illinois, is where the first True Latter Day Saints Herald was published in March 1863.” While that may have been the first issue published in Plano, the actual first issue was printed/published in Cincinnati, Ohio, in January 1860. So folks, let’s all just pick an anniversary year: 157, 147, 150, or whatever you’d like to snatch out of thin air. (And don’t even get me started about how the apostrophe was left off Saints’ in that caption.)
April Update: It appears the church’s ongoing budget woes nixed hopes for a complete upgrading of the printed Herald. Although the online version now includes some full-color photos, the printed publication is still two-color (black & one other) and, even more sadly, is printed on the same low-quality paper, which makes crisp, sharp reproduction of photos, graphics, and type virtually impossible.
Conference Update: Sadly, the Herald and the now-defunct Herald Publishing House received short-shrift at World Conference. While numerous other anniversaries were celebrated and remembered, not so for the now 150-year-old publication and the publishing house that have been an essential part of the church since its reorganization in 1860.

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