Baburnich’s Boneyard:
Telling Evansville’s stories
 Baburnich |
John Baburnich describes himself as a publisher and entertainer. “A story teller and raconteur.” His quarterly webzine The Evansville Boneyard, online since the earliest days of the Internet, features stories and images of Evansville’s art, history, and culture.
Baburnich, data manager of student records at USI, joined the University in 1980. He holds an associate degree in humanities from Rend Lake College and a bachelor’s degree in political science from USI.
He believes his webzine, which debuted in August 1995, was the first electronic magazine to focus on life in a particular city. And he’s proud that he beat publications such as The New York Times to the web. “The Boneyard was one of the first publications on the Internet as we know it today, and I’m certain it’s one of the longest continually published publications,” he said.
Baburnich grew up in Benton, Illinois, immersed in the printed word. “I lived in a small town that miraculously had a daily newspaper,” he said. “My grandfather collected every copy of the U.S. News & World Report until he died in 1962, and I read every one of them.” He devoured magazines of the day such as Life, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post.
His father, William “Butch” Baburnich, was the first computer programmer at Southern Illinois University and an early connection to the nascent Internet. “My father would talk about the BITNET, a point-to-point network used to trade data between Yale and City University of New York.”
Baburnich himself encountered Gopher, a web precursor, at a conference in the early 1990s. The system allowed users to take a virtual tour of the White House and sign a guestbook. He was fascinated. “I started thinking back to cave drawings, to Gutenberg’s press, to the first magazine, The Gentleman’s Magazine, in 1701, and the first newspaper, The Boston Newsletter, in 1704, to publishing as we know it today.
“Now, one single individual could suddenly speak truth to power, bypassing the trappings of publishers and editors, sensitivities of advertisers, high costs of production, and limited distribution system and make a message universally available to anyone on the planet who had a computer and a modem in less than three seconds. It is a huge advancement in communication and journalism.”
He learned that with a few simple commands, he could start his own site. He learned HyperText Markup Language (HTML), bought a graphics program for the artwork, and The Boneyard was born.
Baburnich defines a boneyard as “a junkyard where you take parts of other things and put them together.” It also refers to Boneyard Woods, the part of Benton where immigrants to the area were forced to live.
Readers can see that history and race are of particular interest to Baburnich. “Evansville has a rich and colorful history of black achievement, and with the exception of Darrel Bigham (professor emeritus of history), it has totally been ignored. Black achievement by courageous people who had the odds stacked against them is a significant part of Evansville history.”
The February 2008 issue of The Boneyard was devoted to local African American history. Baburnich is proudest of stories he has unearthed about Evansville citizens such as Charlie Wiggins, “The Negro Speed King,” and Ernest Tidrington, “The Boss of Baptistown,” featured in that issue.
Early editions of The Boneyard were made up primarily of links and syndicated content. Initially most of the original content was provided by local historian Kenneth P. McCutchan. “The Boneyard has published many chapters of his book Old Tales Retold and in the future will release the entire book online,” Baburnich said.
Original content has grown over time. The Boneyard often includes work by local scholars, musicians, poets, playwrights, writers, painters, and photographers. “I’ve tried to expand on every kind of artisan I could find, and opinion leaders and politicians,” Baburnich said. “During the first 10 years, J. Jeff Hays wrote a political column that was admittedly on the left side and created a lot of furor among people who didn’t agree with him.” Hays, who died December 22, was director of purchasing emeritus at USI and served as a state legislator for 26 years. Hays’s last column appeared in summer 2007.
Baburnich regularly publishes historic Evansville photo collections; regional stories from throughout the state as well as Kentucky and Illinois; features on historical markers and historic homes; and “classic” local television commercials.
The Winter 2009 edition, to be published in mid-January, will be a compilation of his USI stories, including a recording of the official song of Evansville produced by The Boneyard and recorded by Daniel Craig, assistant professor of music. “As far as I can determine, The Boneyard has featured the actual works and talents of the human resource of the University of Southern Indiana more than any private publication.”
To receive a quarterly email link to the latest issue of The Boneyard, write to boneyard@evansville.net. Read the webzine at www.evansvilleboneyard.org.
Wendy Knipe Bredhold
News & Information Services
812/461-5259 or wkbredhold@usi.edu
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