The Brillion News celebrates 130 years of community coverage

In a climate where newspapers are closing at a rate of about two a week, one Wisconsin paper is celebrating 130 years of community news coverage.

The Brillion News, based out of the city of Brillion, Wisconsin, just south of Green Bay, was founded 130 years ago in 1894.

In 1899, Otto Zander became the paper’s fifth owner in as many years.

“The reason he made it when the other ones didn’t was he was a German-speaking person in a German-speaking community, so they trusted him more,” Darcy Zander-Feinauer recently told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

The paper at the time had 200 delinquent subscriptions. Otto Zander canceled them, Zander-Feinauer said, “and focused on making a paper that people wanted to pay for.”

Zander-Feinauer is Otto Zander’s great-granddaughter. She worked at The Brillion News as a graphic designer beginning in the ’80s and took co-ownership of the paper and printing company Zander Press Inc. in 2005.

Zander-Feinauer retired in 2021, handing graphic design duties over to her daughter, Bailley Lindgren. That’s five generations of the Zander family working as part of the paper.

“I’m definitely proud that I am a part of the family,” Lindgren said. “There’s definitely some extra motivation there to do a good job with the layout, with the content of the paper, making it look good and making sure people are happy with it.”

What makes a good newspaper?

Zander-Feinauer said she believes the first purpose is to spread the good news of the community, its businesses — “talk about the good stuff, you know, to keep people energized.”

Sports is a big part of that type of coverage, she said, with Brillion being a very sports-minded area.

But there’s also an obligation to keep people — leaders — accountable. And in a small community, that can be challenging.

“Sometimes you do have to put stories in about friends and you don’t want to do it,” Zander-Feinauer said, “but you kind of have to because if you don’t do it for one person, then you really shouldn’t do it for another … It’s hard to cheat people when you know that you’re going to be called on it, and people are going to know about it.”

The biggest role though, as Zander-Feinauer sees it, is keeping Brillon’s history — 130 years of it lives in books of bound newspapers in The Brillion News’ loft.

“You can go back at any point in time and just get a view of what life was like in the 1940s, the 1800s,” she said. “And that history is so important. And if small town newspapers disappear, who’s going to keep that?”

Keeping up with the times

One of the biggest changes Zander-Feinauer witnessed is what she said was a “wonderful” advent of computers, helping speed up the layout and design of the paper.

The internet, while also wonderful for some things, she said, “has been a challenge for small towns, newspapers, because a lot of the advertisers that used to put ads in like car dealerships, restaurants, they just put things on Facebook and the website now — which I don’t blame them.”

Lindgren said The Brillion News still benefits from a lot of events advertising from local groups like the Brillion Lions Club and Optimist Club.

“Then there’s also a handful of local businesses in the area that rely on our paper in order to get out advertising for specials that they have,” she said, “because they do like to spread out their advertising with Facebook.”

Lindgren also said they carry more subscriptions by covering a larger area that includes the villages of Reedsville and Hilbert.

“There are still a lot of loyal subscribers in Brillion,” she said. “There’s a lot of people who want their newspaper, they want to read about Brillion.”

“They want to have it in their fingertips,” said Zander-Feinauer, “cut (out) the pictures and put them on the fridge.”

And, Zander-Feinauer said, her father always said that “getting the newspaper was like getting a letter from home.”

The Brillion News and Zander Press Inc. will be celebrating both 125 years of family ownership and the 130th anniversary of the paper’s existence Thursday, July 18, with tours from 2:30-4:30 p.m. at their commercial printing facility in Brillion.

Following the tours will be a celebration at Carstens Mill until 6 p.m.