Bloomington community leader and former owner of The Herald-Times Scott Schurz Sr. has died. He was 85 years old.
Schurz was named publisher of the HT shortly after his family’s South Bend-based company, Schurz Communications Incorporated, bought the Bloomington and Bedford newspapers in 1966. He was publisher for more than 35 years and remained a part of the Schurz Communications corporate leadership team through the time the company sold the H-T and several other southern Indiana newspapers in 2019.
Schurz lived in Bloomington for 55 years and supported many charitable and philanthropic causes. He was active in United Way, the IU Foundation and in 2019 recently, made a $2 million donation to the Kinsey Institute to create an endowed chair in celebration of IU’s Bicentennial.
A graduate of Denison University in Ohio, IU presented him with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 2000.
He was active in promoting freedom of the press around the world, and was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2003.
