Memorial for great publisher
Bill Schroeder, founder of Lakeland Publishers, who died Dec. 17, was in my opinion a giant of a newspaper man in Illinois and in the United States as well as perhaps doing more for Lake County and its residents than any other person in the past 60 years.
He had one of the outstanding community and suburban newspapers in America filled with news and hard hitting editorials and editorial page commentary that often provided guidance on how to do things for lesser knowledgeable officials. I respected the editorial page views even when I disagreed with him. He always had the best interests of Lake County in his heart and enjoyed a warm following except at times by people who he thought were doing something wrong or costly to taxpayers.
He helped form and even finance statewide and suburban journalism organizations and became president of the Illinois Press Association, which I believe was the largest statewide organization in the country and was a pioneer in new ways of presenting news and advertising. He was a longtime member of the Chicago Headline Club.
Schroeder purchased a newspaper my wife, Shirley, and I started, the Warren Newport Press, when it was named the second-best paper in its category in the state at a time I also was working downtown as a Chicago newspaper editor. He took our award-winning newspaper and improved upon it.
Even in the twilight of his career, he won a prestigious journalism award, the Sarah Brown Boyden Award, presented by the Chicago Journalists Association, for editorial writing preventing the directors of the Gavin School District from wasting millions of dollars by building a new school that was not needed.
Bill Schroeder was a warmhearted, easy-to-know guy who week in and out put his integrity and talent on display for the public to see and judge by publishing more than a dozen newspapers and doing it the right way. Not bad for a Lake County farm boy who grew up near Half Day, Lincolnshire area, to become a giant of a leader.
Dan Friedlander
Waukegan