Chess in the Press

He served, for a time, as "Chess Chronicler" for Mind Sports Worldwide (MSO), an online magazine now defunct. They profiled him in their February 19, 2000 issue with the following:

    Stephen Leary learned to play chess at age 8. Inspired by Bobby Fischer's conquest of the world championship, Steve began playing in chess tournaments during the Fischer Boom of the mid-1970s.
   In high school, he played first board on the chess team and lost only one game during his three years of inter-school competition. Over the years he won a number of local tournaments in Ohio. His rating peaked at USCF 2229.
   In the late 1980s, Steve hopped aboard the Internet. He began posting his "Chess In The Press" roundups of chess news in the general press to the rec.games.chess newsgroup in the early 1990s.
   In 1993, Steve was instrumental in the creation of the rec.games.chinese-chess newsgroup, and maintained the FAQ for several years. Later, he created the "XiangQi Teahouse" website.
   Steve graduated from the University of Akron with a degree in Journalism, and was editor of the student newspaper. He also has a master's degree in Library Science from Kent State University. He currently works as a research librarian.

There were only a few chess publications prior to the rapid growth of the world-wide-web in the mid 1990's. Chess in the Press was one of the earliest.

While there were a few others, here is a timeline of the some of the more popular early internet publications:

Chess Bits - Issue #1, May 15th, 1992
Chess in the Press - Issue #1, undated; Issue #2, May 24, 1993
TWIC - Issue #1, Sept. 19, 1994
IECC Chess Bits & Pieces - Issue #1, March 1995

Chess in the Press was an unusual publication that contained no games nor analyses, but simply chess-related news blurbs and news stories. Some are funny, some interesting, some bland, but the collection is a wonderful mix of things we may have otherwise forgotten.

The 11 issues of Chess in the Press can be read here: