The Directories of Papers: Ayer, Rowell — and Miller, Named and Not Read

Ayer's newspaper annuals (1920, 1952, 1962 read; 1913 restricted) — Miller's Indiana Newspaper Bibliography (1982), borrow-restricted, not read

What it is: the newspaper trade's own directories, which fix papers' births, deaths, frequencies and circulations from the trade's side. The Newspapers leg read Ayer for 1920 from the printed page and 1962 from its printed image (p. 338), through worldradiohistory.com — whose per-year addresses follow no pattern and whose HEAD requests return 403, both defects logged — and Ayer 1952 beside them; the Ayer line is one of the three carriers of the Enterprise's founding conflict, and its 1962 drift to 1855 is printed with the conflict. Ayer 1913 is access-restricted on archive.org. Rowell's earlier listings were attempted once through the Perseus copy; the fetch failed and was not retried — the 1869-era listings stand unread. Chronicling America's directory now redirects and serves HTML where its data feed used to answer; the city parameter did not survive the change, and the leg records the door's new shape rather than a result.

Its standing, from this build's experience: the directories are the only witnesses to the press that are neither the papers themselves nor the county histories — which is why the founding conflict's Ayer side matters and why the leg's largest press gap is a book: John W. Miller's Indiana Newspaper Bibliography (1982), the single best settling source for the press gaps, is borrow-restricted on archive.org in both its scans (401) and stands named, not read, at the head of this part's pull list.

Where it fails: a directory is a year's claim, taken from the papers' own returns; Ayer's drift on the founding year across 1920, 1952 and 1962 is the class's defect in miniature, and this build prints directories as carriers, never as verdicts.

Sources: