Dana Gilbertson, left, and Margaret Willis pause over a full-page thank you ad while processing the Chesterton Tribune Wednesday Dec. 30, 2020. It was the last day if publishing for the Tribune. Andy Lavalley/Post-Tribune (Post-Tribune)
Dana Gilbertson, left, and Margaret Willis pause over a full-page thank you ad while processing the Chesterton Tribune Wednesday Dec. 30, 2020. It was the last day if publishing for the Tribune. Andy Lavalley/Post-Tribune (Post-Tribune)
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A steady stream of people stopped by the Chesterton Tribune’s office at 193 S. Calumet Road Wednesday afternoon.

The front door was locked, the office closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Margaret Willis poked her head out and sold papers as residents came to buy them and say goodbye.

She and her husband, David Canright, co-publishers of the family newspaper declined to comment. Willis, tearful as she took calls between selling newspapers, referenced her comments and Canright’s in today’s edition.

The paper is full of thank you ads from local businesses, letters from heartbroken Duneland readers and goodbye notes from the staff.

“It is with sadness we come to the point where a print newspaper is not financially viable — it took us a long time to acknowledge and accept this painful truth,” Willis wrote.

On Dec. 16, the Chesterton Tribune announced it would halt publication after Wednesday, an end run after serving the Duneland community since 1884 with a laser-eye focus on local news.

“I know people that anticipate that afternoon delivery of that paper,” said David Cincoski, who is transitioning from the town’s police chief to its town manager, replacing Bernie Doyle, who is retiring. “With the digital age, everyone knows print media is suffering. Unfortunately, the Chesterton Tribune is the next to suffer.”

The Poynter Institute website, www.poynter.org, is compiling a list of all of the newsroom layoffs, furloughs and closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The extensive list covers a stunning number of publications coast to coast that have merged, closed, cut staff or reduced print production days.

The list doesn’t even begin to count the number of newspapers that had already shuttered or slashed staff because of declining ad revenue and readership before the pandemic.

According to the Pew Research Center, the number of newspaper newsroom employees dropped by 51% between 2008 and 2019, from about 71,000 workers to 35,000.

“Print journalism, it’s just a dinosaur. In the end, it’s just not going to be sustainable. The internet has created all these niche markets. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. The Chesterton Tribune was a niche market,” said Kevin Nevers, a reporter at the paper for the past 23 years.

Nevers, appointed by the Chesterton Town Council this week to serve as the town’s public affairs liaison, said the Chesterton Tribune never fully recovered from the 2008 recession. Ad revenue dropped and as reporters left, they weren’t replaced.

When Nevers started at the paper in 1997, 12-page editions were common, with the occasional 16-page edition in two sections. Smaller eight-page papers were rare.

“I began to notice 12-page papers were increasingly rare,” Nevers said, adding the number of hand-stuffed ad inserts also began to dwindle.

With the pandemic, the paper shrank to six pages, “and that’s not due to a lack of news,” Nevers said, adding he can’t blame the business community for not buying ads in the midst of a shutdown.

Over the years, Nevers noticed households would sign up for the paper when their kids hit middle school for coverage of school activities, clubs and sports.

“When I interviewed for this job, David Canright said sooner or later, everyone gets their name in the Chesterton Tribune and I think that’s probably right,” Nevers said.

Lily Rex has worked for the paper part- or full-time for the past three years. Most recently, Rex started a master’s degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

“Journalism is the last job I ever thought I’d have before I came here and I love it,” said Rex, a poet. “I see all sorts of connections between this and being a creative writer.”

Nevers and Rex are keenly aware of what Duneland residents are losing with their newspaper.

They lose a lot of things, Nevers said, adding that the first, most obvious thing they lose is information on municipalities and governments and small things, like who to call to get brush collected.

“You lose someone willing to sleep on the courtroom floor so they’re there when there’s a verdict,” said Rex, who did just that while she provided gavel to gavel coverage of Christopher Dillard’s murder trial when he was found guilty of killing Nicole Gland, a bartender at the Upper Deck Lounge.

The Chesterton Tribune, Cincoski said, is an icon, an institution that’s been serving the Duneland community for well over 100 years. The paper was invaluable when a tornado struck the town in August 2009 and in April 2017, when Gland’s body was found in her vehicle behind the newspaper’s offices after she was stabbed to death by Dillard, a bouncer at the Upper Deck Lounge, Cincoski added.

And that’s just two of the bigger stories of the past several years.

“They did a bang-up job of reporting and keeping the residents informed,” Cincoski said, adding from a policing standpoint, the paper always helped the department get the word out about thefts from vehicles and reminding people to lock their car doors, and informing Duneland residents about similar crimes in neighboring towns. “In essence, it was a great neighborhood watch.”

The Chesterton Tribune was committed to the Duneland area and was the one source that residents and businesses could count on for hyper-local news that citizens found vital, Maura Durham, president of the Duneland Chamber of Commerce, said in an email.

“Even more than that, the Canright family is entwined with all of our families and businesses. They have served on our boards, literally brought the chamber back to life after the war, shared ribbon cuttings, and check presentations that most regional papers wouldn’t cover, wouldn’t spend the time, and just wouldn’t care to do as part of their business model,” Durham said.

The chamber’s hopes are that another family as special as the Canrights will purchase the rights to keep the paper alive, Durham said.

Chris Watkins, a lifelong Chesterton resident, said her parents, Ruth and Ed Wahl, have always read the paper, as has she. She stopped by Wednesday afternoon to buy a few extra copies of the last edition for friends who live out of town.

The Chesterton Tribune, she said, was always impartial and let everyone know what was going on. She liked finding out what the Town Council was doing, and the paper was “like a piece of the town.”

Watkins would like to see the Chesterton Tribune maintain some sort of online presence but it won’t be the same.

“Online news is one thing,” she said, waving her handful of papers. “A physical paper is another.”
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