**************** ELGIN * ATION ******************* Emanations from Chicago Street, Elgin, Illinois: The Elgin Daily Courier-News

South of Prairie Street, the land along the Fox River opens up into a wide flat area. South Grove Avenue passes through the center of this range toward the southeast, terminating at National Street and the site of the once great Elgin National Watch Company plant.

These days, the Grand Victoria Casino complex, Festival Park, and a townhouse development straddle the street. At one time, however, this section just beyond the main part of the central business primarily consisted of car dealerships, the level geography lent itself perfectly to the large lots needed to store new vehicles that for sale.

It was halfway up the rise out of the valley toward the east in the 1950s that the Copley Press determined that the new headquarters of its Elgin newspaper, the Elgin Daily Courier-News should be built. It was to be a full service operation, as all newpaper operations were back then, from the reporters out on the street, through the printing of the the newpaper, right to the delivery at everyone's doorstep. It would be right in the center of the city, at the center of the action of the city's life.

If the building remains, hopefully the cornerstone will stay untouched.

The tan brick building facing was a huge statement to the power of the local press. The Courier-News, an afternoon daily, was the main source of information for the entire region, and everyone subscribed to it. It seemed like nearly every kid in town was a paperboy or papergirl at one time or another in their lives.

It stood on the side of the hill at 300 Lake Street, a short and steep little side street, at the intersection of Michigan Street. The building, looking at it from the front, was deceptively large, stretching nearly a block back toward the north back to where the printer was. From the side, however, it was on prominent display from South Grove Avenue, The Fox River and up on the bluff across the river on State Street. It was a proud and powerful statement that couldn't be overlooked.

The newspaper was a major employer and a major force in Elgin. It was a jewel in the midst of the golden age of newsprint. So important was The Elgin Courier-News that it published a complete Sunday newspaper in the days when many smaller-town dailies didn't. At one point, if I'm not mistaken, the circulation for the CN surpassed 35,000, a phenomenal number given the actual total population of the city. It was almost required reading if you lived and/or worked in Elgin.

The site was an attraction. Field trips to the all-inclusive newspaper operation by school children and groups were as common and as a required requisite of growing up in Elgin as much as a trip to a Chicago museum was.

From around lunch time one, Lake Street became a flurry of activity, with reporters scurrying in and deliveries going out. An afternoon daily had to hit the stands and the doorsteps of its subscribers by the end of the work day and before suppertime.

It seemed like a perfect storm of destruction began to brew, though. Elgin itself began its ugly swift descent into oblivion. Downtown Elgin, the core of the city's livelihood, had been decimated by surrounding regional shopping malls. A big recession hit in the early 1980s and the city, in desperation, closed off a main thoroughfare and turned it into a pedestrian mall that actually turned out to speed up the decline of the area. The result was a stagnant advertiser base for the newspaper. The demographics of the city were changing rapidly as well, and many people moving in had no interest in what reading was once considered to be a necessary part of life.

Rusting unused relics of the past, left behind.

Another suspicion on my own part (since confirmed by a former editor of the paper who wrote about it) was a general disinterest in the management of the operation from the owners.

The aging presses were not replaced, and the printing of the paper was sent out of town. An afternoon daily printed out of town had to be shipped in, which meant any timely news of the day couldn't make a reasonable deadline, and thus the news was old by the time it hit print. The major newspaper from the East, The Daily Herald, a booming publication which was moving into every Chicago suburban territory in existence, set its sites on Elgin and initiated an Elgin edition.

The internet was on the rise, and despite efforts to save the Courier-News, including switching to morning delivery, nothing worked well.

The paper, along with its sister publications in Aurora and other cities, were sold to the Chicago Sun-Times. Eventually, due to poor management, a decaying building, and consolidations within their suburban newspaper system, economics eventually dictated moving the operations, including the reporting staff, of a purely American local newspaper out of town.

Left over sign, nothing has been touched.

At $1.00-per-copy newsstand edition price for a flimsy ghost of a newspaper, it is amazing that it even has survived. It is a testament to those who held it together toward the end that it is still in circulation.

With the faraway writers and printers doing what they can to keep it viable and local, it has lost a lot of its luster anyway, despite their good efforts. It bills itself as local, but when reading it, it doesn't project itself quite the way that it used to.

The building remains for sale. I hope whoever buys it uses it with respect and holds it in the esteem it deserves. It was the center of chronicling the daily existence of Elgin for decades.

It is hidden behind a row of townhouses now, a sign of Elgin's rise back to the top. However, it remains a nice looking building. All things considered, it still presents itself with a statement. It just needs a new life.

It is just too quiet on that street now.

**************** ELGIN * ATION ******************* Emanations from Chicago Street, Elgin, Illinois

Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Elgin Daily Courier-News - The Sorry Decline

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