The Lavine Papers consist of four series: PERSONAL AND FAMILY PAPERS, GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE, CLASSIFIED CAREER PAPERS, and VISUAL MATERIALS. The files were donated to the Historical Society during the late 1980s when Lavine changed career direction and moved to Minneapolis to accept a faculty position at the University of Minnesota. As a result, the chronological coverage of the papers ends with the mid-1980s. The papers were personally selected and shipped to the Society by Lavine himself, and no representative of the Historical Society had an opportunity to analyze and appraise the entire collection in his Chippewa Falls office. However, the records management plan developed for the Lavine Newspaper Group (LNG) allows users to identify some material that was not transferred. The research files, for example, appear much reduced. The files that were transferred (numbers #100-300) primarily consist of correspondence with Wisconsin and national political leaders, and they document selected subjects in which he took a strong personal interest, particularly Project ELF. The Menominee seizure of the Alexian Brothers Novitiate at Gresham, which took place shortly after Lavine purchased the Evening Leader in nearby Shawano, was also of personal interest, although these files are less complete.
The PERSONAL AND FAMILY PAPERS series is a small portion of the collection. The series primarily covers Lavine's youth, education, and travel, with limited documentation of his speeches and writings. There are a few letters to his mother, Frances Hoffman Lavine, that supplement her separately catalogued papers at the Superior Area Research Center (Superior Mss Z) and some fragmentary materials about his father. Except for the correspondence in the CLASSIFIED CAREER PAPERS concerning his operation of the Portage Daily Register, the elder Lavine's important civic and journalism career is otherwise undocumented. The travel folders can be classed as both personal and professional, for John Lavine often used his travel experiences for editorial copy, and he frequently traveled with professional organizations. The 1978 China trip, which was sponsored by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, includes his lengthy manuscript “Notes on China” and several reporter's notebooks. Although Lavine hoped to publish this manuscript, there is no evidence that it was. There are also transcribed notes about his visit to Panama with Vice President Walter Mondale. Speeches and writings consist of materials gathered from throughout the collection, and are far from complete. There is little representation of his editorial writing either in draft or printed form, and it is likely that most materials of this type were retained by the donor. Published editorials can be found in the papers themselves, all of which are available on microfilm in the Historical Society Library. The series does include a copy of his 1982 publication, The Constant Dollar Newspaper: an Economic Analysis Covering the Last Two Decades, but nothing concerning Managing Media Organization: Effective Leadership of the Media, a text co-authored with Daniel B. Wackman in 1988. One box of speech notes and a few complete texts cover Lavine's oral presentations. Few of these are dated or identified, although most seem to date from the early 1970s. Several packets of note cards labeled only “computers” suggest Lavine's early ideas about the changes in the newspaper business brought about by electronic media.
The GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE series, which was maintained by Lavine's secretary in his Chippewa Falls office, documents his wide ranging friendships, while exchanges based solely on business, journalism, political, and educational associations are generally filed in the previously-described CAREER PAPERS. Among the correspondents here are Peter Bellerman, David Carley, Ada Deer, William Duren (of Cygnet Films in which Lavine invested), Martin Hanson, Esther Kaplan, Eppie Lederer (Ann Landers), William Schulman, Francis X. Shea, Hugh Simonson, Gus Turbeville, Ned Wallace, Harold R. Wilde, John Winsor, and Burt Zien. The series is arranged alphabetically.
The CLASSIFIED CAREER PAPERS series is arranged numerically in conformance of a records management plan established for Lavine in 1972 by William Mitchell of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire faculty. A much annotated copy of the plan is located in Box 21. This scheme was not entirely successful because files became inactive at a faster rate than the secretarial staff could correctly shift to storage. Although Mitchell's plan allowed for some expansion, the files about Lavine's civic and professional activities (the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and the Inland Daily Press Association, in particular) developed beyond the needs envisioned by Mitchell. As a result, some files went to storage without being classified; in other cases the staff partially renumbered the files in a vain attempt to keep pace with expansion. The Inland Daily Press Association files, for example, were originally assigned a single classification number, #451, but they grew to represent a large and complicated portion of the collection, and the staff chose to number some portions with a new number, #462. Despite the confusing inconsistences and duplicate or absent numbering, the original order has been retained to the greatest extent possible. In some cases, unnumbered files were numbered by Archives staff.
