The newspapers: the Register, the Tribune, and the empty chair

Howard (1907), Vol. I, Ch. VII (the press chapter); the Tribune's own masthead record; Hesburgh Libraries, Notre Dame (2024); the newspaper-directory and holdings-list searches of November 2026

The paper of record for Clay Township ground was first the St. Joseph Valley Register — founded 12 September 1845 by Albert W. West and Schuyler Colfax out of the older South Bend Free Press plant, daily from 1875, absorbed by the Tribune in November 1887 — the only paper that covered the township's settlement week by week. The South Bend Weekly Tribune followed on 9 March 1872 (the dates are triple-carried: Howard's press chapter, the Goodspeed biography of its founder Alfred B. Miller, and the Tribune's own masthead, which also gives the Daily from 28 May 1873 and the Sunday from 30 April 1922); the South Bend News-Times (1913–1938) stood as the second daily through the town's incorporation decade, so 1916 coverage must be checked in both. Notre Dame's Hesburgh Libraries state the standing plainly: the Tribune "has been the city's newspaper of record since its early days." The empty chair: no newspaper has ever been published in Roseland itself, at the strength reached — no title was returned by the newspaper-directory searches, the county newspaper microfilm list carries no Roseland heading, and the State Library's print-holdings list no Roseland entry (gap G-SP-3, narrowed; the directory's own query form, which a text search cannot submit, is the settler that would close it at full directory strength). The repositories, stated exactly: there is no free full-text Tribune run online — the text is gated (NewsBank, whose complete 1873–present archive is a Notre Dame-authenticated holding; Newspapers.com; ProQuest) or on microfilm; what is free is the photograph archive — Michiana Memory's ten-thousand-plus digitized Tribune negatives (1937–1990) — and the State Library's Hoosier State Chronicles, whose South Bend strength is the News-Times, not the Tribune.