WILLOW CREEK — Harold Winslow, the newspaperman who returned the Willow Creek Gazette to local ownership after a decade in the hands of the Bangor Daily News chain, died Tuesday of a heart attack at his home on School Street. He was 61.

Harold Winslow, who purchased the Willow Creek Gazette in 1974 and returned it to local ownership after a decade of chain ownership, dies of a heart attack. His daughter Clara assumes the publisher's role.
Harold Winslow, who purchased the Willow Creek Gazette in 1974 and returned it to local ownership after a decade of chain ownership, dies of a heart attack. His daughter Clara assumes the publisher's role.

When Winslow purchased the paper in 1974, the Gazette had been chain-owned for nine years — a period during which local news coverage had thinned and circulation had fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s.

“This paper belongs in this town,” Winslow wrote in his first editorial in 1974, a line that remains framed on the wall of the Gazette’s newsroom. “A newspaper that is printed in one city and owned in another is a newspaper that serves neither well.”

Under Winslow’s leadership, the Gazette restored its emphasis on town government coverage, high school sports, and the Ice-Out competition. Circulation recovered from 1,400 to approximately 2,200 over his decade at the helm. He also mentored his daughter Clara, who worked as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News before returning to Willow Creek in 1980.

Clara Winslow, 28, will assume the role of publisher effective immediately. She told the Gazette staff that she has no plans to sell the paper.

“My father believed that a community newspaper is a public trust, not a business,” she said. “I intend to honor that trust.”

The funeral will be held Saturday at the Congregational Church. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations to the Willow Creek Free Public Library’s historical collection fund.

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