Archive note: This essay was written at the end of 2020. References to public-health restrictions, organizations, schedules and civic contacts reflect that moment and may no longer be current. Chesterton Post presents it as a historical record.
Early in November, the newsroom considered whether—given the sheer difficulty of 2020—it still made sense to prepare the traditional “Year in Review” wrap-up, normally published on the final publication day in December. It would have offered a brief summary of Duneland’s major stories and a month-by-month catalogue of headlines.
The feeling was that there had really been only one story in 2020, and that another account of the countless ways it disrupted, distorted and changed everyday life would be superfluous.
A case in point was the loss of Duneland’s local daily newspaper. If a family-owned, locally operated paper already belonged to another era, then the coronavirus crisis became the final shock. The paper was not alone: businesses across the country closed and families faced profound uncertainty as the effects continued to unfold.
A community clearinghouse
The newspaper was different from many other casualties in one respect: it was considered an essential business under Indiana’s March 2020 stay-at-home order. More than that, it served an essential cultural purpose if culture means the ties, values and shared concerns that bind a community.
As important as hard-news reporting was, many readers cherished the community pages most: the work of service clubs, neighborhood groups and resale organizations; annual rebuilding efforts, benefit events and local fundraisers; and the fish fries, auctions, concerts and awareness campaigns that filled the calendar.
The paper helped those organizations find volunteers and tell readers where help was needed. It devoted column inches to everyday acts of public service. Duneland’s generosity did not depend on a newspaper, but the publication acted as a clearinghouse connecting needs, opportunities and people ready to help.
The local paper was a mirror in which the community saw its passions and preoccupations reflected.
Watching students grow
For decades, the newspaper also chronicled the life of local schools: lunch menus, class projects, breakfasts, car washes, academic competitions, art, music, theater, speech and debate, radio, building trades and the achievements of student-athletes. It reported on school-board meetings, test results and campaigns concerning supplemental property taxes.
In those pages, readers watched children and their friends grow, learn and compete. They followed a standout student’s path from middle school through high school. Parents meeting around town knew when to congratulate one another and when to commiserate.
If the “Duneland Difference” meant anything, the essay argued, it included a community investing itself in the education and excellence of its young people—and a newspaper creating conditions for that shared attention.
Reporting the work of government
The civic role was equally central. Over nearly a quarter-century, the paper covered thousands of municipal meetings in Chesterton, Porter and Burns Harbor: councils, redevelopment and plan commissions, zoning appeals, utilities, stormwater, parks and public-safety boards.
These meetings were not always dramatic or entertaining. Yet they were where policies were made, ordinances enacted, budgets approved, petitions considered and permits granted. Decisions there affected how property-tax revenue was spent, where subdivisions drained, what could be built nearby and whether fields might become planned developments.
Reporting those decisions helped residents understand changes before the rumble of a bulldozer made them impossible to miss.
The essay recalled a zoning hearing concerning an oddly shaped lot once intended for a small park. Neighbors objected after learning that the property could be sold for a house, and asked why no one had told them sooner. The answer was that the park-board discussion had been reported, but not everyone followed the local publication that covered it.
Public meetings may be quiet, but their consequences reach directly into daily life.
The impending closure meant residents would lose a regular source of municipal reporting. The newspaper’s role was not to assume that public officials acted improperly. In the writer’s experience, local appointees and elected representatives were generally dedicated people doing difficult, necessary and often thankless work.
Still, neighbors could disagree in good faith about whether business development should take priority, whether a bedroom community was preferable to an economic engine, or whether annexation strengthened a town or strained its resources. People could disagree over the meaning of “quality of life” and how best to improve it.
A request to readers
The farewell’s central plea was for residents to continue the essential work of gathering civic information themselves: attend meetings, learn the issues, ask questions and take notes. Neighbors could divide responsibility for councils, commissions and boards, while checking municipal agendas ahead of meeting dates.
The final issue included a reference to regular meeting dates and civic contacts current at that time. Because those details belonged to 2020 and may since have changed, readers should verify schedules and contact information through present-day official sources.
Other regular features carried their own importance: letters from readers, glimpses of the past and obituaries. Through them, an extended community debated and reminisced, celebrated and grieved. Readers learned one another’s names and the names of those who came before them, marking the changing seasons of local life.
Those were the things the writer expected to miss most as the presses stopped.
Archived December 30, 2020 · Edited for clarity and safe historical context by Chesterton Post on August 21, 2026.