The Derry News

The Derry News is the primary newspaper of Derry, Maine, and functions throughout It as both a chronicler of the town's extraordinary violence and a key instrument of its collective amnesia. Its pages record the murders, disappearances, and sensational trials that mark the 27-year cycle of terror, yet the paper's reporting consistently frames these events within the realm of the explicable, helping to maintain the town's peculiar, willful blindness to the supernatural horror in its midst.

Role in Chronicling the 1957-58 Cycle

The Derry News provides the official, public-facing narrative of the first cycle of murders that the Losers' Club confronts. It reports on the disappearance of Edward Corcoran, the subsequent exhumation of his brother Dorsey, and the trial of their stepfather, Richard Macklin, for the beating death of the younger boy. The paper's coverage of the trial, including Macklin's dramatic confession, is detailed, yet it also notes that Macklin was "convincingly cleared" of the other child murders, leaving the true scope of the horror unresolved. The newspaper also reports on the discovery of bodies, such as that of Veronica Grogan, found by a boy using a "FABULOUS GUM-STICK" in a stormdrain, and the imposition of a 7 P.M. curfew, which becomes a constant, chilling reminder of the danger stalking the town's children.

A Record of Derry's Violent History

The News is not merely a chronicle of the 1950s; its archives contain the town's long, bloody history. Mike Hanlon, in his research for an unauthorized town history, uses the paper to trace the cycle of violence back through the decades. He finds reports of the 1906 Kitchener Ironworks explosion, which killed over a hundred people, and the 1930 fire at the Black Spot, a Negro nightclub. The paper's coverage of the Bradley Gang shootout in 1929 is a prime example of its selective memory; the official headline reads "STATE POLICE, FBI GUN DOWN BRADLEY GANG IN PITCHED BATTLE," but Mike discovers that the actual event was a vigilante execution by the townspeople, in which the newspaper's own publisher participated. The News thus becomes a document of what the town chooses to remember and what it chooses to forget.

The 1984-85 Cycle and the Adrian Mellon Murder

The newspaper's role is central to the second cycle, beginning with the murder of Adrian Mellon. The News reports on the Canal Days Festival, the subsequent assault on Mellon by three teenagers, and his death. Crucially, the paper's coverage of the trial omits any mention of the clown that both the victim's boyfriend and one of the attackers claimed to have seen under the bridge. The Assistant District Attorney, Tom Boutillier, successfully suppresses this testimony, arguing that introducing the "clown story" would allow the defendants to escape conviction. The News thus becomes complicit in the town's denial, printing a sanitized version of events that fits the official, rational explanation.

The Newspaper as a Symbol of Civic Complicity

Beyond its role as a reporter, the Derry News itself is a character in the story, embodying the town's complicity in its own horror. Its headlines, such as "DULLES PLEDGES U.S. TROOPS TO HELP LEBANON IF NEEDED!" and "POLICE HUNT FOR PSYCHOPATH GOES ON," sit side-by-side, normalizing the extraordinary. The paper's editorials and reporting consistently frame the violence as the work of a lone psychopath, never hinting at the supernatural. This is not a failure of journalism but a function of the town's own psychic defenses. The News helps to create the "curtain of quiet" that Mike Hanlon identifies, a collective agreement to look the other way, to explain away the inexplicable, and to allow the cycle to continue. The paper's very existence as a purveyor of mundane news in the face of cosmic horror makes it a powerful symbol of Derry's profound and willful ignorance.