Naperville Sun

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since November 2006.

The Naperville Sun is a newspaper based in Naperville, Illinois. It is published six days a week, Sunday through Friday. It is owned by the Sun-Times Media Group, formerly Hollinger, a group that includes the Chicago Sun-Times, the Aurora Beacon News, the Joliet Herald News, the Elgin Courier News and the Lake County News Sun, formerly Waukegan News Sun. Hollinger purchased many suburban daily and weekly papers from The Copley Press in 2000.

[edit] Early Years

When North Central College graduates Harold White and Gordon Haist bought The Naperville Sun for $600 in 1936, the year-old publication was little more than a typewriter, a desk and a name. At the end of The Sun's first year the paper was still being distributed for free to some 2,000 families, and printed in Downers Grove, Illinois for a fee that exceeded the revenue coming in, while its size had dwindled to four pages. In that first decade, the number of publishing pratfalls were barely exceeded by the will to learn from a bumpy start — and keep the paper in print.

The first Sun, dated July 19, 1935, rolled off the press in Downers Grove under the watchful eye of printer Gordon Isaac, who would come to be a mentor to early publishers Harold Moser and Harold White. Moser launched the paper to compete with the Naperville Clarion. The first edition covered the bases: a report and picture of Elmer Yanke's car versus tree collision; gate receipts from 4,298 nonresident visitors to Centennial Beach; the "matrimonial plunge" of Harold Kopp and Esther Topp; a classified ad section; sports; even Cromer Motor Companies used cars. Column two on the front proclaimed "Rising gloriously in the eastern horizon, the sun reigns supreme over the entire earth each and every day. So also The Naperville Sun, upon its inaugural edition ... and on each successive week, it will reign supreme in offering you the latest and most complete stories on sports, news and social gatherings."

The paper drew hometown boy White like a moth to the flame. He offered to do most of the writing as well as proofread stories and set type. Moser couldn't afford to pay him. Within months, though, the 21-year-old Moser was offering to sell the newspaper to his 22-year-old employee. Moser wasn't exactly finished in Naperville, though. He went on to found Moser Lumber and the Macom Corp. and build Naperville from farming town to booming 'burb.

White married Eva Anderson, an art student White fell for at North Central College. She sold ads while White handled production. By Christmas 1939, they'd sold 1,075 subscriptions, at $1 per year. Business was going well enough by the late 1930s that White stopped paying $25 monthly rent at the Old Spanish Tea Room at 128 S. Washington St. and bought the building that served as The Sun's headquarters until 1965.

[edit] Recent History

In 1991, Copley purchased The Sun from White. Eva White died in 1990; Harold White died in 1993. Publication increased one day a week to three, and the paper became a daily in 2003, with the exception of Saturdays. In 2002, The Sun went from publishing three days per week (Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays) to six days per week, becoming a daily newspaper in a town that became the fourth largest city in Illinois.

The Naperville Sun has a circulation of over 20,000 households while reaching 50,000 Naperville adults. Its competitors include The Daily Herald and the Chicago Tribune.

The Sun's sports section won honors from the Associated Press Sports Editors in daily, Sunday and special section competitions in the first three years of its time as a daily paper.