The South Bend Tribune: five generations, three sales short of a century and a half

1872 — the present

The founding: The South Bend Weekly Tribune was first issued on 9 March 1872 by the Tribune Printing Company. Its incorporators — Alfred Bryant Miller, Elmer Crockett, James H. Banning, and Elias W. Hoover — had, in the 1907 history's words, "all been connected with the Register, and had withdrawn by reason of some dissatisfaction with the management of that paper." Miller was the editor, Crockett the mechanical man who ran the presses; the two were brothers-in-law, Crockett having married Miller's sister Anna in 1868. The first edition was four pages, published on a Saturday evening, and its first editorial read the town's growth as the paper's warrant: "We know that in our four or five years' experience in the newspaper business in this city, its reading population has increased nearly one half, that the county has grown accordingly and that there is room for a journal like The Tribune." Howard gives the original plant's site as No. 127 West Washington Street; the paper's own later account puts its first offices at 73 and 75 West Washington Street, and the accounts stand as they are. The first Daily Tribune followed on 28 May 1873 — the city's first daily newspaper. Alfred B. Miller edited until his death in the fall of 1892, a writer Howard remembered as "incisive, persuasive in his reasoning," with "humorous and poetical veins" beside; Elmer Crockett was business manager from the beginning. The company also ran a book, stationery, and art supply store beside the paper until 1902.

The second Miller held the paper for sixty-two years. Frederick A. Miller — F.A. — had set type as a boy and carried a route at twelve; at twenty-four, on his father's death in 1892, he became editor, the majority stockholder, and in time the whole enterprise: an honorary profile records that with Elmer Crockett's death on 3 June 1924 he became president and editor as well. His rules were painted on the newsroom wall in block letters by his order — "Be Accurate." He banned smoking at the Tribune and banned all advertising of alcohol in the Tribune and in the company's radio and television stations. He was a charter member of the Associated Press at its founding in 1900. Under him the paper's circulation reached 110,000, the third largest in Indiana. In April 1921 the Tribune moved into its new building at 225 West Colfax Avenue, its fourth home, and stayed ninety-eight years. One of the first women to earn a byline in its pages was Dorothea Kahn, a South Bend High School and University of Chicago graduate, whose bylined feature covered the Notre Dame–Indiana football game of 4 November 1922 and who went on to the women's pages editorship and a hand in launching the company's radio station before leaving for the Christian Science Monitor in 1924.

F.A. Miller's Tribune fought on the record. Against the Ku Klux Klan, which made South Bend its Indiana showpiece in May 1924, the paper fought, in Indiana University's summary of his career, "vehemently… with many articles that attested to his courage and independence"; when Klansmen in full regalia appeared on the downtown corners on 17 May 1924 and Notre Dame students and townspeople stripped the robes off them, the Tribune reported the day's work in its own columns — "Trouble started early in the day when klansmen in full regalia of hoods, masks and robes appeared on street corners in the business section, ostensibly to direct their brethren to the meeting ground, Island park" — and its headline on the confrontation read, "Klan display in South Bend proves failure." The paper's own centennial edition of 9 March 1972 stated his endorsement rule plainly: a Republican candidate "could count upon The Tribune's endorsement" unless he was "an atrocious choice, or tied to an organization that Miller found obnoxious, such as the Ku Klux Klan." In 1928 he conducted, in the centennial edition's words, "full scale war against the regime of Mayor Chester R. Montgomery, whom The Tribune accused of harboring gambling, liquor violations and prostitution"; Montgomery answered with a seventy-six-page booklet of his own, The Tribune F.A. Miller Menace. In 1945 Miller declined the offer of the Republican nomination for the United States Senate. He died on 29 November 1954, aged eighty-six — sixty-one years as editor and publisher, the longest tenure of the six publishers the paper counted in its first 125 years.

The Schurz century followed. F.A. Miller and his wife had no children, and the editorship passed to Franklin D. Schurz Sr. — a nephew of Mrs. Miller; his wife Martha, whom he married in 1929, was F.A. Miller's niece. Schurz had joined the Tribune organization in 1925 with a Harvard bachelor's and a Harvard M.B.A. interrupted by Army service in the First World War, and Miller trained him, in the family company's own history, "in virtually every aspect of the Tribune's operations." His roles ran the whole house: manager of WSBT radio (the Indiana Broadcast History Archive credits him as the station's general manager from 1936 to 1946), business manager of the Tribune, vice president 1929–46, secretary-treasurer 1946–57, editor and publisher 1954–72, president 1957–75, chairman 1975–76. His son Franklin Schurz Jr., who joined in 1956, succeeded him as editor and publisher after the paper's centennial in 1972 and carried the roles through president, 1972–82, before the company's name changed to Schurz Communications.

