From Picas to Bytes: Four Generations of Seacrest Newspaper Service to Nebraska chronicles more than 100 years of technological innovation, untiring dedication to First Amendment protections, and community building. If you want to know how a newspaper can serve its community, here is how it's done. Almost 20 years ago, I conducted my first interview with Joe R. Seacrest. I never had another. I don't know if Joe knew when we spoke that we would not finish the project we started together that day, but in that one interview, he gave me the entire structure of my story. When Joe R. died March 28, 1995, I knew I was on my own. I didn't even know what I had in that one interview until I'd tracked down a number of people who could tell me about the newspapers. The project was aimed at revealing how the Seacrest family used technological innovation to keep a mid-sized daily newspaper in business while many others closed their doors. But as I conducted the other interviews, about thirty of them, it became apparent that the Seacrest newspaper legacy reached far beyond keeping a newspaper in business. It included leadership in those technological innovations I'd set out to discover, but it also included strong First Amendment protections supported by the belief that the people have a right to know what their government does in their name; and tireless work to make Lincoln economically sound and safe, a good place to raise a family.