With a career spanning more than four decades that began at the Marinette Eagle-Star and ended as the editor of the Oshkosh Herald and Neenah News, Dan Roherty officially announced his retirement in a story published April 30, 2025 by the Herald.
The Marinette Eagle-Star sought Roherty after his UW-Eau Claire graduation. He covered Peshtigo and Marinette County for the Eagle-Star. He recalled redesigning its front page “because it looked like, you know, the Lincoln assassination edition,” an eight-column paper with a lot of one-column headlines.
Roherty went to The Post Crescent in Appleton in 1983, where he would spend the next 32 years on the copy desk. The regional newspaper had up to 100 people working for the editorial department in some form, in addition to paste-up and press crews. Roherty served as wire editor for state, national and world news that filled the daily paper.
Roherty left The PC in 2015 and spent a year in Oshkosh Defense’s bid and proposal department working on military contract proposals. The technical nature of the work with engineers and designers was a change of pace for the newspaper guy.
Tracked down by Karen Schneider through mutual colleagues and acquaintances from her time working for area daily newspapers, Doherty was recruited to start a local newspaper from scratch. The Oshkosh Herald was founded Jan. 11, 2018. In the beginning, it was a smaller paper without a full-time reporter. Roherty had to knock the rust off his news- writing skills as the solo editorial staffer with part-time and freelance contributions to help fill news and sports pages.
Keeping the idea of quality over quantity, the paper found its legs, built a team that included freelance writers, photographers, then reporters and sports editor Steve Clark who handles coverage for three weeklies.
Four years later that opportunity expanded as Neenah News was launched.
Roherty told contributor Patti Lee he is looking forward to stepping back into things he has put aside, whether traveling with his wife, Karen, keeping up with family and old friends, or taking on new interests.
“I’m just so grateful for these seven-plus years getting to know Oshkosh and Neenah better than I could ever have imagined,” Doherty said. “As for everything else, I guess I’ll find out.”
