The history of the newspaper starts with Frank H. Just, who at age 21, founded the weekly Independent in Libertyville on Oct. 18, 1892.
 
Just sold the Independent a year later, and it changed hands again before he reacquired it in 1896. He expanded coverage with a network of correspondents throughout the county.
 
In 1906, Just bought the Waukegan Daily Sun, which was founded in 1897 by Arthur K. Stearns.
 
From 1906 to 1911, Just edited both papers and changed the Independent's banner to The Lake County Independent and Waukegan Weekly Sun.
 
In December 1911, Just sold the Sun and Independent to brothers William and Frank Smith, who folded their Waukegan Gazette that year.
 
Frank Just returned to the newspaper business in 1916 when he founded the weekly Lake County Register in Libertyville to compete with the Smith-owned Independent.
 
Just also started the Waukegan Daily News in 1921 and continued building both enterprises and gaining in circulation. Heated competition forced the Smiths to sell the Daily Sun in 1929 to a group of Chicago investors with links to organized crime, but the stock market crash that year left the investors without the money to meet their loan commitments.
 
Just - a Republican crusader against organized gambling - grabbed the opportunity and purchased The Daily Sun on April 1, 1930. He merged the papers to create The Waukegan News-Sun.
 
The paper stayed in the Just family until 1984, when The Copley Press added it to its roster of 11 daily papers.
 
With a new design and an overhauled editorial product, The News Sun - without the hyphen - rolled out in April 1997, along with the three other Northern Illinois Copley dailies.
 
In December 2000, Copley Newspapers completed the sale of The News Sun, along with its other dailies in Joliet, Aurora and Elgin and weeklies based in Naperville, to Hollinger International, now known as The Sun-Times News Group.

Sun-Times Media is dedicated to being the premier source of local news and information for the greater Chicago area. Its media properties serve more than 300 communities across the region and include the Chicago Sun-Times and Suntimes.com; seven suburban daily newspapers, including the Beacon-News (Aurora), Courier-News (Elgin), Herald-News (Joliet), Lake County News-Sun, Naperville Sun, Post-Tribune (Merrillville, Ind.) and the SouthtownStar; 39 weekly newspapers published by the Pioneer Press and 12 weekly Sun newspapers, as well as Web sites for those newspapers, centerstagechicago.com, RogerEbert.com and YourSeason.com.