In December 1963 the paper's reporter Jack Colwell broke the story that the Studebaker Corporation would shut down its South Bend factory that month — the blow that left 7,000 employees without work, and the single largest news story the paper ever carried out of its own city. The newsroom of those years was run for twenty-seven years by managing editor John J. "Jack" Powers, who also started the internship program the paper has kept since about 1960; the sports department stood on Joe Doyle, a close confidant of Ara Parseghian, and Forrest "Woody" Miller, who covered Notre Dame men's basketball for decades. Todd F. Schurz was named the Tribune's editor in 1995 and became Schurz Communications' chief executive in 2007; Scott C. Schurz Jr. followed as editor and publisher; and David Ray, a great-grandson of Elmer Crockett, stood in the recent record as an editor and publisher of his ancestor's paper. The Hoosier State Press Association named the Tribune a Blue Ribbon Newspaper in 2006, 2016, and 2018. The Awards chapter carries the prize test: the Tribune holds no Pulitzer, and its 2018–19 series with ProPublica on the Elkhart police was a finalist for Harvard's Goldsmith Prize, not a Pulitzer.

The end of the family era came in two steps, and the record states both because summaries often state only one. On 28 January 2019 Schurz Communications announced the sale of its entire publishing division — twenty newspapers — to GateHouse Media, in a deal reported at $30 million for the group; Todd Schurz's own column on the sale was headed by his sentence, "It was time for our family to exit." The Tribune's sale to GateHouse took effect on 1 February 2019, closing five generations and more than 146 years of family ownership. On 19 November 2019 GateHouse completed its merger with Gannett and the combined company took the Gannett name; on that date, and not before, the Tribune became a Gannett newspaper. The plant had already changed around it: in June 2017 the paper shut down its own presses and moved printing to Walker, Michigan, then in July 2020 to Indianapolis and in early 2021 to Milwaukee.

In November 2019 the staff moved out of the Tribune Building after ninety-eight years, briefly to the Union Station Technology Center, and in August 2020 into a former Studebaker assembly plant at 635 South Lafayette Boulevard in the Renaissance District. Sunday readership had peaked above 130,000 in the 1970s; circulation stood at 44,951 in 2015. In March 2022 the paper went to a six-day printing schedule, ending the Saturday edition, and in June 2024 it announced the change from carrier delivery to delivery by mail. The paper publishes daily at southbendtribune.com and operates the Notre Dame sports site ND Insider. Its documented part in the events the other chapters carry — the Merchants National robbery of 1934, the police-tapes litigation, the sky watch of July 1952 that it ran with WSBT, and the Studebaker closing beyond Colwell's story — stands in those chapters; the Schurz purchase and the company's century as a South Bend business stand in the Businesses chapter.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), Chapter VII, §3 — the founding of 9 March 1872, the incorporators and their Register withdrawal, the first daily of 28 May 1873, Alfred B. Miller and Elmer Crockett, Richard H. Lyon, the 1907 masthead, and the plant's sites.
2. South Bend Tribune, centennial edition, 9 March 1972, as quoted in the paper's reference record — F.A. Miller's endorsement rule and the 1928 Montgomery war; the first editorial of 9 March 1872; the first offices at 73 and 75 West Washington Street; Dorothea Kahn's bylines of 1922–23.
3. Indiana University Honors and Awards, profile of Frederick Alfred Miller — born 31 January 1868; majority stockholder 1892; president and editor from 1924; charter member of the Associated Press, 1900; circulation of 110,000, third in Indiana; the 1924 fight against the Klan; the declined Senate nomination of 1945.
4. Schurz Communicator, Spring 2012 (the Schurz family's house history) — six publishers in the first 125 years; F.A. Miller's sixty-one years; Franklin D. Schurz's succession as Mrs. Miller's nephew and his training under Miller.
5. Franklin D. Schurz Papers, finding aid, Indiana University South Bend — joined the Tribune organization 1925; married Martha Montgomery 1929; the sequence of his offices, 1929–1976; and the Indiana Broadcast History Archive — his WSBT general managership, 1936–1946, and the company's holdings at his death in 1987.
6. University of Notre Dame, "A Clash Over Catholicism" (August 2018) — the Tribune's headline on the confrontation of 17 May 1924; the Indiana History Blog's Notre Dame–Klan series — the Tribune's report of that morning, quoted from the paper.
7. The sale record: South Bend Tribune, Todd F. Schurz's column of 28 January 2019 and Cory Havens's report of the GateHouse purchase (2 February 2019); Indianapolis Business Journal and Inside Indiana Business on the announcement; Dirks, Van Essen & April / MediaPost on the $30 million division price — the two-step course, GateHouse on 1 February 2019 and the Gannett name on 19 November 2019.
8. The paper's reference record for the plant course: Tribune Building entered April 1921, vacated November 2019; presses closed June 2017; printing at Walker, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee in turn; six-day schedule from March 2022; mail delivery announced June 2024; Blue Ribbon awards of 2006, 2016, and 2018.