“Printed where the Rainbow’s end tickles the waving grasses; and the time-worn pot of gold bulges with untold treasure for all those of diligence and vision.”
– The slogan on the masthead of the Bureau Valley Chief
TISKILWA — Almost two weeks ago, after Ginger Murphy lugged about 600 newspapers to the Tiskilwa post office one last time, she felt more than one burden lifted.
Dealing with postal officials beyond her Bureau County village of about 800 residents has been a bane of Murphy’s professional existence. Lengthy delays in delivering the weekly paper she and husband, John, have owned for 40-plus years have been frustrating.
“It’s just ridiculous,” Ginger Murphy said. “If there’s an obituary in there, these people, they’re notified three weeks late.”
Now that the Murphys are retiring — effective Sunday, officially — those frustrations are ending. But ramifications of losing a local news outlet for village residents, and for a national Tiskilwa diaspora, might be just beginning.
“That has got to be my greatest joy,” Ginger Murphy said about not going postal. “I do not have to deal with them any longer.
“I’m done.”
Hail and farewell, Bureau Valley Chief.
With the Murphys’ retirement, the Oct. 22 eight-page, tabloid-format edition of the Chief probably is the final one. Among those lamenting the departure is the Tiskilwa village president.
“There’s quite a few people in town who rely on that paper for local information,” Randy Philhower said. “It will be a loss to the community.
“It’s a local news source, and it’s part of the history of the town. It’s been there for many, many years.”
The publication traces its genesis to 1856, when the Independent debuted as Tiskilwa’s first newspaper. Almost continuously ever since, Tiskilwa has had its own journal, under various names.
The Bureau Valley Chief has been the newspaper’s title since 1970, when the Murphys began work there. John Murphy’s parents, Allen and Mary Murphy, purchased the paper in 1954. In 1979, they sold it to their son and daughter-in-law.
Under their ownership, the Chief continued to report staples of small-town life. Among them were Village Board minutes, short news items — “Ron and Eileen Behrends Named Citizens of the Year,” one last-edition headline stated — and a list of local birthdays.
(Happy Halloween natal days, David Churchill and Jim Nevitt.)
“I can write an article if I need to. I’m not an investigative reporter,” Ginger Murphy said with a chuckle.
Now 72 and 70, respectively, John and Ginger Murphy listed for sale the paper and its office, located along Tiskilwa’s somnolent Main Street. They decided last year it was past time for them to exit.
“We’re not closing up because we have to,” John Murphy said. “Financially, we’re doing fine. We’re just getting too old to put in the hours.”
Neither of the Murphys’ adult daughters expressed an interest in assuming the business. They have other careers and live elsewhere.
In the two months the Chief has been on the market, the Murphys have received few inquiries and no takers. They don’t expect any. For the building, perhaps, but not for the paper.
Evolution in how the public consumes news — from print to the internet — hasn’t left untouched this picturesque corner of the world, nestled beneath bluffs in a creek valley about 45 miles north of Peoria.
“People still like newspapers. There’s still value there,” John Murphy said. “But the business environment has changed.”
Over the 15 years before 2019, more than 1,400 U.S. municipalities lost a newspaper, according to The Associated Press. At least 200 American counties have no paper, PBS reported.
The Chief served parts of Putnam and Stark counties and much of Bureau County, where papers in Princeton and Walnut also are based. Former area residents scattered as far as Florida, New York and Texas received the Chief in recent years, according to Ginger Murphy.
But at its end, the Chief’s circulation was about half its total of 40 years ago.
The Chief had no internet presence. That was by design, according to Ginger Murphy, who made no apologies for it.
“If you want this paper, you can buy it and read it as a paper,” she said. “I think the internet is a poison pill, if you will. People have gotten so lazy about reading and understanding. They’ll look at what comes over on their message feed and they’ll read two lines and they think they know it all.
“About 10 years ago, I told John I really felt that if I put it online, we would have more subscribers. I said, ‘I’m not going to do it.’ It would have put a different level of responsibility and time, and I didn’t want to do that.”
For most of the Murphys’ tenure, the Chief was a two-person operation.
Ginger Murphy handled page layout and some advertising, as well as content coordination. Her husband oversaw much of the Chief’s commercial printing business. That included raffle tickets for local fundraising organizations, and forms and invoices for area firms.
“We were able to make things work, with that combination. They kind of offset each other,” said John Murphy, who also is a chaplain at St. Margaret’s Hospital in Spring Valley.
“We’d have slow printing weeks, but we had good weeks for the newspaper. It all kind of went hand in hand,” he said. “We needed both, really, to survive.”
The Chief’s office survived in its current form for a while after the final edition went to press. The Murphys were completing a backlog of orders their commercial-printing customers have placed in anticipation of the closure.
As for the newspaper, back issues will survive in microfilm in several repositories, as well as in hard-copy binders at the Tiskilwa Public Library. But there will be no new editions, at least under the Murphys’ watch.
“We’ll dearly miss having that periodical on our shelf for our patrons to read,” lead librarian Diane Bartolucci said. “It really did get picked up and read all the time. It’s unfortunate.”
That feeling among Tiskilwa townspeople might grow as time without their chronicle progresses, the Murphys suggested.
“That’s going to be the big change. That communication will be gone,” John Murphy said. “I think that’s the one thing they will not really miss until it’s gone.
“People just take it for granted because it’s here. But when it stops, that’s what ends.”
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