[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 9, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S532-S534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO THE LYNN BROTHERS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, lucky is the town that has a good civic 
minded newspaper.
  Vermont is fortunate to have several, and two reasons for that are 
the brothers Emerson and Angelo Lynn. The Lynn brothers have shown how 
public spirited newspapering is also good business.
  A profile of the Lynn brothers in a recent edition of Vermont's Seven 
Days newspaper, written by Ken Picard, opens with this: ``Newspapermen 
Emerson and Angelo Lynn learned a long time ago that it's not enough 
for a community paper to be good. It's also got to do good. And the one 
that achieves both goals can thrive in its niche--even when larger 
corporate newspapers are struggling.''
  Emerson and Angelo Lynn--with roots in Kansas and newspapering in 
their heritage--have made their homes in Vermont since the 1980s, and 
it was the chance to publish newspapers that brought them to our State. 
Emerson has published the St. Albans Messenger since 1981. Angelo 
arrived soon after to purchase and publish the Addison County 
Independent.
  The Messenger, the Independent and the other publications they own 
and manage have flourished under their management. Not only have they 
invested significant time and energy into the success of their own 
newspapers; they also generously mentor and support other local 
publishers.
  This is a time of uncertainty and introspection in the Nation's 
newspaper businesses. Alternate media streams and a severe economic 
recession have driven down earnings and have driven some papers out of 
business. New formulas will be tried. But in the meantime, Emerson and 
Angelo Lynn have shown that the old formula of civic minded journalism 
can still work.
  The Lynn brothers have been successful because they care deeply about 
where they live, and they invest in their communities in every sense, 
including their hearts and souls. They

[[Page S533]]

act out of a sense of responsibility to their readers. Their tone is 
civil and constructive. Mr. Picard quotes veteran Vermont journalist 
Stephen Kiernan: ``These guys have a real sense of place. They know 
when a business is doing well; they know when something is changing; 
they know what's in the wind. A sense of place is essential to any 
business in Vermont, but it's especially true in the media business.''
  These two extraordinary Vermonters continue to give their best, and 
their businesses have become keystones in the civic infrastructure of 
Franklin and Addison Counties, and beyond.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the article from Seven Days, 
``Brothers in Ink,'' by Ken Picard, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                    [From Seven Days, Jan. 27, 2010]

                            Brothers in Ink


While others elegize print journalism, Emerson and Angelo Lynn are hot 
                             on the presses

                            (By Ken Picard)

