Not content with becoming yesterday’s news, once prominent area newspaper publishers and editors have returned to their first love and found renewed life under a different banner.
“I guess I just have ink in my blood,” said Larry Randa, publisher and editor of the Herald News in Joliet and former vice president and general manager of Suburban Life Newspapers, speaking of his return to the newspaper business.
Randa and others sold the family-owned Life to Liberty Suburban Chicago Newspapers in 1999. He then ran the Liberty conglomerate for two years but found that he was not happy under new management and decided to ease into retirement.
“I was used to being my own boss and I didn’t really like answering to the corporate entity,” said Randa. “I liked retired life. I spent a lot of time on golf courses in Florida and I did marketing or freelance work when I felt like it.”
Randa thought that he would remain retired for good, but then he came across an opportunity that he thought was too good to pass up. The Sun-Times group was restructuring its suburban affiliates by adding publisher/editor positions. The positions would be part community relations and part editorial oversight, with plenty of freedom from the parent company.
“I felt with my background in marketing and publishing that I would really be perfect for this job,” said Randa. “And if I was going to come out of retirement it would have to be the perfect job.”
Randa called Sun-Times management and after a few initial meetings the company decided that he would best serve the Joliet-based publication.
Randa said that it was an initial adjustment for him because he was unfamiliar with Will County and, surprisingly, he had never worked for a daily newspaper before.
He spent his first few months in Joliet working 80-90 hour weeks, holding countless meetings to become acquainted with area political and business leaders, he said.
“I felt like I was going from 20 mph to 160 mph my first week here,” he said. “But it’s 10 months later and I love it. This is the perfect position for me.”
The current focus for the Herald is to find a way to expand its coverage area in fast-growing Will County but still hold onto its strong local focus in the Joliet area, said Randa.
“We are a first-buy out here,” said Randa. “We want to try and keep our focus 95 percent local. We want to take national stories and give them a local angle.”
Randa believes that the lack of community-based newspapers in today’s market is a loss for the industry.
“I’m very concerned about the journalism industry right now,” said the Herald News’s Randa. “The big guys are buying up all of the little papers and we are losing that sense of mom and pop local coverage. We need to find a way to get back to the basics.”
A few suburban publications are taking this idea to heart, as two area newspapers have sought to capture the extreme local niche.
Pete Cruger, owner of Rock Valley Publishing LLC and former owner of the long-time Elmhurst-based Press Publications, went through an experience similar to Randa’s.
In 1998, Cruger sold the nearly century-old, family owned Press to Liberty. At the time of the sale Press consisted of 37 publications in the suburban Chicago area. He signed a non-compete clause with Liberty through 2002.
Unlike Randa, Cruger didn’t sign any management agreements with Liberty. However, he wasn’t quite ready for retirement either.
Unable to work in the Chicago area, Cruger looked west and acquired newspapers in Rockford. Eventually he turned his eyes north and began accumulating publications in Wisconsin as well.
Four years ago he was able to return to the Chicago area and began the Elmhurst Independent. Elmhurst was the site of the family’s first publication in the Chicago area with the Elmhurst Press in 1922.
However, while the Press publications emerged as regional newspapers, Cruger’s Independent is strictly local.
“It’s a little different because we are not a regional now,” said Cruger. “We are basically covering one community rather than a county.”
This may help distinguish his new publication from his former publication, which is still printing in the area under the Liberty banner.
“We do compete with them in the category of the small business owner, but they have a strong regional niche and have national advertising,” he said. “That is not our focus.”
The Elmhurst Independent has a circulation of 8,000 and targets all local businesses for advertising. Cruger is interested in expanding the idea of a single community-based publication to other suburbs and said that if he found a community that would be a good fit he would consider it.
Jim Slonoff and Pamela Lannom are attempting to establish the same niche in Hinsdale with their publication, The Hinsdalean.
Slonoff was the publisher of the Doings in Hinsdale and has worked in the community for 25 years. The same management shuffle by the Sun-Times that secured Randa his job at the Herald in Joliet was subsequently the reason for Slonoff’s and Lannom’s departures from the Doings.
However, they were not ready to leave the community that each had invested a combined 40 years in. They saw the opportunity to establish a publication that solely focused on Hinsdale.
“We wanted to provide a newspaper that was dedicated to one community,” said Slonoff, publisher and co-owner of The Hinsdalean. “So many publications are regional now. But the truth is people want to know what is going on with their local village hall, school system and churches.”
The Hinsdalean is a weekly publication that has now printed more than 30 editions. The newspaper is delivered free to every citizen, insuring 100 percent penetration for local advertisers.
Both Slonoff and Lannom have enjoyed their ownership responsibilities and the slim-downed staff has allowed them a more hands-on approach.
“It’s nice to get back out into the community and cover local events,” said Lannom, editor and co-owner. “There is more freedom with being an owner now. It’s nice knowing that there isn’t someone from the corporate office calling to ask us what we were thinking.”
The Doings is still publishing, but Slonoff does not see his former publication as competition.
“I hired most of the people who are there now (the Doings), and if I didn’t, then Pam did,” said Slonoff. “It is a pretty helpful industry. We will send advertising leads each other’s way from time-to-time.”
The two do not plan on expanding their idea to different communities and instead will continue to concentrate on developing the market share in Hinsdale.
“Financially we are doing well,” said Slonoff. “Right now we average between 28 and 32 pages each issue, but we would like to get that up to 36-40. We don’t want to get too big though. So far people have been very happy with the size and the local focus.”