The Black press of the county seat — and the alternative layer

1913–1971 · five papers, all South Bend

South Bend had a Black press for most of the twentieth century; Lakeville never had one of any kind. The state survey of African American newspapers prints the county seat's run: the Observer (1913); the South Bend Forum (1923, weekly); the South Bend Journal (1928, weekly, edited by William D. LaMarr); the South Bend Herald-Times (1950s); and The Reformer (1967–1971, weekly) — the last of them also the county's alternative-press layer of its years, a Black-owned weekly publishing outside the two dailies' frame, with a free online archive surviving it. The run prints at survey strength, from the standard list of Indiana's African American newspapers with its Library-of-Congress control numbers carried in that list; the Directory itself was not approached (standing denial). Against that county record, the Lakeville test is negative and prints as one: no Black newspaper, and no alternative or community paper, published in Lakeville or Union Township was found in any carrier searched — the town's print layer is the one the banked file carries, and its broadcast layer is the article above. The modern layer is digital and county-wide, printed at pointer: the county's news now reaches Lakeville through the Tribune's and the broadcasters' South Bend digital editions, none of them Lakeville-addressed.

Principal sources: "List of African American newspapers in Indiana" (the state survey, first-hand; LCCN data as carried there); The Reformer archive record (first-hand). The LOC U.S. Newspaper Directory was not used.