Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
‘IT WAS A PALACE’
Former Daily Local News employees reflect on paper’s storied past
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a four-part series looking back at the history of the Daily Local News building on North Bradford Avenue, and some of the people who helped to make it thrive over the years.
Readers of the Daily Local News saw something odd when the paper showed up on their doorsteps the afternoon of May 18, 1970.
It was the day before that year’s Primary Election, and the lead story in the paper announced that “Party leaders are ready for Tuesday.” But splashed across the front page of the newspaper that had been serving the West Chester community since 1872 was a diagonal headline that was of a different sort of historical moment.
“Local News begins new era in modern new home” the dramatic headline read. Although readers knew the day was coming — the paper had long touted its planned move to a new building across the borough’s border in East Bradford — that Monday was the official opening to the public of the paper’s “modern new home” at 250 N. Bradford Avenue.
Now, 51 years later, that building is no more.
The Daily Local relocated its headquarters to its printing plant facilities in Uwchlan in 2017, and sold the property at the corner of North Bradford Avenue and Strasburg Road to Toll Brothers for redevelopment as a townhouse complex. The developer began demolition of the 21,000 square foot brick and cement block building in February, and construction has begun there.
Today and for the next three days, the Daily Local will feature a sort of oral history of that “old” new building, told through the mouths of the people who knew the paper and worked there over the halfcentury it existed. We understand, it should be noted, that no one can ever travel back in time and go home again. But we can remember.
PATRICIA “PAT” DEAN, is the wife of the late former editor of the Daily Local, William “Bill” Dean, who was among those who planned and over
saw the move from the paper’s headquarter’s on South High Street in West Chester to the new location on North Bradford.
“I grew up in West Chester, on Linden Street, after coming here when I was 4 years old. We bought the paper at Mrs. Davis’s, a little corner store where they sold popsicles and cigarettes. My mother was a great reader and she loved the newspaper. The newspapers were important in our family. And I met Bill Dean in high school. I was in ninth grade and president of the student council and we were going to have the annual dance, and so I was instructed to go over to the senior high and talk to a senior named Bill Dean. He and his friend Johnny Thomas would play records for the dances. Johnny (whose family owned the Daily Local News) was in the same class.
“Bill worked for the high school newspaper, but he got a job on the paper after college and he was so excited. He went up in the ranks because he was a good writer. He was concise. He knew what good reporting was. He didn’t babble on and on.
“We had an arsonist in the county, and he loved to set fires in barns. There were a lot of barns at that time in West Chester and Chester County. Bill got so excited about that story. I remember him getting up in the middle of the night to go chase the fires. I used to ask him if he was the one setting those fires so he could go out in the night. He always told that story.
“All this new equipment started coming in for newspapers. We had the old hot lead, and Bill would come home with all his white shirts dirty from leaning over that hot lead. There was a wonderful man named Calvin Bostell and he ran those boiling hot lead pots. The lead was on the same level of the newsroom, but the newsroom was in the front. Bill liked to be back in that room because he hung over those Linotype machines. Henry Brinton was the editor and Bill was the managing editor. And when the new offset press came in they knew they had to change.
TIM DEAN, the couple’s son, remembers the work put into the decision to switch to offset printing and move the headquarters.
“What really helped seal the deal was Digital, the name of the company, up in Massachusetts, and Dad was up there a lot. Even though he was on the editorial side and all that and (general manager) Jim Artman those guys would go up there, but he wanted to go there as well because the technology was what he would use. He was the architect of that, the computer and offset.
PAT DEAN: They went to seminars and meetings about the new stuff. He was very excited about it, and welcomed the new things coming along. He fell in love with computers. Bill and Jim Artman were always kind of far-sighted and Johnny was always willing to go along with what they thought. It was a very weighty decision, but it was very good, and Bill was excited about this new press. They knew it was the way to go. Johnny was willing to do this.
“To me the move meant that I couldn’t walk up town to see Bill. We lived in an apartment on Rosedale Avenue and I could push a stroller up there to stop in and see Bill and the gang. That newsroom had a lot of character. But the new building, I think it signified that your daily newspaper is doing well and thriving. And people just loved it. It was still a West Chester address and people were very excited about that.
GLEN PROCTOR, spent 40 years as a reporter, editor, journalism professor and newsroom trainer before retiring. He grew up in West Chester, began working at the Daily Local after serving in the military, and retired as executive editor and vice president of the Richmond, Va. Times-Dispatch after having shared in the Pulitzer Prize for news reporting at the Akron Beacon Journal.
“My first day as a reporter was Monday, Jan. 5, 1970. I was hired without journalism training and showed up for my interview with Managing Editor Bill Dean in late 1969 with a spiral notebook full of poems I had written since age 8, describing early years as a foster kid, later with with aging grandparents and my time as a Marine.
“When we moved to 250 N. Bradford Avenue, it was a palace, although since the DLN was my first journalism job, I couldn’t say what a normal newsroom should look like. It was airy, with coffee, loud typing, wire machine noise and phone interview chatter. The new onestory brick building had an open front entrance area, where Carolyn Smith welcomed employees and visitors. We’d pass a few offices – the general manager for one - before we rounded the coroner and turned left into the newsroom.
“Reporters were lined up in rows, with an aisle in the middle, with news on the left side and sports and features on the right. Although, I think Shirley McCauley, whose husband Joe worked in advertising, had a desk on the right side of the room, at the front. Each person had a regular size desk. I recall that we had at least one Plectron radio at the front of the room to hear police and fire calls.
“About a year or so after I started at the DLN, Dave Barry joined the staff. We sat side by side, so I heard and read Dave’s early humor, long before he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, author and one of America’s most popular humor writers.
DAVE BARRY, began working at the newspaper in 1971 as a reporter, and by 1975 had become news editor. He left as a full-time staffer in 1977, but continued to write weekly columns for the editorial page until the mid-1980s. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1988.
“I have many fond memories of that building. It’s where I learned pretty much everything I know about journalism, much of it taught to me by Bill Dean, who was the editor when I got there.
“The newsroom was small, and everybody got to know everybody well; I made friends I’m still in touch with after all these years. We pounded out stories on big old manual typewriters; we took obituaries over the phone wearing goofy-looking headsets; we bolted out of the building and raced to fires and crime scenes; we attended hideously boring municipal meetings, some of which are probably still going on.
“After work hours — and to be honest, sometimes during work hours — we gathered at Joe’s Sportsman’s Lounge for beers, which as I recall cost 25 cents. That was fortunate, because the DLN did not pay lavishly. But it was was one of the best jobs I ever had.”
GLEN PROCTOR: “We had a lively time on Bradford Avenue. We had a basketball team – Dave Barry, Barry Schecter, Randy Shantz and Bob Ludwick. We weren’t very good, but I recall that we played a couple games around the region, including one or two at St. Agnes’ gym on Gay Street.
“For my time, I was the only African-American on the News staff. There was one Black reporter (or correspondent) before me and I know at least one Black man who came later as a correspondent. I published several poems about that experience and how I felt about being the only. That said, the editors and staff were good to me, showed me great respect and patience and for that, I am forever grateful.
“Ironically, no one in Chester County ever questioned my being a reporter, but more than a decade later – as an Akron Beacon Journal reporter – I was asked to show my press pass while covering government meetings in a majority-white Akron suburb.”
This feature will continue tomorrow.