[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 36 (Friday, March 15, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S2210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO THE SOUTHEAST OUTLOOK

 Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the 
members of Southeast Christian Church on the success of their first 
newspaper, the Southeast Outlook. The Outlook was created because the 
church's newsletter could no longer communicate sufficiently to the 
10,000 members of Southeast Christian.
  The first issue of the paper was published September 1, 1995, and 
averages about 20 to 28 pages a week. The Outlook lets people who are 
part of the congregation get to know each other--which is not easy in a 
church that is, as an elder of the church put it, ``larger than most 
towns in Kentucky.'' The paper focuses on church events, ministries, 
and members of the congregation, as well as issues of State, local, and 
national interest.
  The Outlook has profiled everyone from its elders to the chief 
custodian to a church member who turned to God after a suicide attempt. 
Church members can also keep informed about the congregation's wall-to-
wall activities. Publisher and editor Ninie O'Hara has said, ``Now that 
we have a product, our phone rings off the hook. We have 10,000 people 
at Southeast, and they're all out in the world doing things.''
  O'Hara has been a newspaper publisher and editor in Kentucky since 
1979. Steve Lowery, who hired O'Hara for her first job in journalism, 
said of her, ``She is in my opinion the best writer that we had at our 
company and one of the best writers in the State of Kentucky.'' O'Hara 
turned down a better paying job from the Lexington Herald-Leader to 
take the job at Southeast last summer.
  O'Hara said of the Outlook:

       [The paper] lets the outside world look into Southeast 
     Christian Church and see hey, these people . . . have the 
     same pressures and stresses as us. But they're dealing with 
     it differently because of the presence of God. If they like 
     what they see . . . maybe they'll come and join us.
  Mr. President, I ask you and my colleagues to join me in paying 
tribute to the congregation of Southeast Christian Church and 
congratulating them on the success of their newspaper.

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