The Tribune family: five generations of Millers and Schurzes

1840 – 2019

Alfred Bryant Miller (1840–1892) and Elmer Crockett (1844–1907): the founders. Miller was born in South Bend in 1840, the son of Benjamin Franklin Miller, an abolitionist newspaperman whose Cincinnati presses Kentucky slave owners had once thrown into the river and who ended in the printing trade in South Bend. Alf Miller served as a Union artilleryman in the Civil War; Crockett, born at Mishawaka in 1844 and his brother-in-law, was a Union veteran as well. Both men worked on Schuyler Colfax's St. Joseph County Register before they struck out: on Saturday evening, 9 March 1872, they published the first four-page South Bend Tribune, and the daily followed on 28 May 1873. Miller was the paper's first editor — "a man of marked personality and great force of character" in Timothy Howard's 1907 county history, who made the Tribune "a power not only in politics, but in the molding of public opinion." He died in the fall of 1892. A rival editor belongs to the same generation: John B. Stoll, the brilliant editor of the Ligonier Banner in Howard's phrase, bought control of the competing South Bend Times in the spring of 1883, founding the line that became the News-Times, the Tribune's competitor until it ceased publication in December 1938.

Frederick A. Miller: the 62-year editor. Alfred's only son became the Tribune's editor at 24, on his father's death in 1892, and remained editor and publisher until his own death on 29 November 1954, at 86 — sixty-two years in one chair, the longest tenure in the paper's history. Under him the Tribune moved into its Colfax Avenue building in 1921, founded WSBT radio in 1922 and WSBT television in 1952, and became the city's only daily when the News-Times folded in 1938. He and his wife had no children, and the succession passed by marriage: on F. A. Miller's death in 1954 the publisher's chair went to his wife's nephew.

Franklin D. Schurz Sr. and Franklin Schurz Jr.: the name the company took. Franklin Schurz Sr. — Harvard undergraduate, Harvard M.B.A., a C.P.A. — became editor and publisher in 1954 and built the family firm into Schurz Communications. A popular legend, told as such in the paper's own histories, has the senior Schurz taking polka lessons and sponsoring weekly polka nights on South Bend's Polish west side to woo the west side's readers; it is printed here as the legend it is labeled. His son, Franklin Schurz Jr., succeeded him after the Tribune's centennial in 1972; a grandson, Todd F. Schurz, served as the Tribune's editor and publisher from 1995 to 2000 and as Schurz Communications' chief executive from 2007. The family's ownership — five generations, among the longest local ownerships of any American daily — ended with the sale of the publishing division to GateHouse Media on 1 February 2019; the Tribune became a Gannett paper that November. The press's institutional record stands in the Newspapers & Media record; the family stands here.

Sources:

1. Wikipedia, "South Bend Tribune" — the founders Miller and Crockett, the first edition of 9 March 1872, F. A. Miller's succession at 24 and his 62-year tenure to 29 November 1954, the Schurz succession of 1954 and after the 1972 centennial, the polka-nights story labeled a popular legend, and the GateHouse sale of 1 February 2019.
2. Schurz Communications, Communicator (Spring 2012) — Alfred Miller's 1840 South Bend birth, his father's print shop and sheriff's office, the artillery service, Crockett's 1844 Mishawaka birth, and the six publishers of the paper's first 125 years.
3. Gannett creative services, "GateHouse Media buys South Bend Tribune" (28 January 2019) — the brothers-in-law founding, the WSBT founding under F. A. Miller, Todd F. Schurz's 1995–2000 editorship, and the end of 147 years of local ownership.
4. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) — Alfred B. Miller's editorship and character, the daily's first issue of 28 May 1873, and John B. Stoll's purchase of the Times in the spring of 1883.
5. Indiana Business Magazine, "50 Great Indiana Businesses," as carried at thefreelibrary.com — Benjamin Franklin Miller's abolitionist newspaper and the presses thrown into the river.