Over the course of my tenure as a newspaper reporter, I’ve worked in some pretty crummy buildings – my first job was in a cinderblock building split between the paper and a local insurance salesman, another was in a building where water poured in beneath the doors, out the ceiling and through the walls – so I was awestruck the first time I pulled up to the Times-Journal office here on Broad Street.

 The façade of the building looks like it could have been plucked from the film reels of some Maybury-esque television series, just like the rest of the antique downtown epicenter in which it sits.

 But more than the glory of the old building was the quick realization that this newspaper had been serving this city for nearly 200 years, many of which were witnessed from the same building in which I work each day.

 Only the Press-Register in Mobile has existed longer than the Selma paper.

 On Nov. 2, 1827, the Selma Courier was launched by Thomas Jefferson Frow – less than 40 years later, its presses were torched by Union troops during the Battle of Selma in the Civil War.

 The paper took on a variety of names over the years, including the Selma Free Press, Selma Reporter and Selma Daily News. After the war, the paper merged with the weekly Selma Messenger to become the Selma Times-Messenger, then with the Selma Argus to become the Times-Argus and a host of other names.

 It wasn’t until 1920 that the newspaper became the Selma Times-Journal, which means we will officially celebrate 100 years of life two years from now.

 Mary Raiford, the only female publisher in Alabama newspapers, led the Times-Journal from 1936 until 1959.

 The paper took a stand against the Ku Klux Klan in 1923, when many other Southern papers refused to do so, saying “Selma has no room within her confines for that ugly, malevolent institution of the devil known as Ku Kluxism.”

 The paper provided unbiased coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, leading journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff to say in their book, “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,” that “Selma had something most other venues of civil rights activity did not: a local newspaper that visiting reporters could depend on. The SelmaTimes-Journal saw the historic importance of the story and took its responsibility seriously, providing detailed accounts that reporters found reliable.”

The Times-Journal was also home to Kathryn Tucker-Windham, the Alabama author who wrote “13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey.”

 A history as rich as the one within these walls, which only mirrors the rich history just beyond its confines, is something I take pride in each day and strive with each of my contributions to continue and further.