My hometown newspaper died Aug. 6, 2025.
No cause of death was reported as the news flew through social media, but I suspected sagging subscriptions and ad sales, coupled with rising materials costs as likely culprits in its demise. A press release reported later by area television stations and a regional daily said as much.
One more small piece of the formerly ubiquitous press is part of history. And I find it saddening for many reasons.
It was the first place I ever saw my words in print. In grade school, after I learned to read, I scanned every newspaper and magazine that came into our house. There were lots. We had a subscription to the now deceased local paper, which was actually two papers. The News and The Leader carried separate nameplates when I was growing up. The News was printed on Tuesday, with home mail delivery on Wednesday. The Leader came out Thursday, with Friday delivery.
I read lots of the articles, and looked at all the pictures. When I was elected scribe of my Camp Fire group in fourth grade, I copied the format of the new officer announcments from the adult clubs and wrote a short article. I recopied it in my best penmanship, carried it the four blocks from my school to the newspaper office, and handed it in. A week later, I read it in the paper. I remember the editor changed one word. (I learned early not to be too attached to my prose.)
The firt time I worked with a newspaper photographer was after I wrote to an area daily’s kids’ column, “Ask Andy.” I’ve always suspected my question was drawn from a hat, not selected because it was so interesting. But I won a set of World Books, which I still have despite its being hopelessly out of date. I remember going to the local newspaper office, the same one I carried articles to, for a photo shoot. The picture still shows up from time to time on my hometown museum’s Facebook post.
I grew up respecting our local newspaper photographer. We all knew to step over the cables in the high school gym because he brought extra lighting to the basketball games so he could get good shots. By the time I was taking sports pictures for the paper, we had strobe flashes for the cameras we carried but I don’t think our shots were as good as his.
I kept writing stories for school groups, from the seventh-and-eighth grade civics club to high school drama club, walking them downtown, and seeing my stories in print. I guess it’s no wonder I kept writing for newspapers for a good chunk of my life.
My first full time job was at that newspaper. I started in the backshop as a typesetter, eventually graduating to page design. I also got to help fix page negatives with a special red pen, “stuff” papers coming off the press, counting and tying them as I went. I could flip a stack of 100 papers back then. I even got to help change “dink” rolls on the press.
My boss in the back shop knew my goal was to work up front, so he helped me organize my schedule to attend classes at Northern Illinois University. Eventually I got a journalism degree there, but not until after my hometown paper had been sold to a young man my age who had dreams of building a nationwide newspaper group. He hired me as an editor for a county weekly, also owned by my hometown paper.
That was 1975. And 50 years later, his company closed, shuttering the papers in Rochelle, several other small towns in Illinois and in other states throughout the U.S.
But he really ended a tradition in my hometown that started in the 1800s. There were newspaperswhen the town was called Lane, before railroad progress required a name change. The Lane Leader ran from 1858 to 1859. The Lane Register was published from 1863 to `1865. The University of Illinois Newspaper Project says Lane changed its name to Rochelle on April 10, 1872.
The earliest papers I could find labeled Rochelle were the Herald, 1865-1877, and the longer-lasting Register, 1865-1926, although both seem to predate the changing of the town’s name. I think the records just include some of the Lane years.
The Library of Congress lists 1921 for the founding of the Rochelle News. According to the U of I Newspaper Project database, the Rochelle News succeeded the Rochelle Independent and the Rochelle Register when those nameplates died in 1926.
The News went into business with the .Rochelle Leader in 1934 but each continued under its own nameplate until 1994 when the two papers became the Rochelle News-Leader under the ownership that just closed its doors.
Sadly, no services have been scheduled to commemorate the loss.
À bientôt
sharon p. lynn 