Paul Miller Collection: Paul Miller Papers

The Paul Miller Papers contain 52 linear feet of material donated to OSU Libraries by Paul Miller. The Paul Miller Papers consist of general correspondence, speeches, columns, and photographs of Mr. Miller, as well as similar material and memorabilia related to the Associated Press, the Gannett Corporation, and other newspaper, radio and television concerns with which Mr. Miller was involved. In addition to providing biographical information on Mr. Miller and other leaders of the Gannett Group, the material in this collection helps to document four decades of world affairs and of developments in journalism and broadcasting.

The expansion of Gannett Co. into a major world-wide newspaper group and a stockholder's corporation is thoroughly documented. The collection contains not only Mr. Miller's notes, but also company publications, background studies, and correspondence regarding acquisitions and mergers as well as the efforts to take the company public. Each time the Gannett Group added a newspaper to its membership, the newspaper was carefully studied and Miller communicated with the owners and publishers. As a result, these papers depict developments in the privately owned newspaper industry throughout the United States as well as the history of the corporation.

During World War II and the decades following, newspapermen covered a multitude of events around the world. There are notes regarding the private sides of world leaders such as Sir Winston Churchill and Harry S. Truman and communications with military officers, some of which were confidential at the time they were written. The 1945 air flight that pioneered scheduled global service is documented in detail, as is the United Nations Organization conference. There also are first-hand reports from Berlin during the 1949 airlift, from London and Cairo during the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis, from Guatemala after a revolution in 1959, from the Soviet Union during a 1962 meeting with Khrushchev, and from China in 1972, shortly after that country opened its gates again to foreign visitors.

Miller spoke and wrote on the wide variety of concerns faced by journalists in the 1960's and 1970's. In his columns, which he began in 1957 and continued until his retirement, he commented forthrightly on social and political affairs at the local, state, and national levels. Among the topics included in these resources are: journalistic ethics, acquisitions and mergers, cable television, economic conditions, presidential elections, taxation, and the space age.

An online version of the finding aid for the Paul Miller Papers can be found here, and a PDF of the finding aid can be downloaded here.