{"id":161,"date":"2021-10-07T20:34:41","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T20:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/?p=161"},"modified":"2021-10-07T20:34:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T20:34:41","slug":"owners-retirement-leaves-bureau-county-village-without-newspaper-after-160-years-peoria-journal-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/?p=161","title":{"rendered":"Owners\u2019 retirement leaves Bureau County village without newspaper after 160 years – Peoria Journal Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPrinted where the Rainbow\u2019s end tickles the waving grasses; and the time-worn pot of gold bulges with untold treasure for all those of diligence and vision.\u201d<\/em>
\u2013 The slogan on the masthead of the Bureau Valley Chief<\/strong>
TISKILWA \u2014 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\u2019s professional existence. Lengthy delays in delivering the weekly paper she and husband, John, have owned for 40-plus years have been frustrating.
\u201cIt\u2019s just ridiculous,\u201d Ginger Murphy said. \u201cIf there\u2019s an obituary in there, these people, they\u2019re notified three weeks late.\u201d
Now that the Murphys are retiring \u2014 effective Sunday, officially \u2014 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.
\u201cThat has got to be my greatest joy,\u201d Ginger Murphy said about not going postal. \u201cI do not have to deal with them any longer.
\u201cI\u2019m done.\u201d
Hail and farewell, Bureau Valley Chief.
With the Murphys\u2019 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.
\u201cThere\u2019s quite a few people in town who rely on that paper for local information,\u201d Randy Philhower said. \u201cIt will be a loss to the community.
\u201cIt\u2019s a local news source, and it\u2019s part of the history of the town. It\u2019s been there for many, many years.\u201d
The publication traces its genesis to 1856, when the Independent debuted as Tiskilwa\u2019s first newspaper. Almost continuously ever since, Tiskilwa has had its own journal, under various names.
The Bureau Valley Chief has been the newspaper\u2019s title since 1970, when the Murphys began work there. John Murphy\u2019s 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 \u2014 \u201cRon and Eileen Behrends Named Citizens of the Year,\u201d one last-edition headline stated \u2014 and a list of local birthdays.
(Happy Halloween natal days, David Churchill and Jim Nevitt.)
\u201cI can write an article if I need to. I\u2019m not an investigative reporter,\u201d 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\u2019s somnolent Main Street. They decided last year it was past time for them to exit.
\u201cWe\u2019re not closing up because we have to,\u201d John Murphy said. \u201cFinancially, we\u2019re doing fine. We\u2019re just getting too old to put in the hours.\u201d
Neither of the Murphys\u2019 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\u2019t expect any. For the building, perhaps, but not for the paper.
Evolution in how the public consumes news \u2014 from print to the internet \u2014 hasn\u2019t left untouched this picturesque corner of the world, nestled beneath bluffs in a creek valley about 45 miles north of Peoria.
\u201cPeople still like newspapers. There\u2019s still value there,\u201d John Murphy said. \u201cBut the business environment has changed.\u201d
Over the 15 years before 2019, more than 1,400 U.S. municipalities lost a newspaper, according to The Associated Press<\/a>. At least 200 American counties have no paper, PBS reported<\/a>.
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\u2019s 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.
\u201cIf you want this paper, you can buy it and read it as a paper,\u201d she said. \u201cI think the internet is a poison pill, if you will. People have gotten so lazy about reading and understanding. They\u2019ll look at what comes over on their message feed and they\u2019ll read two lines and they think they know it all.
\u201cAbout 10 years ago, I told John I really felt that if I put it online, we would have more subscribers. I said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to do it.\u2019 It would have put a different level of responsibility and time, and I didn\u2019t want to do that.\u201d
For most of the Murphys\u2019 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\u2019s commercial printing business. That included raffle tickets for local fundraising organizations, and forms and invoices for area firms.
\u201cWe were able to make things work, with that combination. They kind of offset each other,\u201d said John Murphy, who also is a chaplain at St. Margaret\u2019s Hospital in Spring Valley.
\u201cWe\u2019d have slow printing weeks, but we had good weeks for the newspaper. It all kind of went hand in hand,\u201d he said. \u201cWe needed both, really, to survive.\u201d
The Chief\u2019s 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\u2019 watch.
\u201cWe\u2019ll dearly miss having that periodical on our shelf for our patrons to read,\u201d lead librarian Diane Bartolucci said. \u201cIt really did get picked up and read all the time. It\u2019s unfortunate.\u201d
That feeling among Tiskilwa townspeople might grow as time without their chronicle progresses, the Murphys suggested.
\u201cThat\u2019s going to be the big change. That communication will be gone,\u201d John Murphy said. \u201cI think that\u2019s the one thing they will not really miss until it\u2019s gone.
\u201cPeople just take it for granted because it\u2019s here. But when it stops, that\u2019s what ends.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPrinted where the Rainbow\u2019s end tickles the waving grasses; and the time-worn pot of gold bulges with untold treasure for all those of diligence and vision.\u201d\u2013 The slogan on the masthead of the Bureau Valley ChiefTISKILWA \u2014 Almost two weeks ago, after Ginger Murphy lugged about 600 newspapers to the Tiskilwa post office one last time, she felt more than<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t