Cropping, Printing, and Proofing

The Northern Light at 50: Cropping, Printing, and Proofing by Jeffrey Croteau, Director of the Van Gorden-Williams Library and Archives

The Northern Light began publishing fifty years ago, in 1970. The magazine grew out of an earlier publication called the NewsLetter which the Supreme Council published from 1942 until 1969 (see The Northern Light, August 2015). The News-Letter was an altogether different publication originally intended as “a channel of frequent communication between the Supreme Council and the responsible leaders of the Scottish Rite in the Northern Jurisdiction.” Initially, only 3,000 copies were distributed among an NMJ membership that numbered just over 200,000. With only four pages and no illustrations, one could argue that, in format, it had more in common with the eighteenth-century Boston newspaper that it was named after than it did a mid-twentieth-century magazine. The Northern Light was conceived as something different: a modern, engaging publication with lots of illustrations and a colorful cover, intended for all NMJ members and their families.

The Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives is located in Lexington, Massachusetts, at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library and is open to the public 10-4, WednesdaySaturday.

Have questions? Drop us a line at library@srmml.org or give us a call at 781-457-4109.

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It is easy to forget the physical process of making a magazine. Even in our digital age, presses still run to print the magazine you are holding in your hands. The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library has a collection of photographic prints that were reproduced in The Northern Light during photography’s pre-digital age. This material reminds us that, when The Northern Light began half a century ago, the photographic process was physical and time-consuming. Consider how much more labor went into each photograph. Photographs were taken, film was developed, prints were made, and then measured and cropped for publication. Pictured here is one item from this collection, a photographic print that was reproduced in the second issue of The Northern Light. It shows editor George E. Burow, 33°, and assistant editor, Richard H. Curtis, 33°, at the Williams Press printing plant in Albany, New York, checking the press run of the very first issue. It includes instructions for the printer about enlarging and cropping the image. In the magazine, the published photo shows just Burow and Curtis, not the worker on the right carrying a stack of The Northern Light magazines. You can compare the photo here to the final image, reproduced in the April 1970 issue at scottishritenmj.org/thenorthern-light.

A look at the early days of The Northern Light shows how much has changed in fifty years, which begs the question— what exciting changes lay ahead in the next fifty years?

Editor George E. Burow (right) and Assistant Editor Richard H. Curtis checking the press run of the first issue of The Northern Light, 1969. Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, SC 068.