{"id":9764,"date":"2018-03-23T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T15:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=9764"},"modified":"2026-04-13T01:15:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T06:15:38","slug":"traer-star-clipper-office-closing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2018\/03\/traer-star-clipper-office-closing\/","title":{"rendered":"Traer Star-Clipper office closing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IF\"March 16, 2018\/June 27, 1930<\/strong>: “The Traer Star-Clipper is still ‘the best weekly newspaper in the United States,’ according to the judges of the annual contest conducted by the National Editorial association for the promotion of better weekly newspapers…”<\/em><\/p>\n

Traer isn’t losing its newspaper, but it’s the next-worst thing. The office and home of the Traer Star-Clipper<\/em> is going to be shut down at the end of the month, its functions moved to Tama. There will be no one in town putting out the town’s news every week.<\/p>\n

The office isn’t what it used to be, even from when I popped in many days at a time to do research for some of my first published pieces. (At the end of the 20th century, I did countdowns of the most important school and athletic events. Ironically, I’d never done a deep dive for highway purposes … until last Friday.)<\/p>\n

The closure means the end of a cherished small-town tradition \u2014 picking up the paper a day early. People would line up to get their news hot off the press. From 1894 to 1953, that meant standing on a winding staircase you might have heard about<\/a>. After that, it was a little less dramatic, just walking into the current building (above).<\/p>\n

Elmer E. Taylor, the second generation of the family that founded and ran the paper for more than a century,\u00a0died three days after he retired<\/a>. The paper hasn’t been locally owned for a long time; Ogden Newspapers owns it and\u00a0every other weekly in Tama County<\/a>. The\u00a0Dysart Reporter’s<\/em>\u00a0base was relocated to Traer a few years ago.<\/p>\n

My concerns next go to the bound volumes and card catalog (yes, there’s an index in a file cabinet, meticulously curated over decades). Not having those available \u2014 or worse, seeing them discarded \u2014 would be a deep blow to local history. It would be best for them to end up with the museum or library.<\/p>\n

It’s the end of an era, and the end of my dream of one day winning Powerball and thinking it would be fun to run a newspaper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: The official announcement.<\/a> “Exciting new changes” is, to put it mildly, an interesting choice of words.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 4\/13\/26: Yes, eight years later. The Master Editor-Publisher award was given to Elmer E. Taylor Sr. in 1932 and Elmer E. Taylor Jr. in 1956. This blog post conflated the two. The offending sentence has been cut and the writer flogged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 16, 2018\/June 27, 1930: “The Traer Star-Clipper is still ‘the best weekly newspaper in the United States,’ according to the judges of the annual contest conducted by the National Editorial association for the promotion of better weekly newspapers…” Traer … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tama-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9764"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16262,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9764\/revisions\/16262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}