Phone book bios become a tradition

    COUNTY -- Some years before I went to college, my parents decided to buy a subscription to the Harlan Tribune. I, of course, being a teenager, didn’t quite care about what my parents did with our paper subscriptions. I didn’t read the paper, so I was indifferent, it simply meant I had more things to grab from the mailbox.
    As I got older I did start to notice the paper more and more. I started to become more aware of what was happening outside of just my own town. As time went on, I realized I didn’t know a lot about Shelby County despite it being a less than five minute drive from Avoca.
    I lived so close to Shelby County, but even with the paper, I never truly knew what was going on.
    My little story of unawareness captures the entire idea behind the  creation of the phone book bios.
    The series started with intern Jacey Goetzman in 2017. During her stint at the Harlan Newspapers, Goetzman created a self project where she grabbed a phone book, picked a random name, called that person and asked them their story.
 

 
 

 

Harlan Newspapers

1114 7th Street
P.O. Box 721
Harlan, IA 51537-0721

(800) 909-6397
news2@harlanonline.com

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