Reedsburg Times-Press
Overview
The Reedsburg Times-Press is a community newspaper serving Reedsburg, Wisconsin, a city in Sauk County, and its surrounding area, in print and online. It describes its own lineage as running since 1888, and its present form is the product of a 1939 merger of Reedsburg's two historic weeklies, the Reedsburg Free Press and the Reedsburg Times. The Times-Press is published twice weekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays in its recent schedule, as part of the Capital Newspapers group of Lee Enterprises, with its local coverage presented online through WiscNews. Its history connects a Civil War-era free press, a newspaper that began life under other names in two other towns, a twentieth-century consolidation, and acquisition in 2000 by the Madison-based Capital Newspapers partnership.
The Reedsburg Free Press, 1860–1939
The older of the Times-Press's two parents is the Reedsburg Free Press. The Guide to Wisconsin Newspapers records it as a weekly published from June 25, 1860, to September 7, 1861 — a first run ended, like many small papers of the moment, as the Civil War began — and then revived from March 22, 1872, to September 1, 1939. For sixty-seven years in its second life the Free Press was a fixture of Reedsburg journalism, through the city's growth as a Sauk County farming and trading center. It was not Reedsburg's first paper: the Guide also records a Reedsburg Herald of 1856 to 1858. But the Free Press was the durable one, and its name still leads the combined paper's title, in the hyphenated second position that newspaper mergers traditionally give the absorbed partner — a point of local pride, since in this case the order is reversed: the surviving title puts Times first.
The Wandering Times: Bessemer, Baraboo, Reedsburg
The Times half of the partnership had a more itinerant birth. The Guide records the line beginning on February 7, 1888, at North Freedom, Wisconsin, under the name Bessemer Times; moving to Baraboo in December 1888, where it published as the Baraboo Times until August 1890; and only then settling at Reedsburg as the Reedsburg Times, the name it carried from August 1890 to August 1939. The paper itself, in its modern descriptions, dates its history from 1888 — the Bessemer Times founding — making the Times-Press one of those American newspapers whose birthday belongs to a different town and a different nameplate than its own. A brief daily experiment also belongs to this era: the Guide records a Reedsburg Daily Times published from May 9 to June 19, 1899, six weeks in which Reedsburg tried to support a daily; the town remained weekly territory thereafter.
The 1939 Merger: Times-Press
In September 1939 the Reedsburg Free Press, ending its run on September 1, 1939, merged with the Reedsburg Times to form the Reedsburg Times-Press. The merger followed the standard Depression-era logic of American weekly journalism: two papers dividing a small market could not both survive, and a single combined weekly could carry the advertising, legal notices and subscriptions of the whole community. The combined Times-Press became Reedsburg's paper of record for the rest of the twentieth century. Its archive is correspondingly deep: Newspapers.com's collection of the Times-Press holds 198,895 searchable pages spanning 1872 to 2017, counting the Free Press file it inherited — one of the larger digitized weekly archives in south-central Wisconsin, and the principal source for genealogical research in the Reedsburg area.
Late-Century Title Variations
The Guide's listings for the 1990s show the title passing through a complicated patch. A Reedsburg Times-Press weekly is recorded from February 1888 lineage to November 6, 1999, merging with the Reedsburg Report to form the Reedsburg Report Times-Press; and a parallel listing shows a Times-Press from March 16, 1995, whose title varies as Reedsburg Report from 1995 to November 1999 and Reedsburg Report Times-Press thereafter. In the same decade Reedsburg gained a second weekly identity: the Reedsburg Independent, founded February 18, 1999, by News Publishing Co. — the competitor that, in Sauk County's 2018 official-newspaper bidding, reported a paid circulation of 2,713 against the Times-Press's 497. The Times-Press title ultimately re-emerged as the paper's name, the form in which it is published today.
Acquisition by Capital Newspapers, 2000
On July 1, 2000, Madison Newspapers and Lee Enterprises acquired the Independent Media Group's newspapers in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Among the Wisconsin purchases, Madison Newspapers acquired eleven papers including the Portage Daily Register, the Baraboo News Republic, the Reedsburg Times Press, the Juneau County Star-Times, the Wisconsin Dells Events and the Sauk Prairie Eagle; a subsidiary, Central Wisconsin Newspapers, Inc., was created to manage them. In 2003 Madison Newspapers changed its name to Capital Newspapers, integrating its Central Wisconsin and Citizen Newspapers subsidiaries in name, with newsrooms remaining separate and independent. The Times-Press thus became part of the partnership behind Madison's Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times — a small Sauk County twice-weekly inside one of Wisconsin's principal newspaper companies, published today within Lee Enterprises' Capital Newspapers listings.
The Paper in Operation: Portage, Baraboo and Madison
The Times-Press's recent operating details show how thoroughly a modern community paper's production is regionalized. Its 2019 U.S. Postal Service statement of ownership lists the publication as weekly with 52 issues a year and an annual subscription price of $75.55, with its known office of publication and publisher's headquarters at PO Box 470, Portage, Wisconsin; publisher Tom Wiley of Madison Newspapers in Madison; editor Jason Cuevas of Mauston; and managing editor Todd Krysiak of Portage. Its state legal-notice certification lists a Baraboo address, a contact in Julie Kopfhamer, publication on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and Lee Enterprises, under Kevin Mowbray, as parent company. In Sauk County's 2018 official newspaper proceedings, the Times-Press bid a paid circulation of 497 and publication on Wednesdays and Saturdays, at a legal-notice rate below those of the county's dailies — the paper of a single community competing for county business against larger neighbors.
Coverage and Digital Presence
The Times-Press offers print and online coverage of news, opinion and sports from the Reedsburg area, as its media profiles summarize it, within the Madison media market. Its local report — Reedsburg city government, the Reedsburg school district and Beavers athletics, Sauk County affairs, farm and business news, obituaries and legal notices — is published online through the WiscNews platform shared by Capital Newspapers' central Wisconsin titles, at wiscnews.com under the reedsburgtimespress section, with social channels on Facebook and X. Staff contacts listed for the paper in recent media directories run through wiscnews.com addresses, reflecting its integration into the group's shared news operation while its reporting remains assigned to the Reedsburg community.
Reedsburg and Its Two Papers
Reedsburg is unusual among Wisconsin cities of its size in sustaining two community newspapers into the twenty-first century: the Times-Press, heir to the Free Press of 1860 and the Times of 1888, and the Independent, founded in 1999. The 2018 county figures suggest the younger paper held the larger paid circulation, while the Times-Press held the older name, the deeper archive and the backing of the state's capital-city newspaper group. That division — heritage and corporate scale on one side, independent local ownership on the other — is a fair picture of the choices facing Wisconsin's community press, embodied in a single Sauk County city.
Legacy
The Times-Press's 198,895-page archive, reaching back through the Free Press to 1872, is its monument: a near-complete weekly record of Reedsburg across the agricultural century, two world wars, and the city's modern development. Its double lineage — a Free Press born before the Civil War and a Times born as the Bessemer Times in another town — and its survival through merger, title experiments and chain acquisition into the Lee Enterprises era give it one of the most layered histories of any weekly in south-central Wisconsin.
Directory Facts
The Reedsburg Times-Press is a community newspaper published for Reedsburg, Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States, in print and online through WiscNews. It was formed in 1939 by the merger of the Reedsburg Free Press (1860–1861 and 1872–1939) and the Reedsburg Times (begun February 7, 1888, at North Freedom as the Bessemer Times). It was acquired on July 1, 2000, by Madison Newspapers, now Capital Newspapers, within Lee Enterprises, and has been published on Wednesdays and Saturdays in recent years.
