The Silver Bay Public Library and the Bay Area Historical Society have begun a project to merge the physical newspapers in their possession (to get as complete a set as possible) and to loan them to the Minnesota Historical Society in St Paul for scanning. The goal is to eventually have all issues of all local newspapers available online on the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub. The Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub is a searchable website from the Minnesota Historical Society that makes millions of pages of Minnesota newspapers available online. BAHS has begun this project by focusing on finding all issues of the North Shore Journal, or as it was previously called – The Shopper.
BAHS has had success finding more recent complete years of Shoppers. We are, however, missing many from the early years of 1958 through 1978. If you know of physical copies we can borrow for scanning, we would be most appreciative!
Ed Maki, President of the Bay Area Historical Society, wrote a short history of the Silver Bay area newspapers for its Summer 2020 newsletter. He wrote that Silver Bay has had a continuous run of its locally owned Shopper since 1958. It was started by John and Francis Morris in their home and run off a mimeograph machine. At first, it was collated, stapled, folded and hand delivered around town. In 1971/1972, the Shopper was sold to Gene and Delores Roach who in turn sold the paper to Dave and Martha Rowe. The Rowes had the paper for only a couple of years before selling the Shopper to Ken and Bonnie Kruger. The Krugers operated the business in their home, but the printing was done by a company in the Cloquet/Carlton area. The content of the Shopper relied on lots of classified ads and some news – usually public service announcements. Ken and Bonnie sold the Shopper to Seth Thun in 1989 who moved the business to an office in the Norshor Agency building. Seth’s brother-in-law, Mike Tollar, was the production manager, and the Shopper continued to be sent out to be printed. On April 1, 2002, the Shopper was sold to Christine Mallory. At that time, the name was changed to “The Northshore Journal”. The Northshore Journal office continued to be located in the Norshor Agency building until it moved to its current location in October of 2019 at 27 Evans Circle.
Stay tuned for updates on our other publications that are being scanned and enjoy these photos from early Shoppers. Remember to contact us if you have old issues on hand that we can borrow:
