Which towns and counties does Sun Times News Online serve?

Sun Times News Online serves Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois, with its clearest coverage centered on Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri, and the Chester area of Southern Illinois. If you live in or follow news from those two regions, the site is aimed at you; if you are looking for statewide or national coverage, it is not.

The two coverage areas

The site describes itself as "Serving Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois," and its published stories match that footprint.

Southeast Missouri

• Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri is the anchor of the Missouri side. The newsroom address listed on the site is in Ste. Genevieve (21851 White Sands Road, Ste. Genevieve, MO 63670).
• Ste. Genevieve County R-II School District appears in coverage, for example a story on emergency preparedness support from MLC.
• Memorial Hospital is covered in local health news, including statewide recognition for its "Get Your Shot" campaign.

Southern Illinois

• Chester, Illinois is represented directly: a Chester Grade School Beginner Band Night story names the school's band director and the number of students registered.
• The Illinois side also appears through Memorial Hospital, which the site ties to Illinois statewide recognition.

What kinds of local institutions are covered

Coverage clusters around the institutions that define daily life in these towns:

How to tell whether your town is covered

1. Check the section labels. The site's navigation lists News, Obits, and Sports, and its stories are tagged by place name in the dateline (for example, "Ste. Genevieve, MO").
2. Search the town name. If your community sits within Ste. Genevieve County or the Chester area, it is likely to appear; towns well outside those two clusters generally do not.
3. Watch the weather block. The "River Region Weather" feature is the site's own framing of its geographic reach, so it is a quick signal of the area it treats as local.
4. Use the newsroom contact for edge cases. Inquiries go to [email protected]; that is the appropriate route if you are unsure whether your town falls inside coverage.

A practical example

Suppose you live in Chester and want to know whether a school event will be reported. The Beginner Band Night story shows the site covers Chester Grade School activities with specific detail — the director's name and a count of 38 registered students — so school news from that town is a reasonable expectation. By contrast, a story datelined only to a distant county would fall outside the pattern shown on the site.

Limits to keep in mind

The site presents itself as a local outlet, and the evidence on its pages points to Ste. Genevieve County and the Chester area as its core. It does not claim comprehensive coverage of every town in the two states, and the site does not publish a town-by-town coverage list. Treat the datelines and section content as your guide, and direct specific questions to the newsroom email.