The earlier papers, and the News-Times

1836–1938 — the Free Press, the Register, the Forum, the Times, and the rival the Tribune outlived

The first papers: Brown's chronology gives the county its first newspaper in 1831 — the Western Pioneer and St. Joseph IntelligencerThe documented line runs clearer from 1836: the South Bend Free Press (1836–1845 in the Library of Congress's newspaper directory, succeeding the St. Joseph Beacon and Indiana & Michigan Intelligencer), a Whig paper edited from 1842 by a nineteen-year-old Schuyler Colfax, hired by the Indiana Whigs, who bought it in 1845 and renamed it the St. Joseph Valley Register — the paper Harriet Beecher Stowe is quoted as calling "morally pure," the leading Whig organ of northern Indiana, and the training ground of the Tribune's founders. The Register added a daily edition on 18 September 1875 and ended in 1887, bought by the Tribune after forty-two years. Around that spine stood the rest of the early press, as Howard's press chapter lists it: the St. Joseph County Forum, begun in 1853 by Ariel Euclid Drapier and his son William — the first Democratic paper in Indiana or southern Michigan, on Anderson & Cooley's account — which passed through the Beacon name and John B. Stoll's company to become the Times (1883); a Sunday News; and the foreign-language press of an immigrant city, the Polish Goniec, the German Indiana Courier (established 1873), and the Indiana-Posten (from 1899).

The News-Times: the South Bend News-Times was formed on 2 June 1913 by the merger of the Times (1883) and the short-lived South Bend News — the Morning News line of 1908 — and for twenty-five years it was the Tribune's real competition: morning, evening and Sunday editions at its height, 17,000 daily circulation claimed in 1921, edited in turn by John H. Zuver, Boyd Gurley, Joseph M. Stephenson, Sidney B. Whipple, McCready Huston and Fred Mills. It published at a loss from 1931 and printed its last issue on 27 December 1938, Stephenson's farewell note in it — a date the paper's histories agree on even where they garble each other (one online account gives the News-Times a death in "the 1950s"; the record's 1938 is the paper's own). For this history the News-Times is the second press of record: the Charities section read its 1914–1921 run — the Federation for Social Service campaigns, the 1917 Red Cross drives — first-hand, and the Events and Veterans legs read its Armistice-era front pages of 12 November 1918 and 12 November 1922.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Resolution 4226-13 (2013) — Colfax, the Free Press editorship and the 1845 purchase and renaming; Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, Colfax biography (1966).
2. Library of Congress newspaper directory listings, via Chronicling America data — the Free Press, 1836–1845, and its predecessors.
3. Howard (1907), press chapter (the Register's daily of 1875 and end of 1887; the Forum of 1853; the Courier of 1873); Anderson & Cooley (1901), newspaper chapter.
4. Hoosier State Chronicles blog (Indiana State Library) — the News-Times merger of 2 June 1913, its editors, its editions, and the last issue of 27 December 1938.