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What is The Northwoods River News?
The Northwoods River News is a local community newspaper serving Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and the surrounding Northwoods area. Its homepage is organized around the everyday concerns of a small-town readership: city and county government, court news, obituaries, opinions, local schools (including Nicolet College), high school sports, and outdoors coverage, plus community items such as events, business notes, and reader-submitted photos.
The site also shows how a small newsroom mixes routine coverage with broader regional stories. Current headlines range from a former Rhinelander mayor's death and a School District of Rhinelander arts program to an NTSB report on a Lake Wausau plane crash and a student food drive. The page also carries a notice about an outage caused by a hardware malfunction and says a new site is under construction—useful context if pages load slowly or look unfinished.
For readers, the practical use is local: checking obituaries, school and sports results, and municipal or court developments you won't find in national outlets. For anyone submitting news, the menu lists channels for community photos, "bouquets of roses" thank-yous, and outdoors photos, which suggests reader contributions are part of the editorial mix.
A sensible next step is to go straight to the section matching your need—Obituaries, Sports, or City/County—rather than scanning the front page, since the homepage mixes news, notices, and navigation. If you're comparing local coverage, the area's other regional paper, The Lakeland Times, covers nearby Lakeland-area communities.
How can I read the e-edition of The Northwoods River News?
The site lists an E-Editions link in its top navigation, next to a $1 Super Shopper item and a Sign in link. That pattern suggests the e-edition is reached from the site's own menu rather than through a separate app, and that reading may involve an account or a paid copy. The page evidence does not show the e-edition's exact terms, so treat the sign-in and price details as things to confirm on the page itself.
A practical way to get there
- Open The Northwoods River News and look along the top menu for E-Editions.
- If a Sign in prompt appears, check whether a free account or a subscription is required before you commit.
- If the e-edition link fails, note the site's own notice: it says a hardware malfunction interrupted service on RiverNewsOnline.com and LakelandTimes.com, and that a new site is under construction. Retry later rather than assuming the link is gone.
Who this suits
The e-edition is most useful if you want the paper as printed—page layout, headlines, obituaries and legal notices in their original order—or if you are outside the Rhinelander area and cannot pick up a print copy. For quick headline browsing, the regular site is faster: the homepage already surfaces local stories such as the former mayor's passing, school and sports updates, and the FBLA/DECA food drive.
As a general rule, check whether an e-edition offers an archive of past issues before subscribing; that is often the deciding factor for readers researching local history or obituaries.
How do I submit an obituary to The Northwoods River News?
The site lists an Obituaries section under Community, but the supplied page content does not include a submission form, email address, deadline or fee. The practical route is to contact the newsroom directly and ask for its obituary guidelines before writing.
What to prepare
- Full name, age and date of death
- Funeral or memorial service details, including location and times
- A short biography and list of survivors
- A photo, if the paper accepts one
- Your contact information and relationship to the deceased
What to ask the newsroom
Ask whether obituaries run as news items or paid notices, the word limit, photo requirements, the submission deadline relative to the service, and whether funeral homes normally handle submissions. These details vary by outlet and are not stated on the page evidence.
Practical next step
If the death occurred in the Rhinelander area, start with the funeral home—many coordinate newspaper notices and can confirm current rates and deadlines. Otherwise, use the site's Contact Us page to reach the newsroom and request the obituary policy. For surrounding northwoods coverage, The Lakeland Times is the affiliated paper named in the site's outage notice.
Where can I find high school sports scores and recaps for Rhinelander schools?
For Rhinelander high school scores and recaps, start with The Northwoods River News. Its sports section carries local high school coverage, including dated roundups such as "RHS Sports recap" items and cross country meet results for Rhinelander High School.
What to expect there
- Recaps rather than live scores: Coverage appears as short articles summarizing a meet or game, often with team placements (for example, boys and girls cross country finishes at a conference meet). Expect results a day or so after the event, not real-time updates.
- Local breadth: Beyond sports, the same outlet covers Rhinelander school news, obituaries and community events, so it works as a single stop for following the teams and the schools.
- Practical caveat: The site has posted notices about service interruptions and construction, so if a page fails to load, check back later or look for the e-edition.
A useful next step
If you follow a specific team, check the sports section after each scheduled game or meet rather than daily; recaps cluster around event dates. For statewide context, the WIAA website publishes tournament brackets and postseason results, which pairs well with the local recaps for verifying standings.
As a reader scenario: a parent wanting Friday's football result and next week's cross country placings would find both in the paper's sports recaps, then use the WIAA site to confirm playoff seeding.
What community events and entertainment are happening in the Rhinelander area?
The Rhinelander area's community calendar is covered mainly through The Northwoods River News, which lists entertainment, area events, business watch, school news and outdoors items alongside its news reporting. The current front-page mix shows the flavor of local coverage: a school culture program bringing Mexican folk artists to the School District of Rhinelander, a student FBLA/DECA food drive called Trick Or Can, and a light community feature about a donkey game at a local event. These are the kinds of happenings that make up much of the area's day-to-day entertainment, rather than large ticketed concerts.
For a practical next step, start with the paper's community and area events sections, then check school and Nicolet College listings, since student programs and drives often function as public events. If you are planning a weekend, use the events listings to confirm dates and locations, and note that the site has reported service interruptions, so a phone call to organizers is a sensible backup.
A simple comparison of where to look:
| Source type | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Local newspaper community and events pages | School programs, drives, civic happenings | Coverage depends on submissions and may lag |
| School district and college channels | Student performances, culture programs | Narrower focus, less general entertainment |
| Area events calendars | Dated listings and seasonal festivals | May miss small community fundraisers |
For broader regional context, The Lakeland Times covers neighboring communities in the Northwoods.
How do I contact The Northwoods River News about a website outage or subscription issue?
Use the contact options listed on The Northwoods River News site itself; the outage notice on the homepage points readers to a "read more here" link for service updates, and the site's About Us and Contact Us pages are the right places to start for subscription help.
For a website outage
- Check the homepage notice first. It states that RiverNewsOnline.com and LakelandTimes.com experienced interrupted service after a hardware malfunction and that the papers were working with online partners to restore service. Follow the "read more here" link for the latest status before reporting the problem yourself.
- If the site is back up but a specific page still fails, note the page address, the time you tried, and what you saw (error message, blank page, login loop). That detail helps staff distinguish a lingering outage from an account problem.
- If you cannot reach the website at all, use the phone number or office address published in the print edition or on the paper's social media pages, since those channels may stay available when the site does not.
For a subscription issue
- Start with the Contact Us page and the Sign in area, which are linked from the homepage. Subscription questions typically involve delivery problems, missed papers, billing, or trouble signing in to the e-edition.
- Have your account details ready: the name and address on the subscription, the delivery start date, and any payment or renewal reference. For e-edition access problems, note the email address you registered with and whether the sign-in page rejects your password or simply fails to load.
- The homepage lists "E-Editions" and a "$1 Super Shopper - FREE" item, so if your question concerns which product you are entitled to, say which one you are trying to open.
A practical next step
If the site is down, wait for the posted restoration update and use the phone contact in the meantime; if the site is up but your account is not working, send a message through Contact Us with your account details and a short description of the error. That split keeps outage reports from being mixed up with billing or login requests, which are handled differently.
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