Rainy Lake Chronicle

The Rainy Lake Chronicle occupied several buildings around Ranier during its run from 1974 to 1982, this just being its last. The Chronicle was the brainchild of Ted Hall, who at age 52 decided to leave his flashy career of working for two metropolitan New Jersey newspapers and a news magazine that took him all over the world and trade it in for running a local newspaper out of a "cobwebby old print shop" in Ranier. He purchased a 70-year-old linotype machine and got to work. He wanted to capture the essence of Ranier and its people through his publication. An excerpt from an article about Ted Hall and the Chronicle says it best:

"The warmth of this snug village on the Canadian border issues from a cobwebby old print shop, in the description of its proprietor, where is born each week a nubby little newspaper, in the description of its Editor es Cetera, who happens to be the same person, Ted Hall. At risk of seeming melodramatic, the best way to describe the relationship between Ted Hall and the village of Ranier is a live affair. That nubby little offspring, the Rainy Lake Chronicle, is proof. 'I still marvel at getting the paper out,' Hall said. 'Every week I look at it and say, by God, another bloody miracle.' The miracle has occurred with flawless regularity for three years now, long enough for 1,400 readers in nearly every state, who have heard about the paper by word of mouth, to become vicarious neighbors of the 250 villagers of Ranier and to keep in touch with the moods and seasons of the northland. Ted Hall writes about his village on the shore of his beloved Rainy Lake with such grace and wit it is like getting a letter from a friend. 'I do treat the paper as sort of a conversation with its readers,' Hall said, 'not as a textbook.' Thus his readers learn about the triumphs and tragedies of the residents, and even of the village dogs, by name; about the municipally owned Village saloon, Ranier's main source of income; about the status of the Federal Mudpuddle in front of the post office; about Harry Erickson's fine store, never referred to without the adjective; about the habits of the evening grosbeaks and red polls who share dinner on the windowsill with a red squirrel."