Media as business — the newspapers and the broadcasters, as firms

1853 – the present · the firms, not the journalism

The newspapers file of this build owns these papers' editorial history whole. What stands here is the same houses counted as businesses: who owned them, what they were worth as property, and where the firm stands now.

The Mishawaka Enterprise, as a firm: the property begins as D. C. Ireland's Free Press — founded 1853 in the county histories, 1855 in the contemporary Register notices, 1854 in the paper's own later directory returns, the conflict printed whole in the newspapers file — a nineteen-year-old printer's venture with no plant of its own, printed across the Michigan line. L. A. Elliott bought it and gave it the Enterprise name; Archibald Beal bought it in 1858; Norman V. Brower held it from 1865, the 1868 directory styling him "editor and prop." of a weekly at the town's center. Edward A. Jernegan bought the paper in 1872 and held it for forty-eight years — the purchase survived the Great Fire months later, which destroyed the office — and Ayer's directory still printed him editor and publisher in 1920, over a Friday Republican weekly, $1.50 a year, circulation 1,150. By 1952 the proprietors were Bert and Edith Enos (Thursday, Independent, circulation 5,798); by 1962 Edith Boys Enos stood alone on the masthead as editor and publisher, circulation 5,147. The proprietors after 1962 stand week by week in the library's microfilm mastheads and are not named in any record — the newspapers file registers that gap with the film as its settling source. The firm's present state is a living weekly: the industry's 2025 planning data carries the Mishawaka Enterprise as a paid Thursday weekly at ZIP 46546, and De Kever's city history calls the Enterprise, on this descent, the oldest business in Mishawaka — the claim printed as the city history's judgment, in the newspapers file and here.

The Mishawaka Democrat, as a firm: a second proprietorship, launched 4 July 1891 by William P. O'Neill — seventeen at the founding, later lieutenant governor of Indiana (1913–17) — as the Democratic house against the Republican Enterprise. The property ran twenty years, 1891 to 1911 on the directory record carried in O'Neill's biography; the library holds only fragments of its file (1897–98, 1907–08), and it is gone from Ayer's 1920 Mishawaka entry. A firm that ended: no successor, no present state, its founder's later career its longest shadow.

The Mishawaka Times, as a firm: the postwar town's third paper, standing in the library's film from September 1961 to 5 October 1966 and in almost no other record reached: the trade directories bracket it without catching it — Ayer's 1962 Mishawaka entry lists the Enterprise and the Countryman's Press and not the Times. Its one named employee in the record is a career line: John F. Dille III, later president of Federated Media, "worked at the Mishawaka Times and Elkhart Truth before moving to broadcasting," in the Indiana Broadcast History Archive's account — which places the Times, at that strength, inside the Dille family's Truth Publishing orbit, the Elkhart house whose president he became. Its founder, publisher of record, frequency and politics are not established in the record reached; the newspapers file registers the gap, with Miller's Indiana Newspaper Bibliography and the Editor & Publisher yearbooks as the settling sources. As a firm it is printed at exactly that size: five filmed years, one named staffer, no directory trace.

The Dodge publishing houses, as firms: Mishawaka's largest print proprietorship was never a newspaper. The Power and Transmission Publishing Company (1885, above) published the pulley trade's journals from the pulley town; its successor line stands in Ayer's 1920 directory as the Dodge Idea — monthly, established 1885, circulation 30,000, editor "W. Mix," publisher the Dodge Publishing Company — a factory house organ claiming more than twice the town's population in readers, against the Enterprise's 1,150 on the same page. The Countryman's Press (1955–1976), a statewide farm bi-weekly published by the Cooperative Publishing Company at 116 West Mishawaka Avenue, circulation 4,389 in 1962, repeats the pattern: Mishawaka as a print shop for other people's publics. Both are carried editorially in the newspapers file; as firms they belong in this count.