Because Mitchell's plan was based on function, correspondence with particular individuals sometimes appears in more than one category. A further problem with the functional scheme is that it masked that total coverage for individual papers. The chief exceptions to the functional arrangement are the files about the purchase and operation of the Portage Daily Register by Max Lavine that predate the implementation of the records management plan. This section includes correspondence between general managers Royall Rose and Thomas S. Foley with Max in Superior and then with John in Chippewa Falls. In general, this correspondence deals with management issues, rather than editorial content. The legal function is represented by a case involving Duane Craig, general manager of the Portage newspaper who used his position to defraud local banks, and a suit against Daniel Schroeder, a leader in the Posse Commitatus.
As received, the bulk of the CLASSIFIED CAREER PAPERS concerned Lavine's tenure as a member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents. Of this, the largest portion consisted of mimeographed and photocopied minutes, reports, correspondence, and other papers that were circulated to all members of the board and that would be most effectively studied by researchers using the Regents' own archives on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Retained in the Lavine collection is material that isolates his individual participation and interests include collective bargaining for faculty and the education of minorities. Lavine also corresponded individually with many University of Wisconsin System administrators and faculty about specific issues. Of these, the files about University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and University of Wisconsin-Superior bulk largest. Lavine also served as the Regents' representatives on the Wisconsin Higher Educational Aids Board (HEAB). While the Historical Society is the repository for HEAB's historic records, as of 2010, when the Lavine papers were processed, that agency had transferred only a limited amount of records. As a result, minutes and HEAB records received by Lavine were transferred and used to fill in gaps. As with the Regents records, only files that document Lavine's individual participation have been retained in his collection. Lavine's correspondence with Esther Kaplan, secretary of the board, the agency's copies of which are not known to exist elsewhere, are especially detailed and informative.
Although only limited material in the CLASSIFIED CAREER FILES deals with the coverage of specific news events, there are files on several stories in which Lavine took a strong personal interest. Within the files on Project ELF (which stands for Extremely Low Frequency) there is correspondence with Wisconsin Senators Proxmire and Nelson and with various organizations such as Stop Project ELF that opposed the Navy project, stories written by Lavine concerning his trip on a Seafarer submarine, and photographs of the interior of the ELF facility at Clam Lake. Of special interest is correspondence about Lavine's 1979 decision to release a restricted GAO (United States Government Accountability Office) report that cast official doubt on ELF's feasibility. Later, Lavine witnessed a test that changed his opinion. The most notable of the material on the Alexian Brothers Novitiate episode, which took place shortly after his purchase of the Shawano paper, is a folder of press photographs.
There are substantial files about Lavine's involvement with journalism organizations. The files about the Inland Daily Press Association (IDPA), which are the most extensive, primarily concern the association's annual cost-revenue and wage-salary surveys and Lavine's tenure as president. The cost studies cover the years 1960 to 1982, with varying amounts of data for each year. Several years are represented by both the detailed information submitted by the individual LNG papers and the papers' placement within the otherwise anonymous industry-wide statistical reports. This detail contrasts with the otherwise fragmentary financial information about the Lavine Newspaper Group elsewhere in the collection. However, some years are represented only by the general study results. Lavine's files as IDPA president include occasional board minutes, information on conference planning, and correspondence with the IDPA executive director and other association officials. Other documented professional organizations include the American Press Institute and the Associated Press.
Also classed with the career materials are files on Lavine's membership in the Milwaukee Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith which add substantially to the Historical Society's Wisconsin Jewish Archives. In addition to several folders of correspondence with Saul Sorrin, a leader in the Milwaukee Jewish community, there is material here on Lavine's controversial defense of Affirmative Action.
The VISUAL MATERIALS are divided by format – Photographs, Negatives, and Transparencies – and consist of formal and informal portraits of John and Max Lavine, snapshots (as well as two home movies) of Flambeau River trips, photo journalistic coverage of the Alexian Novitiate seizure and a visit to the ELF facility in Clam Lake. There are also snapshots of travel to Mexico and Israel, but none documenting Lavine's trip to China. Several snapshots record a documentary photo shoot by William Duren's Cygnet Films.
