On May 14, 2016, the Vineyard Gazette will most likely carry a story about the Aquinnah annual town meeting. There will be other town news, breaking news, and perhaps a story about some animal being saved, washed ashore or doing something it isn’t supposed to do. Animal stories are always popular, going all the way back to May 14, 1846, when the first Vineyard Gazette was published by Edgar Marchant, and included a front page essay on vultures.

On Tuesday, May 10, the Gazette’s will wrap up its Tuesdays in the Newsroom series for the season with an event to celebrate the Gazette’s 170th birthday next week. The theme is the Vineyard Gazette: Then and Now, and the Gazette’s unofficial historian Tom Dunlop will preside over a tour and discussion of the newspaper’s history and the evolution of the publishing process.

Visitors will receive a four-page commemorative edition of the paper, which will include that first front page, which in addition to a nod to vultures carried stories on married life, church bells and a note from Dr. Caldwell: “There are but three animals who can abide tobacco, viz. the African rock goat, the tobacco worm and man.”

In 1846 the price for an issue of the Gazette was five cents, and an annual subscription was two dollars. The paper was published every Tuesday morning in the upstairs office in Milton’s Building on Main street, Edgartown. The newspaper has been located at 34 South Summer street since 1938.

Guests at this year’s event will be able to see the press run and feel the old building shake, just as it has for so many years. The current press, a Goss Community press, was installed in 1975, and is still in excellent condition, humming every Thursday night with press supervisor Jeremy Smith at the helm.

The long history of the paper includes Edgar Marchant’s reign as publisher to the time of Henry Beetle Hough and his wife Elizabeth Bowie Hough, who received the paper as a wedding gift in 1920. In 1968 James (Scotty) Reston, the Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times columnist and Edgartown summer resident, bought the Gazette at the urging of Mr. Hough who wanted to be certain the newspaper remained under family ownership. Richard and Mary Jo Reston continued the Reston family ownership until 2010, when the paper was sold to Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg.

The event begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Gazette office in Edgartown. Refreshments will be served. For tickets, go to gazetteanniversary.bpt.me. The Tuesdays in the Newsroom series will resume in September.