WSBT radio and WSBT-TV, as firms: the broadcast properties began as the South Bend Tribune's — boundary-printed at their origin, which is South Bend's: WSBT radio launched in 1922 as WGAZ, and WSBT-TV signed on 21 December 1952, owned by the Tribune's company, the Schurz family house. The Mishawaka chapter of both firms is a plant chapter. In 2007–08 Schurz Communications built its broadcast headquarters at 1301 East Douglas Road in Mishawaka — some 85,000 square feet — and the radio stations began broadcasting from it in the autumn of 2008, WSBT-TV unveiling the all-digital facility on 16 November 2008. From that autumn the firms' work — newsroom, studios, master control — was seated in Mishawaka, while both licenses remained licenses of South Bend, as the producers file's license test establishes. The ownership course then divided the cluster. On 14 September 2015 Schurz announced its exit from broadcasting, selling its television and radio stations to Gray Television for $442.5 million; Gray, which already held South Bend's WNDU-TV, swapped WSBT-TV to Sinclair Broadcast Group for WLUC-TV of Marquette, and sold the WSBT radio group to Mid-West Family Broadcasting for $5.5 million; the Federal Communications Commission approved the television transfer on 12 February 2016 and both sales closed on 16 February 2016. Present state: WSBT-TV is a Sinclair station (WSBT Licensee, LLC), CBS on 22.1 and Fox on 22.2 since 1 August 2016, produced at 1301 East Douglas Road, Mishawaka, and since 2025 sharing those studios with its Sinclair sister WSJV of Elkhart; the WSBT radio group is Mid-West Family's, and its studios have returned to Monroe Street in downtown South Bend, on a date the producers file registers as a named gap. The licenses never became Mishawaka's; the plant, the payroll and the product did, in 2008, and the television half remains.

Schurz Communications and Federated Media, as Mishawaka-seated firms: two media companies are headquartered in this city, and neither was founded in it — the distinction is the entry. Schurz Communications traces to the South Bend Tribune of 1872, founded by Alfred B. Miller and Elmer Crockett — Crockett himself Mishawaka-born, in the company's own Communicator history — took the Schurz name in 1976, seated its corporate headquarters in the Douglas Road building it built in Mishawaka in 2008, sold its newspapers, the Tribune among them, to GateHouse Media in January 2019 for $30.0 million, and stands today at 1301 East Douglas Road, Suite 200, Mishawaka, describing itself as a broadband and cloud-services company. Federated Media, the Dille family's radio company — its ties running to John F. Dille's takeover of the Elkhart Truth and its stations in 1952, on the company's own history — keeps its corporate headquarters at 245 Edison Road, Mishawaka, and produces its Michiana stations from its Edison Road studios, every one of them licensed to another city, as the producers file establishes. Both firms are Mishawaka's by seat and payroll; their founding stories belong to South Bend and Elkhart, and are boundary-printed as theirs.

Sources:

1. The newspapers file of this build — the Enterprise's founding conflict and succession (Ireland, Elliott, Beal, Brower, Jernegan, the Enoses), the Democrat's 1891–1911 course and O'Neill, the Times's filmed run of 1961–66 and its registered gap, the Dodge Idea's 1920 directory line, and the Countryman's Press, each on its own sources (Chapman, Howard, Ayer's directories of 1920, 1952 and 1962, the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library holdings list, Tetlow's Ireland dissertation).
2. The producers file of this build — the FCC license test (no station licensed to Mishawaka), the Schurz building of 2007–08 and its occupants, the 2015–16 breakup on the Gray and Sinclair announcements and the FCC approval of 12 February 2016, radio's return to Monroe Street, WSJV's arrival in 2025, and Federated Media's Edison Road seat, each on its own sources.
3. Schurz Communications, the company's history page and its Communicator of April 2012 — the 1872 Tribune founding by Miller and Crockett, Crockett Mishawaka-born, the growth chart listing "1922 – WSBT Radio" and "1952 – WSBT-TV," and the present broadband and cloud-services form at 1301 E. Douglas Rd., Suite 200, Mishawaka.
4. Gray Television announcements (14 September and 1 October 2015) and Business Wire (January 2019) — the $442.5 million broadcasting sale, the WSBT-TV swap to Sinclair, and the $30.0 million newspaper sale to GateHouse Media, as carried in the producers and newspapers files.
5. Federated Media, the company's published history — John F. Dille's 1952 takeover of the Elkhart Truth with WTRC-AM and WLTA-FM, and the company's family-owned course to its Mishawaka headquarters.