Contact Us
News and advertising staffs can be reached at (903) 693-7888. The Watchman offices are at 325 W. Sabine Street Suite G, Carthage, TX 75633.
The Watchman office is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday. The office closes from noon to 1 p.m. each day for lunch.
Editorial Staff
Send news tips and calendar items to news@panolawatchman.com.
Watchman Archives
The Watchman maintains physical archives for our papers dating from the early 1980s to present at its downtown Carthage office. Digital archives on panolawatchman.com date back to around 2011.
For older archives, researchers have several different options:
- Microfiche copies of the Watchman dating back to its early years are available at both the M.P. Baker Library at Panola College, 1109 W. Panola St. in Carthage, and at the Old Jail Library and Museum, 213 N. Shelby St. in downtown Carthage. The M.P. Baker Library’s regular semester hours are 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday; and 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday. The M.P. Baker Library’s hours may vary in summer. Call (903) 693-2052 or visit panola.edu/library for more information. The Old Jail Library and Museum’s hours are subject to volunteer availability. Call (903) 693-3388 for more information.
- Online PDFs for issues from 1961 to 1998 are available for free on the M.P. Baker Library’s website at panola.edu/library/panola-watchman/. These PDFs are not text-searchable and require a specific date to find if researchers are looking for particular stories.
- The University of North Texas is currently working to digitize all of the Watchman archives as part of its Portal to Texas History project. These PDFs are text-searchable and will be of a higher quality than the PDFs hosted by Panola College, however the digitization process is ongoing and not every newspaper may be available.
The Watchman unfortunately does not have an extensive photo archive. Much of the paper’s photo archives have been lost for unknown reasons. Staff are currently working to go through a found box of photos that look to date from the 1970s to 1980s, but it is not organized and easily searchable for specific photos. Researchers looking for photos dating before 2014 or so will need to look at the physical copies of newspapers or online PDFs. Please note that the quality of these photos will not be great. For researchers looking for photos taken after 2014 or so, the newspaper may have digital copies of photos available upon request. Please email news@panolawatchman.com.