       Newspapermen Emerson and Angelo Lynn learned a long time 
     ago that it's not enough for a community newspaper to be 
     good. It's also got to do good. And the one that achieves 
     both goals can thrive in its niche--even when larger 
     corporate newspapers are struggling.
       Emerson Lynn, editor and publisher of the six-days-a-week 
     St. Albans Messenger since 1981, knows his paper has 
     influence in the community. Shortly before Christmas, the 
     Hannaford supermarket in his town participated in a company-
     wide ``Fund-a-Feast'' campaign. Throughout the holidays, 
     shoppers could buy a $10 box of food to donate to their local 
     food shelf. The store in Vermont that sold the most boxes 
     would win $1000 for its food shelf, and the winning store in 
     the entire 171-supermarket chain would get an additional 
     $2500.
       A week before the contest ended, Emerson approached store 
     manager Dan LeCours and asked him how many boxes he needed to 
     win. LeCours said he didn't know, but was sure he didn't have 
     enough on hand to even come close.
       ``Emerson said, `You get me that number, and I'll take it 
     from there,' '' LeCours recalls. ``Coming from Emerson, if he 
     says it, he means it.''
       Knowing that one in eight Vermonters is now on food stamps, 
     Emerson ran free full-page ads in the Messenger the following 
     week, asking his readers to rise to the challenge. They did.
       ``That last weekend we sold $9000 worth of Fund-A-Feast 
     boxes. None of that would have happened were it not for 
     Emerson Lynn,'' says LeCours. ``It just goes to show the 
     power of the press when the person behind it is highly 
     trusted and highly respected.''
       Lately, it's hard to find any good news about print 
     journalism. In December, the now-defunct-in-print Editor & 
     Publisher magazine essentially wrote its own obituary when it 
     reported that more than 40,000 newspaper jobs disappeared in 
     2009, nearly twice as many as the 21,000 that vanished in 
     2008. Mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times and 
     the Boston Globe have continued to echo that death knell.
       But you won't find that story anywhere in the pages of a 
     Lynn publication, or in their bottom lines. Emerson's younger 
     brother, Angelo, has been editor and publisher of the twice-
     weekly Addison County Independent since 1984. According to 
     Emerson, 2008, the first year of the current recession, was 
     the Lynns' best year ever. Emerson admits that profits are 
     down, but only slightly, and neither brother has laid off 
     staff.
       In fact, both the Messenger and the Independent have 
     employees who've been with them for more than 30 years. In 
     the Messenger's newsroom, editor Gary Rutkowski and staff 
     writer Leon Thompson have a half-century of combined 
     experience between them. Emerson and Angelo insist their 
     papers wouldn't be where they are today without that level of 
     institutional memory.
       Of course, reaching out to the next generation is crucial, 
     too. Both the Messenger and Independent routinely devote 
     space to publishing the work of students in the Young Writers 
     Project. Once a month, Angelo delivers 200 free copies of the 
     ``Addy Indy,'' as it's often called, to Middlebury Union High 
     School. Inside each is a copy of the Tigers' Print, the 
     student newspaper. Emerson does the same thing for Bellows 
     Free Academy--St. Albans.
       This isn't just smart PR for the Lynn newspapers--it's also 
     a long-term investment in their readerships.
       ``For our newspapers,'' says Emerson, ``this is our seed 
     corn.''
       It's a fitting metaphor, coming from two Kansas brothers 
     who moved to Vermont more than 25 years ago to sow the seeds 
     of community journalism in the Champlain Valley. Since then, 
     the Lynns have reaped the journalistic equivalent of a bumper 
     crop. In addition to the Messenger and the Independent, the 
     brothers now publish the Colchester Sun, Essex Reporter, 
     Brandon Reporter and Milton Independent. Angelo also puts out 
     Vermont Ski & Ride Magazine, a winter monthly on the ski 
     industry, and several telephone books in southern Vermont.
       In an age when the public has an overabundance of news 
     sources to choose from--websites, blogs, social networking 
     sites, 24/7 cable-news channels--how do Lynn publications 
     manage not just to survive, but to thrive? Very simple, 
     Emerson explains. They remain faithful to their core mission: 
     Give readers in-depth local coverage--school board meetings, 
     high school sports, property taxes and so on--that they want 
     and can't find anywhere else.
       ``When you have a tight-knit community, everybody likes to 
     know that everybody else is on the same page, and Addison and 
     Franklin counties are pretty tight-knit communities,'' Angelo 
     adds. ``What you find now is that, increasingly, the 
