Molding a daily identity
skateboarders in a downtown park some said would never see its 2004
dedication.
As of 1995, there was no Millennium Carillon. George Pradel was still a
semi-retired traffic cop. Land for a third library had not yet been
purchased. The corner at which Fredenhagen Park sits was still known
for ice cream and fountain drinks — and not the fountain built nine
years later.
To be sure, the boom began long before the earth moved at Naperville
Crossings this year, the site at 95th Street and Route 59 some are
touting as the new downtown area. But developments in the past decade
helped Illinois' fourth-largest city come into its own. So, too, its
hometown paper mirrored the city in refinement.
"The city has grown intelligently," said the Sun's publisher, Jerry Alger, "and that's what we have to do, too."
Building a brighter sunbeam
When the 1990s began, The Sun was still based downtown and reporters
still labored under the watchful eyes of Harold White, the paper's
publisher for the last half-century.
Then media group Copley purchased The Sun in 1991, and the dominoes of
change toppled in rapid succession. One of Copley's early moves —
purchasing a new press and moving printing operations to Plainfield —
would eventually give The Sun a new look and a new home.
The state-of-the-art press opened new horizons for the company,
particularly in photo quality, according to Sun Editor in Chief Jim
King, then with the Copley-owned Aurora Beacon-News. Newly arrived
consultant (and eventual publisher) Greg Mellis, who had led the
award-winning photo staff at the Springfield State Journal Register,
spread the gospel of splashy, in-depth photo spreads and magazine-style
newspapers that mirrored the interests of readers.
Mellis sowed the seeds of this reporting model in The Sun's other
publications, beginning in 1996 with the weekly Fox Valley Villages
Sun. King played a part, branding the newspaper "60504," which matched
the ZIP code of readers and echoed TV show "Beverly Hills 90210," all
the rage then.
More than a dozen free Sun weeklies popped up in Naperville's
neighboring towns. Advertisers liked that every resident got a copy,
King said; residents loved the content. In the new style, reporters
didn't just announce the new school finance officer, King said, they
showed where the money went and the residents' stake in the cash flow.
They didn't do a "hot weather" story — they interviewed kids baking in
the heat and gave tips for staying cool and identifying heatstroke.
"As much as anything, it taught us in newspapering that we need to
write about the things that connect with people's lives," King said.
"Suburban journalism didn't have to be second-rate journalism by any
means."
The style change "affected everybody" in the Copley chain, King said.
Traces are seen today: in the photo front of Out & About, the Sun's
weekly entertainment insert; and the graphically engaging front of
today's editions, though they also take a cue from parent company
Hollinger International and the Chicago Sun-Times, which acquired
Naperville and the weeklies in 2000.
"My father got The Wheaton Sun for a while and he said the front cover
of the paper, and of Out & About, was his favorite thing about The
Sun," said Wendy Fox Weber, managing editor and steward of the
entertainment section. "When people say pictures don't matter that
much, I think of that."
A change of scenery was in the offing for the Naperville staff as well.
After years of the Ogden Avenue printing plant sitting vacant, Copley
decided in 1998 to move the editorial staff from its increasingly
cramped quarters downtown.
The Sun's home since 1965 was endearing to some. Longtime editor Tim
West liked being in the middle of it all on Jackson Avenue;
sportswriter D.J. Wanberg enjoyed clinking glasses with colleagues
after work at nearby Features Bar & Grill. But the quarters were
cramped, Wanberg said, and most were ready to go.
Elbow room was scarce in the months between when the building was sold
to Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn and the completion of a $3.9
million office conversion at the old printing headquarters. Writers
encamped in a single room at Plainfield, where belongings were stored
underneath desks, while copy editors and designers plied their trade in
Aurora.
"But the wait was worth it," Wanberg said. "My jaw dropped when I
entered our current home on Ogden Avenue. ... I still think of it as a
journalistic palace with plenty of open space to think, write and do my
job."
Going daily
Room to air it out creatively would serve the Sun's staff well as open
spaces in Naperville gradually met the bulldozer's blade and the city's
population ballooned from 82,000 in 1991 to nearly 140,000 residents
today.
"The overriding issue in Naperville for the past 30 years has been
development and growth," West said, "and how the local governments have
coped with the need for more schools, traffic problems and so forth.
That's been the theme for all the years I've been here and won't really
end until the last major parcel of developable land is gone."
