From the news director: What's left in The Herald-Times building?

A bag of used golf balls. A 2-year-old brownie (gross, whoever left that there). Several cartoon panels. World Book encyclopedias from 1994. Plastic figurines, including my favorite, a bendable Chester Cheetah dressed as an astronaut. Many, many awards. These are some of the remnants of 61 years of newspapering in Bloomington.

It’s a time of transition here at The Herald-Times, though I must admit, it seems like we’ve been in transition for a long time. When I started here 1.5 years ago, The Herald-Times had not been integrated into the Gannett publishing system. We had a crew of designers who put out the H-T, the Bedford Times-Mail, the Martinsville Reporter-Times, the Spencer Evening World, the Ellettsville Journal, another publication between here and Terre Haute, the name of which I can’t remember, the Paoli News-Republican, the Springs Valley Herald in French Lick.

Things have changed at a dizzying pace ever since. Our design hub was dissolved, with some former H-T employees taking new positions in the company, positions that no longer exist in some cases. Gannett sold the Paoli and French Lick papers. They appear to have merged and are under the Dubois County Herald title these days. The one I don’t remember and the Ellettsville Journal are no more. We’ll have to see what happens to the rest.

Part of Gannett’s plan to dig out of a financial downturn includes selling its real estate holdings, including the building that has housed the H-T.

The future of the H-T building:What MCCSC plans to do with property it purchased on Walnut Street for $2.9 million

We are still here, but not for much longer. Most of the building is empty, but the newsroom is still a newsroom, with old papers piled in high stacks, reporters making calls or tossing about ideas for angles, headlines, and sources, computers and screens and camera equipment dotting desks.

The Monroe County History Center has been here to collect artifacts and thousands of photos. They are being digitized and categorized. There is a large cabinet of microfilm that I will pack and send off to NewsBank to be digitized.

But there’s one thing that we haven’t been able to find a way to preserve, and perhaps it’s sentimental more than anything. In the basement of the H-T building is a large room with bound volumes of old papers. Copies of the Bloomington Courier from 1914, the pages yellowed and delicate from age. Decades of Daily Telephones and World-Telephones and Herald-Telephones, and of course, copies of The Herald-Times.

Staff librarians once carefully catalogued stories, putting clippings in files that, when I looked in some, seemed to have been a personal way of organizing, not the science our public libraries apply. Laura Lane recently visited the archive to try to find a story about the Argonaut Club, but without an exact date, it’s more of a trip to the past than a fruitful search.

We have had discussions with some people at Indiana University, the Monroe County History Center, MCCSC, and more recently the Monroe County Public Library. So far, none has taken us up on our offer to steward all these books of history into the future, although the library has offered to inventory the room as a start.

I have been told that if a new home isn’t found for these materials, they will be stuffed into storage somewhere, inaccessible and uncared for. It’s a sad thing to imagine. If you think you might have a solution that would preserve this incredible history, send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

Looking back, looking ahead:The Herald-Times property for sale after storied history on South Walnut Street

In spite of the worry about the future of the print archive, the staff of the H-T has been ready for this move for a long time.

I don’t know for sure where we’ll go next. Our office won’t be a place that you can walk in without an appointment. We don’t take money, we can’t help with subscription issues, the circulation staff won’t be in the same building anymore, we probably won’t even have a copy of the printed paper unless we bring ours from home. (Yes, we pay for subscriptions and we tip our carriers.) But one thing will not change: We will continue to report impactful, useful and informative stories that our digital and print subscribers value.

I’ve packed some of the holiday decorations that have brightened the H-T office in years past, a good faith sign that we will be well settled in a new office when Christmas 2023 comes around. The H-T newsroom wishes you all a happy and bright holiday.

— Your H-T staff: Jill, Carol, Laura, Boris, Rachel, Rich and Jim

P.S. This is the last printed opinion page of the year. We won't be publishing on Christmas Day or New Year's Day.

Jill Bond is news director for The Herald-Times. Reach her at jbond@heraldt.com. 

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Column: Herald Times prepares to move, seeks home for print archive