     community newspaper is the glue that binds.''
       Stephen Kiernan agrees. A former staff writer at the 
     Burlington Free Press for 15 years and a longtime Middlebury 
     resident, he's impressed by how involved Angelo and Emerson 
     are in their respective communities. This means, for example, 
     that he sees Emerson out running at a middle-school lacrosse 
     jamboree attended by hundreds of parents and children. Or he 
     spots Angelo at a performance of the play Our Town, and the 
     next day reads his editorial about how the play reflects 
     Middlebury's diversity.
       ``These guys have a real sense of place,'' Kiernan says. 
     ``They know when a business is doing well; they know when 
     something is changing; they know what's in the wind . . . A 
     sense of place is essential to any business in Vermont, but 
     it's especially true in the media business.''
       Steve Terry, also a longtime Middlebury resident and former 
     editor of the Rutland Herald, agrees. He says that whenever 
     big institutions in Addison County want to break a story, 
     they make sure the Independent gets it first.
       ``People could read in the Herald or the Free Press that 
     something happened in Middlebury,'' Terry says, ``but they 
     just wouldn't believe it or feel it was covered until they 
     read it in the Independent.''
       Tyrone Shaw, director of the journalism program at Johnson 
     State College, is an aficionado of sorts of small community 
     newspapers. Shaw says that Lynn newspapers consistently 
     provide ``aggressive but responsible'' news coverage of 
     important local issues. He's especially fond of their 
     editorial and letters sections, which he calls ``meaty and 
     interesting.''
       In large part, that's because Angelo and Emerson typically 
     write their own editorials. They come from opposite ends of 
     the political spectrum. Angelo is more left leaning than 
     Emerson and far more likely to criticize the governor, Jim 
     Douglas' residence in Middlebury notwithstanding. Emerson, a 
     regular contributor to the conservative blog Vermont Tiger, 
     is more likely to attack Bernie Sanders and the actions of 
     the left-dominated legislature. In the last election, 
     however, he supported Barack Obama.
       Despite some divergent views on elected officials, economic 
     growth and job creation, the Lynn brothers insist they see 
     eye to eye on all social issues, such as abortion and 
     gay rights. Back in July 1997, the Messenger was the first 
     daily paper in the state to endorse civil unions. It's 
     that sophisticated understanding of the issues, Shaw says, 
     that makes the brothers' papers invaluable reading in 
     their communities.
       ``I think they were both born with newspaper ink in their 
     blood,'' he concludes. ``They're old-fashioned newspapermen 
     in the very best sense.''
       That assessment of the Lynn DNA isn't far off. Emerson and 
     Angelo are fourth-generation newspapermen. Their great-
     grandfather, Charles F. Scott, bought the Iola Register, a 
     small weekly in southwestern Kansas, in 1882. His son, Angelo 
     Scott, took over the paper and ran it until 1965, when he 
     turned it over to Emerson and Angelo's father, who's also 
     named Emerson.
       The elder Emerson and his wife, Mickey, met at college in 
     Australia, but returned to Kansas in 1950. They published 
     first the Humboldt, Kan., Humboldt Union, then the Bowie News 
     in Bowie, Tx., where Emerson and Angelo lived for seven 
     years.
       ``Every single Wednesday night Dad would load us into the 
     car and take us down to the paper, and we'd insert the 
     papers,'' recalls Angelo. It's a job the brothers still do on 
     occasion in the Messenger's ancient, lime-green press room in 
     St. Albans.
       In 1965, the Lynns' parents returned to their Kansas roots 
     and took over the Register. They ran it until last year, when 
     Emerson and Angelo's mother died and their father turned over 
     the publishing duties to their sister, Susan Lynn. The 
     siblings have a third brother, Michael, a pastor in Hamden, 
     Conn. Angelo jokes, ``The four of us are either preaching 
     from the pulpit or from the editorial pages.''
       Perhaps it was inevitable that Emerson and Angelo would 
     choose the newspaper business. In 1970, when Angelo was 16, 
     he attended a summer camp at the University of Kansas for 
     kids interested in journalism. On the third day, he recalls, 
     antiwar protesters bombed the student union. He happened to 
     be in the office of the photography instructor, who grabbed a 
     camera and dashed to the scene.
       ``Minutes later,'' Angelo remembers, ``we were crouched 
     behind a police car, the cops with pointed guns surrounding 
     the student union, and us with our cameras clicking . . . I 
     was hooked.''
       Both Emerson and Angelo eventually graduated from KU's 
     William Allen White School