Local and national events — and the way the Sun staff responded to them — also showed that Naperville had grown up.
On March 5, 1999, resident Marilyn Lemak sedated and smothered her
children, Nicholas Morrissey Lemak, 7, Emily Grace Lemak, 6, and Thomas
David Lemak, 3. Sun reporters followed her arrest, trial and
imprisonment over the following five years.
When the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred, The Sun was
still published three times a week. The staff quickly turned around
localized stories for the next day's edition on police response, how to
explain the tragedy to kids, communications issues and volunteer
efforts. Friday's edition that week reported wedding plans derailed by
grounded flights and the missing status of Navy Cmdr. Dan Shanower, a
Naperville Central High School graduate.
In recent years, as the city's pace of life quickened, news coverage
included new skate parks, a south side library, the unveiling of the
Millennium Carillon and Shanower Memorial, the annual Ribfest blitz and
inexhaustible topics such as teardowns and traffic.
In early 2003, Alger was hired as publisher with the directive to gauge
the interest of business leaders, officials, advertisers and residents
in taking the hometown paper daily.
"They wanted us to be there when they needed us to be there," Alger
said of the response. City leaders didn't want to wait two days to read
important community news in The Sun, or read about decisions that
affected them in out-of-town papers whose attention was divided among
several communities, papers "too big to be small enough to cover our
town," Alger said.
Suitably encouraged, Alger and the staff pushed to hit a March 30
launch. Writers and photographers were pooled from the weekly
newspapers, and production schedules changed to meet the change in
philosophy. The pace was hectic, but exciting to those such as Editor
Joe Corrado, who came from a daily newspaper background and felt swept
up in a momentous undertaking.
"I long felt the city was interesting and newsy enough to merit daily
coverage," Corrado said, "and never really worried that we wouldn't be
able to find enough news to put the paper out there every day."
Corrado recalled putting the paper to bed for the first daily edition.
"Several of us were watching the designers wrap it up," he said. "We
got the last page sent to prepress and had a great feeling of, 'Hey, we
finally made it!' And then we realized, 'Wait, we have to do this again
tomorrow!'"
The first months of the daily — and to an extent, even today — were a
period of trial and error, seeing what worked and what didn't. Features
such as Your Turn and business columns and The Driver's Seat were added
to interact with readers. The Sun's "bulldog" early Sunday edition —
available Saturday night — was dropped. A text-heavy front page was
scrapped for today's graphical menu of each edition's contents. More
writers were culled from the weeklies to cover Naperville from all
fronts.
All of the experimenting stemmed from one unifying thought — to get better for readers' sakes.
Crystal ball gazing
In newspapers, a firm sense of the future can be as fleeting as the medium itself. Yesterday's plans are often yesterday's news.
After all, during his eight years with The Sun, Corrado helped launch
seven new papers, reformat two others, convert Naperville to a daily
and close four publications.
What doesn't change is the paper's purpose — to remain relevant, to
adapt to the changing lifestyles and attitudes of readers. "No time to
read" really means "nothing in it to read," Alger said.
So as The Sun eyes its next decade, Alger is focused on crafting a
publication that is "responsive and responsible" — a paper that knows
when to have fun, to not take itself too seriously, he said, but also
sticks to the lifeblood of keeping residents informed — whether
unraveling the vagaries of government spending or reporting the latest
from the business scene.
The key is to be useful, Alger said. To know that every day you'll
likely find something remarkable in these pages. And missing a day
means missing the latest surprise.
As Weber said, "The connection between the readers and the paper is
astounding. Our Your Turns and Letter to the Editor show a real
relationship. The readers expect a lot from The Sun, and it's great to
see that. It sure beats apathy."
West hoped that one day The Sun would add a Saturday edition, which
Alger hinted it might. But the focus should be tight, West said, and on
Naperville.
"A lot of the future of all newspapers will be determined by technology
and how we wind up disseminating information in the future," West said.
"But it's a two-way street and to a certain extent, technology will
have to adapt to what we need it to do in terms of gathering
information and getting it to the public."
King speaks of being a guide to readers. Sure, you can get information
from the Internet, he said. But The Sun organizes it for you, delivers
it with personality. And the insight of 70 years telling the
community's stories — your stories.
"We're not the only paper in town," King said, "but we're the paper that knows this town the best."
Contact staff writer Colt Foutz at cfoutz@scn1.com or (630) 416-5196.
7/19/05
