Closings

     “The loss of newspapers may be, ironically, the most important under-reported story of our time.” Evan Davis

The Chesterton Tribune is poised to cease publication in 10 days after 136 years. It was owned most of those years by the Canright family and came out five times a week. Toni and I sent our regrets to the publishers:

If the Chesterton Tribune ceases publication, which appears inevitable, it will be an incalculable loss. The paper has truly been a community newspaper, skillfully reporting on doings ranging from the mundane to the unusual, from town board meetings to a Black Lives Matters march. Reporter Kevin Nevers has a particular felicity with words, and whenever his byline appeared, the story was must reading. With a granddaughter who recently graduated from CHS, we looked forward to reading about events she participated in, often accompanied by photos. The Tribune carried more state, national, and international news than any other paper in Northwest Indiana. Its history columns, especially “Echoes of the Past,” were a special delight. Of all the area closings that have taken pace during the pandemic, this will, in all likelihood, have the most long-lasting effect. Journalism has suffered numerous hits over the past 20 years, and our country, as a result, is much the worse for it.

Sorrowfully, James and Toni Lane

Chesterton resident Darcey Wade wrote: 

    The paper printed my first letter to the editor, 1976, our class reunion discriminated against single people by charging them more to attend. I am going to miss so much about it. I even have a copy of an old letter to the editor from Mr. Dave Sanders, a local character who ran Saturday’s child, the hippest place in Porter.

Former Post-Tribune editor Dean Bottorff wrote:

    I am always saddened to hear about the death of yet another newspaper, especially small community newspapers that, without other media, have been the mainstay of (if not the only) reliable source of local information. Who’s going to be left to watch over the likes of town boards, zoning commissions, the sheriffs, courts and school districts? Who’s left to honestly broker the truthful information that a viable community needs to function. Who’s left to record our daily lives, births, graduations, weddings and funerals? Who’s left to record the mundane of clubs, bake sales and bingo? Certainly not the Internet or social media which have evolved into cesspools of gossip, deceit and – too often – divisiveness. Sadly, when a community loses it’s newspaper, it loses part of it’s sole and the citizens there are thrust into bleak darkness.

IUN emeritus professor Don Coffin added:

  When I was a kid, there were four newspapers in Indianapolis--the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis News (both owned by the same company), the Indianapolis Times, and the Indianapolis Recorder (weekly; published since the 1890s, clientele mostly in the Black community; I subscribed to it when I worked in the Division of Planning and Zoning-I was a planner--in the 1970s). Only the Star and the Recorder have survived, and the Star has shrunk considerably over the past decade. It's not just small towns.

3 Floyds Brewpub, closed since March due to the pandemic, announced that it had no plans to reopen. Located in a nondescript industrial park in Munster, it became a hot spot after its craft brews, including Dark Lord, became critically acclaimed. I went there only once, with History colleagues Jerry Pierce and Jon Briggs on a mid-afternoon Friday, and by the time we finished our meal, there were dozens of people outside hoping to get in. NWI Times reporter Joseph Pete interviewed veteran Douglas Hathaway, who said he wore a 3 Floyds shirt to a DC craft brew fest and “got fan-boyed into oblivion - You've been there. Wow.”

 

Julius "Groucho" Marx (1890-1977) was a master comedian whose humor encompassed slapstick, satire, clever word play ("Time wounds all heels"), wise cracks, puns, and farce. A vaudevillian who debuted at 15 in Grand Rapids, MI, he played Gary's Palace Theater with his brothers in his 20s and reached Broadway not long afterwards, The Marx Brothers starred in 13 films beloved by generations of comedians. Groucho hosted the unique game show “You Bet Your Life,” first on radio and, beginning in 1953. on network TV. I was an instant fan. He once said, “A man is only as old as the woman he feels" and before he died quipped, "Bury me next to a straight man.”

I prefer writers (Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Richard Russo) that have a comic rather than tragic outlook on life. In Russo's "The Risk Pool" the author's alter ego lives in upstate New York, where his grandfather divides the year into “Fourth of July, Mohawk Fair, Eat the Bird, and Winter.” A drunk accosts his ne'er do well father Sam Hall and insists he must know a fighter from Syracuse named Hall. “That's the name my wife and I fight under,” Sam said.