The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Newspapers & Media — North Liberty
North Liberty had its own press for sixty-seven years: a first paper in 1892 that lasted four, and a second, founded while the first still lived, that ran from 1895 to 1962 and for most of that span was the town's memory of itself. Since 1962 the town has been covered from outside — by Walkerton's paper, which kept a column under the dead paper's very name, and by the South Bend Tribune. This section traces the two titles from the directory record, prints the one genuine conflict in their dates whole, and tests the broadcast side to its negative.
The North Liberty Herald: the first paper, 1892 to about 1896
1892 – c. 1896
The town's first newspaper was the North Liberty Herald, established in 1892. The carrier is the National Register nomination for the Commercial Historic District (Garner, 2012), read in its own text: "The town's first newspaper, the North Liberty Herald, was established in 1892 and operated for four years." No founder, editor, politics, or surviving issue of the Herald is named in any source reached — the U.S. Newspaper Directory record as reflected in Chronicling America carries only one North Liberty title, the News, and the Herald's four years rest on the nomination alone, printed at that single-carrier strength. Its office, if it shared the town's later printing building, is not stated. The Herald banks as a title, a start year, and a span; everything else about it is a named gap whose settler is the Indiana State Library's newspaper holdings and the directory's underlying survey.
The North Liberty News: 1895–1962, Dell Woodward's paper
1895 – 1962
The North Liberty News was founded in 1895, a year before its predecessor folded, and outlived it by sixty-six years. The directory record is exact in its identifiers: the U.S. Newspaper Directory, as carried by Chronicling America and its derivative listings, gives the News publication years of 1895 to 1962, LCCN sn87055772, OCLC 15560289. The town's own gazetteer line confirms the paper's standing in its prime: Polk's Indiana Gazetteer for 1916–17 counts among North Liberty's institutions "a bank and a newspaper, the News." The nomination fills the office: a building in the commercial district identified as a printing establishment on the Sanborn maps of 1909 and 1917, its presses run by a two-horsepower gasoline engine, "likely the home of the North Liberty News since it is the only printing operation identified on the Sanborn maps," and the paper's publisher in the early 1900s named — Dell Woodward. The same nomination records the paper's late ownership: the News "was owned by the Independent News Company as early as 1940" — the Walkerton company, foreshadowing the coverage lineage below. What the News was in the town — its columns, its correspondents from the township's school districts, its asking in a 1991 retrospective column (its successor's pages, on the Story of North Liberty section's evidence) how North Liberty got its name — is sampled throughout this build wherever the paper is the carrier, and its full run, 1912–1962 on film at the strength the events file cites, is the single richest unread source in the town's record.
The end of the News: 1962, or "through the 1960s" — printed whole
Conflict, unmerged
The two best carriers divide on when the town's paper died. The directory record ends the North Liberty News in 1962. The National Register nomination, in the same passage that names its publisher, states that the paper "continued to operate through the 1960s" — a decade's span with no terminal year, which cannot be squared with 1962 unless "the 1960s" is loosely meant or the directory's end year marks a title or frequency change the nomination did not register. Neither carrier is preferred here. The banked current-today file prints 1962, following the directory; this section prints the nomination's telling beside it, and the conflict stands as a named item whose settler is the paper's own final issues and the State Library's holdings record.
Covered from Walkerton and South Bend: the lineage since
1962 – present
When the town's paper ended, its function moved five miles west and its name went with it.The South Bend Tribune stands as the county paper of record, and it is the Tribune that carries the town's modern public life — its elections, its festival's candidates, its school corporation's sport — throughout this build's modern articles. No newspaper is published in North Liberty today, a tested statement the current-today file makes and this section repeats at pointer size.
Broadcast: no station licensed here
Tested November 2026
No radio or television station licensed to North Liberty was reached in any pass of this build. The town lies inside the South Bend–Elkhart broadcast market, and its stations are that market's; WSBT's news director appears in the town's record in 1968 as a Chamber of Commerce Ladies' Night speaker in Walkerton's paper, which is the shape of the town's broadcast history entire — the signals came from elsewhere, and the town appeared in them as news, never as the licensee. The negative prints at the strength of the build's repeated searches; the FCC's licensing records are its settler.