[[Page S534]]

     of Journalism. Emerson got married and moved east to work on 
     Capitol Hill as a speechwriter for then-U.S. Sen. Jim 
     Pearson, a Kansas Republican--then for his successor, Sen. 
     Nancy Kassebaum.
       But Emerson quickly grew bored with his duties and began 
     looking around for a newspaper to buy. He considered some in 
     the Rocky Mountain area, but quickly realized he'd never 
     afford one. In 1981, a broker approached him with a proposal 
     to buy a stridently right-wing daily in northwestern Vermont. 
     The St. Albans Daily Messenger, then owned by publisher 
     William Loeb, had never made money. Emerson bought the paper 
     and quickly improved its reputation and financial 
     performance.
       Three years later, Gordon Mills, owner of the Addison 
     County Independent, approached Emerson and asked him if he 
     was interested in buying his newspaper, too. Emerson declined 
     but suggested he contact Angelo, who at the time was running 
     the Yates Center News, a small, struggling weekly in 
     southeastern Kansas.
       So in August 1984, at age 30, Angelo bought the Vermont 
     weekly. Four years later, he turned it into a twice-weekly 
     paper. Today the Addison County Independent has a staff of 21 
     employees, seven of whom (including Angelo) work in the 
     newsroom. Angelo insists that his commitment to news coverage 
     continues to pay off. Though he says he's made only a modest 
     investment in the paper's website over the years, in 2009 the 
     Vermont Press Association named it the state's best.
       Meanwhile, the Lynns have continued to acquire flailing 
     newspapers and turned them into money-making ventures. And 
     they've done so with seemingly boundless energy.
       ``As Angelo likes to say, we're always the last ones on the 
     treadmill,'' Emerson says. ``You may be smarter than us, but 
     you'll never outwork us.''
       Indeed. As kids, Emerson and Angelo spent most summers at a 
     family cabin in Colorado. Each morning they'd wake at the 
     crack of dawn, load their packs and spend the next 10 to 14 
     hours hiking to a summit.
       That commitment to rigorous outdoor exercise hasn't 
     flagged. Emerson and Angelo are well past 50--in a rare show 
     of vanity, Emerson declines to disclose his age, and Angelo 
     won't betray his brother. But neither looks or acts it. Trim, 
     hale and handsome, the brothers have chiseled bodies and 
     resting heart rates that would be the envy of men half their 
     age.
       Both routinely compete in marathons, triathlons, canoe 
     races and other competitions that demand iron-man stamina. 
     Angelo skis 40 to 50 days per year. Last year, he competed in 
     the Canadian Death Race, a three-day endurance course that 
     traverses a raging river and three mountain summits and 
     includes 17,000 feet of elevation change.
       Never one to be outdone by his younger brother, Emerson 
     recently took on a 3100-repetition weight-training workout 
     challenge. He completed it in under one hour and 50 minutes.
       ``We're excessive,'' Emerson admits unapologetically. ``The 
     two of us are extraordinarily competitive. But it's never me 
     against him or him against me. It's ``Let's see what we can 
     do.' ''
       That drive for peak performance is reflected in their 
     careers. Both are self-described workaholics--Emerson is 
     still married, Angelo divorced--and are intimately involved 
     in every detail of their publications, from writing daily 
     editorials to selling ads to distribution. On a recent visit 
     to Seven Days, Angelo's station wagon was filled with 
     newspapers that needed delivering.
       ``I have never met anyone in daily journalism who has 
     maintained such a high level of energy day after day after 
     day,'' notes Chris Graff, the former Associated Press writer 
     who ran the Montpelier bureau for 26 years. Speaking of 
     Emerson, he recalls, ``When I was at the AP, his routine was 
     to arrive at work at 5 a.m. every day--and he wrote an 
     editorial every day.''
       But the Lynns' competitive spirit doesn't come with a 
     bullying or predatory attitude. The brothers have helped 
     fellow Vermont publishers, including those at Seven Days, who 
     benefited from Angelo's free advice when this paper launched. 
     Angelo was also on hand when a group of journalists and 
     publishers gathered recently in Grafton to discuss working 
     cooperatively in the digital age.
       M. Dickey Drysdale, editor and publisher of the Herald of 
     Randolph, calls the Lynn brothers ``the best gift that Kansas 
     has ever given to Vermont journalism.'' Drysdale, who's been 
     at the Herald since 1971, says Emerson and Angelo have given 
     him business advice and suggestions for advertising campaigns 
     over the years, never expecting anything in return.
       ``You can sometimes get the idea that press lords are 
     supercilious and very, very serious,'' Drysdale adds. ``Both 
     [Emerson and Angelo] seem to approach their jobs with a high 
     seriousness, but also a cheerful attitude that makes them fun 
     to deal with and makes their newspapers very approachable.''
       The Lynns say they don't view other community newspapers as 
     competition, even in markets where they compete for ad 
     revenues. As the state's biggest dailies shrink in size--
     lately, the Monday Burlington Free Press has had fewer pages 
     than the Monday Messenger--neither brother sees any reason to 
     alter their course.
       ``I don't think you get stronger because other people get 
     weaker. You're stronger because of your adherence to your 
     mission,'' Emerson concludes. ``We're not having to 
     rediscover that local news is important. We've been doing 
     that forever. That's our bread and butter.''

                          ____________________