Inside Granger: the years the Tribune built the suburb a magazine of its own

BY 2005 – 2011

For one era Granger had two monthlies, and the second was the daily's. The South Bend Tribune's Flagship Publications Department was the company's niche-magazine division — "a group of niche publications that the Defendant created, managed, produced, and published," as the federal court would later summarize the designated evidence — and its titles included InMichiana, the regional magazine, and Inside Granger, the zoned monthly for this ground. The department was running by July 2005, when the coordinator whose lawsuit preserves its record joined it part-time; the magazine's surviving digital editions, on the printer's platform under the running head "insideGRANGER46530," run monthly from March 2009 through July 2011, and they show what a metro daily thought a suburb's magazine was: the Tribune's own columnists reprinted for the territory (Heidi Prescott's Market Basket, the retail column, appears in number after number, "Printed in the South Bend Tribune" noted under it), community profiles at feature length (Gene Stowe's profile of REAL Services' Becky Zaseck, March 2009), the district's doings (the Committee for Penn Pride's turf campaign, November 2009), the community's memory (the Granger Reunion of Harris School graduates, April 2010), and the corridor's commerce as news (the Granger Business Association's Super Hero campaign for the State Road 23 construction summer, September 2010).

The end is a court record, which is why it can be dated. In Hizer v. South Bend Tribune (N.D. Ind., decided July 1, 2014), the paper's designated evidence showed that the Flagship publications "cost more to produce than its advertising revenues could support"; a designer transferred out of the division on July 12, 2010, "eleven months before the Flagship Division was eliminated," which puts the elimination in June 2011; and "the entire Department was eliminated, and the magazines the Plaintiff worked on as editorial coordinator were no longer produced or published." The July 2011 digital edition therefore stands at the run's edge — a monthly dated within weeks of its division's death, printed here whole as the record gives it. Set the two monthlies side by side and the era explains itself: the Gazette, independent and advertising-thin, survived because its costs were a publisher's own; Inside Granger, a division of a metro daily with a newsroom's overhead, died the moment the chain of decisions reached it — three years before the daily itself was sold. Granger's one experiment in being a magazine market ended in 2011, and the Gazette has had the ground to itself since.

Sources:

1. Hizer v. South Bend Tribune, 31 F. Supp. 3d 986 (N.D. Ind. 2014): the Flagship Publications Department and its titles (Inside Granger, InMichiana); the coordinator employed from July 2005; the division eliminated eleven months after July 12, 2010; the magazines' costs against their advertising revenues.
2. Inside Granger, digital editions (Walsworth digital-editions platform), March 2009 – July 2011: the March 2009 community profile (Gene Stowe); November 2009 (Penn Pride); April 2010 (the Granger Reunion); September 2010 (the Super Hero campaign, Catherine McCormick); the Market Basket reprints (Heidi Prescott), January 2010, May 2011, July 2011.